Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Enhancement of Glucosamine Hydrochloride on Thioredoxin Production by Synoviocytes from Knee Osteoarthritis In vitro

Background: Knee osteoarthritis (OA) is well known to be a common disease of the synovial joint in elderly peoples, which are characterized by progressive loss of articular cartilage with bony remodeling, periarticular muscles, among others. Although the etiology of OA is not well understood, oxidative stress responses are attracted attention as one of important mechanisms in the development of OA. Oral administration of dietary supplements, such as glucosamine hydrochloride (GH) and chondroitin sulfate are accepted to be effective treatment of OA, however, the therapeutic mechanisms of these dietary supplements are not fully understood. The present study was designed to examine the influence of GH on the production of thioredoxin (TRX), one of the most important endogenous anti-oxidative molecules, by synoviocytes from an OA patient using an in vitro cell culture technique. Methods: Human fibroblast-like synoviocytes (1 x 105 cells/ml) were stimulated with 25.0 μM H2O2 in the presence of various concentrations of GH. After 24 h, TRX concentrations in culture supernatants were examined by ELISA. We also examined the effect of GH on transcription factor, signal transducer and activator of transcription factor 6 (STAT6), activation and TRX mRNA expression in synoviocytes 6 and 12 h after H2O2 stimulation, respectively. Moreover, we examined the influence of GH on TRX protein production by wheat germ cell-free protein synthesis system. Results: Treatment of cells with GH caused an increase in the ability of cells to produce TRX after H2O2 stimulation, and the minimum concentration that caused significant increase was 0.75 μg/ml. Although the addition of GH at more than 0.75 μg/ml into cell cultures inhibited STAT6 activation and TRX mRNA transcription, GH increased translocation of mRNA to produce specific proteins. Conclusion: These results strongly suggest that the ability of GH to increase TRX production from synoviocytes may account, at least in part, for clinical efficacy of GH on OA. Special Issue: Immunopharmacology and Immunotoxicology of Natural Products
Inflammatory and Immune Responses in Depression

With high global chronic disease burden [1] and prevalence [2], mental illness is presently facing an enormous drug development challenge. In stark contrast to revolutionary, mostly serendipitous, discovery of psychiatric drugs between the end of 1940's and late 1950's, followed by a period of stagnancy during the next half a century, the last decade has witnessed drug development pipeline for nervous system disorders drying up, and major pharmaceutical companies deemphasizing or exiting neuroscience in turn [3-6]. According to one estimate, over 50% of patients with depression do not completely respond to treatment of approved antidepressant drugs [7]. Fortunately, the initial clinical observation of rapid antidepressant effects of the anesthetic ketamine [8] leading to further supporting evidence [9-11] and identification of glutamate pathway as a new drug target in depression [4, 12, 13] has recently revitalized neuropsychiatric therapeutics [14-16]. Not surprisingly, given the success of serendipity in brain treatments, the idea of undertaking a systematic search for reported psychiatric benefits of existing drugs has been proposed [17]. Similarly, other drug repurposing approaches may also seem promising [18-22]. However, irrespective of discovery route, the future of brain drug development is considered to benefit greatly from understanding biological mechanisms involved in pathophysiology and effective therapies [23-25]. It is in this context that the present thematic issue on inflammatory and immune responses in depression was conceived. From the initial observation in late 1980s that a subset of hepatitis C patients treated with interferon alpha develops psychiatric side effects including depression [26], to the findings in 1990s that subsets of patients with major depressive disorder show elevated levels of circulating leukocytes and the proinflammatory cytokine interleukin-6 [27, 28], evidence has accumulated in recent years to suggest a role of peripheral and central inflammation, and innate and adaptive immune systems in the development of depressive symptoms [29-31]. The present issue is in keeping with immense significance of this newly emerging concept in developing new therapeutics for mood disorders.
User-centric Optimization of Caching and Recommendations in Edge Cache Networks

