Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Differential stimulation of helper and cytotoxic T cells by dendritic cells after infection by Yersinia enterocolitica in vitro.

Dendritic cells (DC) are antigen-presenting cells crucial for initiating immune responses like sensitization of T cells to foreign antigens. We have previously shown that infection of DC by enteropathogenic Yersinia enterocolitica in vitro leads to a transient suppression in the immunostimulatory capacity for autologous enriched total T cells. In this study, we found that killed Yersinia could replace live bacteria in this aspect, and that yersinial lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-antigen could be detected intracellularly over a time course of 8 days. A suppressive effect on T cell proliferation after stimulation with Yersinia-infected compared to uninfected DC was seen for CD4+ T cells isolated by immunomagnetic separation techniques over the whole time course of 8 days, whereas CD8+ T cells followed to exhibit a suppressed proliferation rate starting on day 5 post infection till the end of the time course. In contrast, enriched total T cells stimulated by Yersinia-infected DC showed weaker proliferation till day 6 post infection compared to stimulation by uninfected DC, but not thereafter. Mixing of purified CD4+ and CD8+ T cells at day 8 post infection could reconstitute the effect seen for enriched total T cells. Thus, helper in concert with cytotoxic T cells might contribute to the immune responses, that are necessary for control of Yersinia-infections.
UWB front-end for SAR-based imaging system

A planarly fed UWB leaky lens antenna is presented integrated with wide band transmit and receive front-end electronics, to be used in a SAR-based imaging system. The unique non-dispersive characteristics of this antenna over a very wide bandwidth, together with the dual band front-end electronics based on ‘off the shelf’ components and integrated using standard PCB technology makes them very attractive as transmit-receive element for a MIMO array configuration. Design and measurement results of the leaky lens antenna characteristics are presented, and design considerations for the integrated mm-Wave electronics are discussed.
Importance of ligand conformational energies in carbohydrate docking: Sorting the wheat from the chaff

Docking algorithms that aim to be applicable to a broad range of ligands suffer reduced accuracy because they are unable to incorporate ligand‐specific conformational energies. Here, we develop a set of Carbohydrate Intrinsic (CHI) energy functions that quantify the conformational properties of oligosaccharides, based on the values of their glycosidic torsion angles. The relative energies predicted by the CHI energy functions mirror the conformational distributions of glycosidic linkages determined from a survey of oligosaccharide‐protein complexes in the protein data bank. Addition of CHI energies to the standard docking scores in Autodock 3, 4.2, and Vina consistently improves pose ranking of oligosaccharides docked to a set of anticarbohydrate antibodies. The CHI energy functions are also independent of docking algorithm, and with minor modifications, may be incorporated into both theoretical modeling methods, and experimental NMR or X‐ray structure refinement programs. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Anti‐proliferative effect of a triazole derivative (ST1959) on LNCaP human prostate cancer cells through down‐regulation of cyclin and androgen receptor expression

Previous studies demonstrated that ST1959, a triazole derivative endowed with immunomodulatory activities, also exerts inhibitory effects on proliferation and survival of a panel of tumor cells. In this study, we sought to ascertain the effects of ST1959 on the growth of androgen‐dependent and androgen‐independent prostate cancer (PCa) cells.
The deep hypothermic circulatory arrest causes more kidney malfunctions based on a novel rabbit model