On streaming platforms such as Youtube and Netflix, recommendations influence a large share of content consumption. In this context, use rexperience depends on both the quality of the recommendations (QoR) and the quality of service (QoS) of the delivered content. However, network decisions (such as caching) affecting QoS are usually made without explicit knowledge of the recommender's actions. Similarly, recommendation decisions are made without considering the potential delivery quality of the recommended content. In this paper, we propose to jointly optimize caching and recommendations in a generic network of caches, towards maximizing the quality of experience (QoE). This coincides with the recent trend for large content providers to also act as Content Delivery Network (CDN) owners. We formulate this joint optimization problem and prove that it can be approximated up to a constant. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first polynomial algorithm to achieve a constant approximation ratio for the joint problem. Our numerical experiments show important performance gains of the proposed algorithm over baseline schemes and existing algorithms.
Elateriospermum tapos Seed Protein as a New Potential Therapeutic for Diabetes, Obesity and Hypertension: Extraction and Characterization of Protein

The Elateriospermum tapos seed extract is one of the major contributors to the therapeutic effects as remedy drink for chronic diseases, such as hypertension, diabetes and obesity by the locals in East Malaysia. It is believed that the component in the seed, such as protein, plays an essential role due to its nutraceutical properties. Hence, we report the extraction of protein from the seed of E. tapos that has the potential biological activities. The protein was initially extracted using salt solution, which was similar to the local practice and maximal values of extraction yield (44 mg/g) was performed based on the extraction parameters; pH 8, sample to buffer ratio, 1:50 (w/v), 2 h at 80 oC. Sodium dedocyl sulphate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) profile showed that 7S globulin was the dominant protein in the E. tapos seed protein isolate (ETSPI), whereas Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) analysis showed that the extracted protein consisted of α-helical secondary structure. This protein could be digested up to 72.5% in vitro. In the biological activity evaluation, the results showed that ETSPI exhibited angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitory (56.6%/100 μg), lipase inhibitory (26.7%/100 μg), α-amylase inhibitory (31.2%/100 μg), free radical scavenging (33.4%/mg) and metal reducing activities (0.97 mM FeSO4/mg), which suggests that this protein has the potential in the aforementioned therapeutic effects.
Oxidative and electrophilic structural modification and catalytic regulation of human hydroxysteroid sulfotransferase 2a1 (hsult2a1)

Human hydroxysteroid sulfotransferase (hSULT2A1) catalyzes the sulfation of a broad range of endogenous (e.g., hormones, neurotransmitters, bile acids) as well as xenobiotic (e.g, drugs, environmental pollutants) compounds. Alteration in the catalytic activity of hSULT2A1 can lead to outcomes like endocrine disruptions or aberrant drug metabolism and xenobiotic toxicity. Oxidative and electrophilic stresses are known to cause physiological damage and be implicated as possible underlying pathologic mechanisms of a wide range of diseases. To examine the oxidative as well as electrophilic regulation of hSULT2A1, model oxidants (glutathione disulfide (GSSG), 5,5’-dithiobis(2nitrobenzoic acid) (DTNB), diamide, tert-butyl hydroperoxide (TBHP)) and electrophiles such as quinone metabolites of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB-quinones) and phenyl-pbenzoquinone (PBQ) were chosen for this study. Mechanistic studies correlating the enzyme structural modifications with alteration in the catalytic properties were performed to elucidate the catalytic regulative mechanism of an individual oxidant or electrophile. Thiol oxidants including GSSG, DTNB, and diamide showed catalytic regulation of hSULT2A1. Changes in protein intrinsic fluorescence indicated conformational alterations in hSULT2A1 following the reaction with diamide. Binding properties of hSULT2A1 for its substrates were also altered after reaction with these thiol oxidants, which could be one major reason for the kinetic alteration due to oxidative modification. Formation of mixed disulfides with cysteines in hSULT2A1 was also identified as a result of reaction with GSSG and DTNB. TBHP was chosen as a model for lipid peroxides, and reaction with this hydroperoxide decreased the catalytic function of hSULT2A1. The dissociation constant for binding of dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) was significantly altered with TBHPpretreatment, but this did not affect the binding of 3’,5’-adenosine diphosphate (PAP) to the enzyme. Structural analysis identified cysteine sulfonic acids and methionine sulfoxide
The lowest-energy chlorophyll of photosystem II is adjacent to the peripheral antenna and near Chl ZD2: Emitting states of CP47 assigned via circularly polarized luminescence

The identification of lowest-energy chlorophyll pigments in photosystem II (PSII) is critical to our understanding of the kinetics and mechanism of this important enzyme. We report parallel circular dichroism (CD) and circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) measurements at liquid helium temperatures of the proximal antenna protein CP47. This assembly hosts the lowest-energy chlorophylls in PSII, responsible for the well-known "F695" fluorescence band of thylakoids and PSII core complexes. Our new spectra enable a clear identification of the lowest-energy exciton state of CP47. This state exhibits a small but measurable excitonic delocalization, as predicated by its CD and CPL. Using structure-based simulations incorporating the new spectra, we propose a revised set of site energies for the 16 chlorophylls of CP47. The significant difference from previous analyses is that the lowest-energy pigment is assigned as Chl 612 (alternately numbered Chl 11). The new assignment is readily reconciled with the large number of experimental observations in the literature, while the most common previous assignment for the lowest energy pigment, Chl 627(29), is shown to be inconsistent with CD and CPL results. Chl 612 is significantly closer to the reaction center than Chl 627 and is also in contact with the peripheral light-harvesting system in higher plants, in a lumen-exposed region of the thylakoid membrane. This result consequently has significant implications for our understanding of the kinetics and regulation of energy transfer in PSII.
Lexical and Hierarchical Topic Regression

Inspired by a two-level theory from political science that unifies agenda setting and ideological framing, we propose supervised hierarchical latent Dirichlet allocation (SHLDA), which jointly captures documents' multi-level topic structure and their polar response variables. Our model extends the nested Chinese restaurant processes to discover tree-structured topic hierarchies and uses both per-topic hierarchical and per-word lexical regression parameters to model response variables. SHLDA improves prediction on political affiliation and sentiment tasks in addition to providing insight into how topics under discussion are framed.
Mitochondrial neurogastrointestinal encephalomyopathy: approaches to diagnosis and treatment

Mitochondrial neurogastrointestinal encephalomyopathy (MNGIE) is an ultra-rare disease caused by mutations in TYMP, the gene encoding for the enzyme thymidine phosphorylase. The resulting enzyme deficiency leads to a systemic accumulation of thymidine and 2’-deoxyuridine and ultimately mitochondrial failure due to a progressive acquisition of secondary mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) mutations and mtDNA depletion. MNGIE is characterised by gastrointestinal dysmotility, cachexia, peripheral neuropathy, ophthalmoplegia, ptosis and leukoencephalopathy. The disease is progressively degenerative and leads to death at an average age of 37.6 years. Patients invariably encounter misdiagnoses, diagnostic delays, and non-specific clinical management. Despite its rarity, MNGIE has invoked much interest in the development of therapeutic strategies, mainly because it is one of the few mitochondrial disorders where the molecular abnormality is metabolically and physically accessible to manipulation. This review provides a resume of the current diagnosis and treatment approaches and aims to increase the clinical awareness of MNGIE and thereby facilitate early diagnosis and timely access to treatments, before the development of untreatable and irreversible organ damage.
Duplex RT-Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification Assay for Simultaneous Detection of Influenza A Virus H6 and H9 Subtypes