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES High incidences of acute kidney injury after cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) were observed in previous reports. However, whether deep hypothermic circulatory arrest (DHCA) leads to more severe kidney injury than CPB without DHCA remains controversial. The aim of the study was to investigate the effects of DHCA on renal function in a novel rabbit model of using closed-thoracic DHCA. DESIGN AND SETTINGS Experimental study on New Zealand white rabbits performed in the Department of Cardiac Surgery, the First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University. METHODS Thirty rabbits were randomly divided into 3 groups: the sham-operated group (Group A, N=10), the CPB group (Group B, N=10), and the DHCA group (Group C, N=10). Serum creatinine (Scr), blood urea nitrogen (BUN), serum cystatin C, neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL), malondialdehyde (MDA) levels, superoxide dismutase (SOD) activities, histopathologic llesions, and apoptosis were assessed. RESULTS Each single rabbit in Groups B and C died during surgery. Animals received DHCA exhibited more severe kidney impairments than those received CPB and those that were sham operated. Scr and BUN concentrations at 24 and 48 hours after surgery; cystatin C and NGAL concentrations at 12, 24, and 48 hours after surgery; MDA levels, histopathological lesions, and apoptosis score of the kidneys were the highest in Group C, followed by Group B, and were the lowest in Group A (all P<.05). The activities of SOD were the lowest in Group C, followed by Group B, and were the highest in Group A (P<.05). CONCLUSION Our study established a simple, convenient, economical, and long-term surviving rabbit model for the study of DHCA-induced organic injury. Based on more significant kidney injuries, including elevated levels of serum cystatin C and NGAL at an early time, increased lipid peroxidation, decreased renal antioxidative ability, enhanced histological lesions, and increased tubular epithelial apoptosis from DHCA animals, we concluded that DHCA has more kidney dysfunctions than CPB without DHCA.
Nursing Administration in Small Rural Hospitals

Most of the world's population is rural and 45% of all United States hospitals are small or located outside of urban centers. The interdependence of rapidly changing rural communities and hospitals is described in this study of nursing directors' jobs. Findings provide needed information about the challenges and demands of nursing administration in small organizations useful for development of curriculums sensitive to values, politics, and economies; and for all nurse executives eager to understand the complexity of decisions and actions, whether in small organizations or in large multi-institutional systems compromising hospitals of varying sizes.
Coexpression of exogenous and endogenous mouse mammary tumor virus RNA in vivo results in viral recombination and broadens the virus host range

Mouse mammary tumor virus is a replication-competent B-type murine retrovirus responsible for mammary gland tumorigenesis in some strains of laboratory mice. Mouse mammary tumor virus is transmitted horizontally through the milk (exogenous or milk-borne virus) to susceptible offspring or vertically through the germ line (endogenous provirus). Exogenously acquired and some endogenous mouse mammary tumor viruses are expressed at high levels in lactating mammary glands. We show here that there is packaging of the endogenous Mtv-1 virus, which is expressed at high levels in the lactating mammary glands of C3H/HeN mice, by the virions of exogenous C3H mouse mammary tumor virus [MMTV(C3H)]. The mammary tumors induced in C3H/HeN mice infected with exogenous MMTV (C3H) virus contained integrated copies of recombinant virus containing a region of the env gene from an endogenous virus. This finding indicates that there was copackaging of the Mtv-1 and MMTV(C3H) RNAs in the same virions. Moreover, because Mtv-1 encodes a superantigen protein with a V beta specificity different from that encoded by the exogenous virus, the packaging of Mtv-1 results in an infectious virus with a broader host range than MMTV(C3H).
Postpartum estrus as an indicator of reproductive status in the dairy cow.

Abstract Reproductive performance of 577 cows of the Florida Agricultural Experiment Station dairy herd was evaluated from 1959 to 1968. Following 1,398 parturitions, 1,209 pregnancies occurred and 189 cows were sold for various reasons without having been diagnosed pregnant. Percentages of cows exhibiting standing heat before 60 days postpartum were: 0 heats, 25.9%; 1, 38.7%; 2, 28.0%; 3, 7.2%; and 4, . 3%. No cow was bred until 60 or more days postpartum. Average services required per conception for the five groups were 2.60, 2.58, 2.32, 2.21, and 1.75, a significant decline. Overall services required per conception were 2.48. Rates of nonreturn to first service increased with number of heats. Cows exhibiting one or more standing heats during 0 to 30 days postpartum required fewer services (2.29) than did cows with no heats during 0 to 30 days (2.63). However, incidence of standing heats (0, 1, or more) during 31 to 60 days was not related to subsequent reproductive performance. In addition, cows sold nonpregnant experienced fewer postpartum heats during 0 to 30 days and overall than did those which became pregnant.
Age-related changes in the thickness of the human lamina cribrosa

Objective: To measure the human lamina cribrosa thickness (LCT) in vitro in fully hydrated specimens and to determine whether there is any association between thickness and age or sex. Methods: 45 fixed human optic nerves, age range 9–90 years, were dissected from the globe and frozen sectioned. The study was divided into two parts: the first investigated the overall change in LCT and cribrosal beam thickness (CBT) with age, and the second divided eyes into two specific age groups (38–49 and 78–87 years) and assessed differences with respect to age and sex. Results: LCT ranged from 345.4 to 555.9 μm between the samples. A positive relationship was found between LCT and age (LCT = 2.41×age+365.5, 95% confidence interval (CI) for slope 1.31 to 3.52; r2 = 0.30, p<0.001). A regional difference in CBT was observed, with beams being thickest at the posterior cribrosa (mean 14.8 (standard deviation (SD) 2.2) μm) and thinnest at the anterior cribrosa (9.8 (SD 2.4) μm). CBT increased with increasing age. Differences related to sex were also found, with females having relatively thinner LCT than males, irrespective of age, but this was not statistically significant. Conclusions: This study shows an increase in human LCT with increasing age. This changing structural property of the lamina cribrosa may have implications for its functioning with respect to compliance and reversibility, and has particular relevance to glaucoma, where increasing age has been identified as a strong risk factor for the development of the disease.
Melanocytes are not absent in lesional skin of long duration vitiligo.

This paper provides evidence that melanocytes are still present in the depigmented epidermis of patients with vitiligo even after stable disease of 25 years' duration. Melanocyte cultures were successfully established from depigmented epidermal suction blister tissue of all 12 randomly selected patients and these cells produced melanin. Even under in vitro conditions, vacuolation of melanocytes was demonstrated in five patients with active disease, which was reversible upon exogenous addition of bovine catalase to the culture medium. Full skin biopsies from 17 patients with vitiligo, obtained from depigmented and normally pigmented areas, confirmed the involvement of melanocytes, keratinocytes, and Langerhans cells in this disorder. In addition, the presence of clustered and single pre-melanosomes in basal and supra-basal keratinocytes of lesional and normal epidermis, as well as the retention of single melanocytes in lesional epidermis, was demonstrated by light and electron microscopy. Upon topical application of a narrow band UVB-activated pseudocatalase, vacuolation, granulation, and dilatation of the endoplasmic reticulum completely recovered, but the ectopic pre-melanosome shedding remained. Taken together, these observations indicate that melanocytes are never completely absent in the depigmented epidermis and that these melanocytes can recover their functionality in vivo and in vitro upon the removal of hydrogen peroxide. Furthermore, this study supports the concept that vitiligo involves the entire epidermal unit in both depigmented and 'normal' pigmented skin.
Physical health disparities and mental illness: the scandal of premature mortality

Summary A 20-year mortality gap for men, and 15 years for women, is still experienced by people with mental illness in high-income countries. The combination of lifestyle risk factors, higher rates of unnatural deaths and poorer physical healthcare contribute to this scandal of premature mortality that contravenes international conventions for the ‘right to health. ’
Scalable distributed first story detection using storm for twitter data

Twitter is an online service that enables users to read and post tweets; thereby providing a wealth of information regarding breaking news stories. The problem of First Story Detection is to identify first stories about different events from streaming documents. The Locality sensitive hashing algorithm is the traditional approach used for First Story Detection. The documents have a high degree of lexical variation which makes First Story Detection a very difficult task. This work uses Twitter as the data source to address the problem of real-time First Story Detection. As twitter data contains a lot of spam, we built a dictionary of words to remove spam from the tweets. Further since the Twitter streaming data rate is high, we cannot use traditional Locality sensitive hashing algorithm to detect the first stories. We modify the Locality sensitive hashing algorithm to overcome this limitation while maintaining reasonable accuracy with improved performance. Also, we use Storm distributed platform, so that the system benefits from the robustness, scalability and efficiency that this framework offers.
A passion for P450s (rememberances of the early history of research on cytochrome P450).