The World Health Organization has listed H6 and H9 avian influenza viruses (AIVs) for impending pandemic outbreaks. Therefore, a specific, sensitive and rapid method for diagnosing H6 and H9 subtype’s infections is crucial for establishing control strategies after outbreaks. A duplex reverse transcriptase loop-mediated isothermal amplification (dRT-LAMP) assay was developed and evaluated for simultaneous detection of H6 and H9 AIV subtypes. Two sets of LAMP primers were designed for targeting hemagglutinin (HA) genes of H6 and H9. The detection limit of H6 and H9 RT-ALMP assays were both 10 copies per reaction. The sensitivity of the assay was compared to conventional RT-PCR and real-time RT-PCR assays; it showed a 100-fold higher sensitivity than the real-time RT-PCR method and 1000-fold higher sensitivity than conventional RT-PCR. dRT-LAMP assay showed no cross reactions with 19 strains of closely related respiratory viruses and AIVs other than H6 and H9 subtypes. The dRT-LAMP assay positively detected both H6 and H9 avian influenza subtypes from field samples and exhibited high specificity and sensitivity. This assay can be used for rapidscreening of H6 and H9 avian influenza subtypes since both can be diagnosed in a single reaction.
"He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship

Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva. nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible.
Pollination ecology provides some new insight into evolution and systematics of Mediterranean legumes

Cristofolini, G. , Galloni, M. , Podda L. & Vivarelli, D. : Pollination ecology provides some new insight into evolution and systematics of Mediterranean Legumes. — Bocconea 24: 53-60. 2012. — ISSN 1120-4060. Plant evolution and diversification is driven by several environmental selective pressures and constraints. Pollinators’ ethology, form, and size play a relevant role in determining floral characters, and more so when pollination is specialized (i.e. due to one or very few insect species). Floral characters, in turn, constitute the main ground of traditional classification system. Recent molecular phylogenies of Mediterranean Legumes have challenged the commonly accepted systematics, as several genera usually regarded as “natural” ones proved to be polyphyletic. The question arises, whether the incongruence between natural groups based on floral traits and monophyla based on molecular homology is due to experimental flaws, or whether it has a biological background. The authors present recent evidence that pollination in Mediterranean Legumes is much more specialized than previously reported. Even species pollinated or visited by several insect species are specialized, in that their fitness is enhanced only by one or few of them, while other visitors and pollinators may exert little influence on seed production, or even depress it. Such specialization may account for homoplasy of floral characteristics, so that several “natural” genera may reflect common pollination syndromes rather than represent mono-
Bioinhibition of Phenotypes of Gram-negative Food Indicator Bacteria from Nigerian Fermented Food Condiments

Identification of a total of 440 Gram-negative food-borne bacterial strains from four Nigerian fermented condiments revealed that: 77 (17.5%) were Escherichia coli, 96 (21.8%) Klebsiella pneumoniae, 89 (20.2%) Enterobacter aerogenes, 10 (2.3%) Enterobacter cloacae, 34 (7.73%) Proteus mirabilis, 48 (10.9%) Salmonella spp. , 38 (8.64%) Citrobacter sp. and 48 (10.9%) Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The bacterial strains were mostly resistant to cotrimoxazole (50.0–65.0%) and tetracycline (40.0–70.0%), while moderate to high multiple antibiotic resistance (MAR) of 37.5–75.0% was also exhibited by the food-borne bacteria. The inhibitory activities of crude extracts of selected plant spices, Allium cepa, Allium sativum, Aframomum melegueta, Eugenia aromatica, Xylopia aethiopica, Monodora myristica, nutmeg, Zingiber officinale were very minimal in vitro (7.1–29.0%), except for Piper guineense, which exhibited moderate inhibitory activities (20.0–54.0%). No in vitro inhibitory activity was recorded against the food indicator bacteria by Lactobacillus acidophilus, L. brevis, L. plantarum, L. fermentum and Leuconostoc mesenteroides isolated from the condiments. However, three Lactobacillus strains from Nigerian fermented beverages, L. plantarum LbOG1, L. delbrueckii LbOG2 from ogi and L. brevis LbKN1 from kunun zarki were able to inhibit about 65.0% of the selected Gram-negative food-borne bacterial pathogens. Sensory analyses indicated that there was no significant difference between the level of acceptance of the biopreserved condiment and the control by the respondents. Antimicrobialproducing Lactobacillus strains would therefore, be of considerable effect in enhancing the bioinhbition and preservative quality of Nigerian indigenous fermented food condiments both at the cottage and industrial levels of production, for local consumption and for exportation. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Acupuncture for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis

Background: Patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) often suffer from progressive worsening of dyspnea and lung function. Although 2 drugs are now available for IPF treatment, many gaps are still to be filled. Evidences suggest that there may be some beneficial effect of acupuncture on pulmonary diseases. This review aims to systematically determine the efficacy and safety of acupuncture for treating IPF. Methods: The following 8 databases will be searched from their inception to March 20, 2017: PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Web of Science, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Chongqing VIP, and Wanfang Data. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of acupuncture for IPF without restriction of publication status will be included. Two review authors will independently undertake study selection, extraction of data, and assessment of study quality. Meta-analysis will be conducted after screening of studies if possible. Dichotomous data will be analyzed using odds ratio (OR), and continuous data mean difference (MD). Statistical analysis will be conducted using Review Manager (RevMan) software. Results: This systematic review will provide a detailed summary of the current evidences related to the efficacy and safety of acupuncture in improving breathlessness, exercise limitation, health status impairment of patients with IPF. Conclusion: This evidence may be useful to clinicians, patients, and health policy-makers with regard to the use of acupuncture in IPF treatment. Ethics and dissemination: This systematic review will provide up-to-date information on acupuncture for IPF. This review does not require ethical approval and will be disseminated electronically through a peer-reviewed publication or conference presentations. Trial registration number: PROSPERO 2017:CRD42017059848.
Virtual Mobile Edge Computing Based on IoT Devices Resources in Smart Cities

The emerging of the internet of things (IoT) led to increasing the computation resources required to satisfy a large number of requests from the connected devices, for this the Cloud Computing (CC) allows the processing of requests in the cloud to guarantee the efficiency of services for end-users. The main problem of the current CC architecture is the latency in real-time applications such as video streaming, which require a distributed architecture to support the future generation of applications. The Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) provides a fully distributed architecture where a part of processing executed in the edge of network which supports the requirements of IoT applications. In this paper, we propose to use the connected devices as on-demand virtual edge servers to provide computation services close to endusers where each submitted task is divided into a set of sub-tasks, each one can be executed by any other device which is a part of the virtual edge server according to the available resources in the selected device. In this context, we have formulated the partitioned and the offloading problem in MEC environment using linear programming techniques. Optimal Partitioned and Offloading (OPO) algorithm that allocates network, storage and computing resources to user application sub-tasks with respect to MEC constraints and user quality requirements is modeled, implemented, and evaluated. Results show the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed algorithms.
S5 × Diﬀ has the exponential product model property

It is known that the two-variable fragment of ﬁrst-order logic with equality is not only coNExpTime -complete but it enjoys the exponential ﬁnite model property (fmp) [6,3]. When extended with counting quantiﬁers, it retains its coNExpTime decidability [4,7,8], albeit at the expense of losing its fmp. Here we investigate some logics in between these two in the modal setting. We show that the product modal logic S5 × Diﬀ (where Diﬀ is the logic of diﬀerence frames) enjoys the exponential fmp w.r. t. to product frames. The result is optimal in the sense that extending S5 × Diﬀ with a modal ‘diagonal’ constant (interpreted as equality in the ﬁrst-order setting) results in a logic lacking even the ‘abstract’ fmp [5].
Advances in Environmental Biology

, individual factors, product characteristics and perceived credibility. A questionnaire was designed for this purpose and using exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling analysis, we tried to explore the relationship between the variables mentioned with electronic loyalty. According to the output data, all research hypotheses were confirmed except for the impact on satisfaction and perceived value. So as to promote customer e-loyalty, it is suggested that each of the indicators identified factors influencing the research emphasis should be considered by the banks.