Many members of the superfamily of hemeproteins, known as cytochrome P450 (P450 or CYP), are currently described in the literature (over 2000 at the date of this writing) [see Nelson, 2003 (http://drnelson.utmem.edu/CytochromeP450.html)]. In mammalian tissues, the P450s play central roles in drug and xenobiotic metabolism as well as steroid hormone synthesis, fat-soluble vitamin metabolism, and the conversion of polyunsaturated fatty acids to biologically active molecules. P450s also play a major role in plants by catalyzing the synthesis of a large number of secondary metabolites. Today we appreciate the unique oxygen chemistry catalyzed by the P450 enzymes as well as the dramatic effect of protein structural changes resulting in modifications of substrate specificity. Recent scientific advances have shown the importance of genetic differences (polymorphisms) in altering the physiological response of an animal to endo- and exo-biotic chemicals. In many instances these changes can be directly attributed to small differences in the amino acid sequence of a P450. The present article describes some of the early events associated with the establishment of the biological function of P450s. The 1950s and 1960s showed the transition of P450 from an unknown spectroscopic curiosity to the major player it now occupies in maintaining cellular homeostasis. The P450s are now recognized to occupy a great variety of phylogenetically distributed isoform activities. Much has been learned about the P450s, but much more remains as poorly understood. It has been almost 50 years since this class of unique proteins were discovered and their catalytic functions characterized. The present article describes the background and early history of research leading to our present knowledge of the cytochromes P450. Hopefully we will learn lessons from this history as we venture forward down the path of future scientific discovery.
A perspective on costs and cost estimation techniques for organic Rankine cycle systems

The potential of organic Rankine cycle (ORC) systems is acknowledged by both the considerable amount of ongoing research efforts and the increased occurrence of its applications in practice. A large share of research in this field strives to improve ORC systems by analyzing the performance of various cycle architectures and numerous working fluids. These technical feasibility and optimization studies are at the core of ORC development. Yet, when it comes down to considering practical instalments the economic feasibility of the project is often decisive. Complementary to research efforts on these technical issues this paper approaches the matter from an economic point of view. The costs-dimension of ORC systems is discussed from various perspectives. First of all, this paper provides a brief review of literature knowledge on ORC investment costs. Technical publications on ORC development increasingly include estimates of the costs associated with the system design, but knowledge on actual ORC module and project costs remains scarce. Secondly, this paper takes a closer investigation into the methods used to estimate ORC project costs from the bottom up and the expected accuracies associated with these estimates. Finally, these insights are used to estimate the costs of a known ORC system applied for waste heat recovery. The comparison of the estimated and the actual specific investment costs confirms the existence of a wide accuracy range. The purchased equipment costs obtained with the bottom-up estimate diverge from the actual costs by almost 44% and the deviation leads to differing interpretations on the share of equipment items in the total purchased equipment costs. The results of this analysis are not generalizable since only one real-life study is used for comparison. The main conclusion of the paper is to be cautious when interpreting estimated ORC plant costs.
Konzepte zur Analyse und Korrektur von Beinachsenfehlern

Zusammenfassung Die Behandlung unterschiedlich langer und krummer Beine zählt zu den grundlegenden Aufgaben der Kinderorthopädie. Während im Wachstumsalter häufig das Potenzial der Epiphysenfugen zum Ausgleich von Beinlängendifferenzen und gelenknahen Achsendeformitäten durch Epiphysiodese genutzt werden kann, sind beim ausgewachsenen Patienten oder bei diaphysären Fehlstellungen zur Korrektur meist aufwendige und invasive operative Eingriffe erforderlich. Dazu stehen klassische Methoden zur Verfügung wie die adhoc-Korrektur durch Platten- bzw. Schrau -benosteosynthese oder die Fixateur-kontrollierten Methoden zur Kallusdistraktion, deren technische Möglichkeiten durch moderne Implantate wie Hexapodringfixateure, aber auch eine wachsende Zahl an Verlängerungsmarknägeln stark erweitert wurden.
Geochemical Parameters of Water Quality of Karra River, Hetauda Industrial Area, Central Nepal

Water samples of Karra river from Hetauda industrial area were collected during pre monsoon (May 2012) to assess water chemistry (Ca 2+ , Na + , K + , HCO 3 - , NO 3 - , SO 4 2- , Cl - , F - and H 4 SiO 4 ) and evaluate influence of natural processes and anthropogenic activities viz. industrial and agricultural inputs. The pollution was more severe near the industrial stretches due to direct discharge of the treated and untreated effluents from industries. Carbonate contribution was noted ~36.2 % from carbonate weathering and ~ 63.8 % from silicate weathering. Journal of Institute of Science and Technology, 2015, 20(2): 31-36
A Nonlinear Control for DC–DC Power Converters

A nonlinear control is proposed and its application to the regulation of the dc-dc converters of the boost and buck types is investigated. The proposed controller, which assumes the exponential form of the linear multiloop controller, provides an additional tuning parameter which can used to modify the output response. The system stability in the presence of uncertain load and line voltage as well as the relationship between the nonlinear and linear control strategies are studied. Numerical and experimental results to illustrate the features of the proposed strategy are also presented
Maternal Thyroid Function and Motor Competence in the Child

Serum thyroid hormone levels were measured in women living in an area of severe dietary iodine deficiency in a remote region of Papua New Guinea. Levels of maternal hormone were found to be related to the motor competence of the women's offspring, who were aged between six years and 11 years 10 months at the time of assessment.
Conversion of Darbepoetin to Low Doses of CERA Maintains Hemoglobin Levels in Non-Dialysis Chronic Kidney Disease Patients

Background/Aims: Finding the lowest effective dose of erythropoietin-stimulating agents is critical in the management of renal anemia. We evaluated the efficacy of converting darbepoetin to CERA at doses lower than those usually recommended. Methods: We selected consecutive non-dialysis chronic kidney disease patients treated with darbepoetin doses ≤40 µg/week in absence of iron deficiency, recent blood transfusion, bleeding, neoplasia, myocardial infarction/stroke in the last 3 months. Darbepoetin ≤20 µg/week was shifted to CERA 75 µg/month, while darbepoetin 21–40 µg/week to CERA 100 µg/month. Primary endpoint was the change in hemoglobin (Hb goal, 11–13 g/dl) at month 3, 6, 9 and 12. Results: Studied patients (n = 37) were aged 70 ± 13 years and GFR was 30 ± 12 ml/min/1.73 m2; prevalence of males, diabetes and prior cardiovascular disease was 43, 45 and 40%, respectively. Before switching, efficacy population received darbepoetin 18 ± 10 µg/week with 28 patients receiving ≤20 µg/week. Prevalence of Hb goal at baseline was 75.7% and did not change at months 3 (70.3%), 6 (70.3%), 9 (72.2%), and 12 (80.0%). CERA dose remained unchanged during the study (81 ± 11, 82 ± 16, 91 ± 30, 90 ± 54 and 88 ± 61 µg/month). Out of the 438 visits performed, CERA dose was increased in 52 (11.9%) and reduced in 36 (8.2%) visits. Blood pressure, Hb, GFR, transferrin saturation and ferritin did not change. Conclusions: In chronic kidney disease patients treated with darbepoetin doses ≤40 µg/week, CERA can be efficaciously used at doses lower than those recommended.
Forest applications with hyperspectral imaging

The world's forests generate oxygen and store carbon, mitigating global climate change. Monitoring the health of these forests is an international priority, which benefits from the use of remote sensing. With hyperspectral sensors capable of discerning forest species and foliar chemistry, many forest information products can be generated including maps of forest species, canopy chemistry, biomass, and carbon. Methods and challenges related to forest monitoring and mapping are discussed, with reference to our past and current work in the field of hyperspectral imaging, and with an emphasis on biomass and carbon mapping. The processes explained in this paper have been tested primarily on a study site on Vancouver Island, Canada.