Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Oligomeric structure of glycoproteins in herpes simplex virus type 1

A number of herpes simplex virus (HSV) glycoproteins are found in oligomeric states: glycoprotein E (gE)-gI and gH-gL form heterodimers, and both gB and gC have been detected as homodimers. We have further explored the organization of glycoproteins in the virion envelope by using both purified virions to quantitate glycoprotein amounts and proportions and chemical cross-linkers to detect oligomers. We purified gB, gC, gD, and gH from cells infected with HSV type 1 and used these as immunological standards. Glycoproteins present in sucrose gradient-purified preparations of two strains of HSV type 1, KOS and NS, were detected with antibodies to each of the purified proteins. From these data, glycoprotein molar ratios of 1:2:11:16 and 1:1:14:9 were calculated for gB/gC/gD/gH in KOS and NS, respectively. gL was also detected in virions, although we lacked a purified gL standard for quantitation. We then asked whether complexes of these glycoproteins could be identified, and if they existed as homo- or hetero-oligomers. Purified KOS was incubated at 4 degrees C with bis (sulfosuccinimidyl) suberate (BS3), an 11.4 A (1A = 0.1 mm) noncleavable, water-soluble cross-linker. Virus extracts were examined by Western blotting (immunoblotting), or immunoprecipitation followed by Western blotting, to assay for homo- and hetero-oligomers. Homodimers of gB, gC, and gD were detected, and hetero-oligomers containing gB cross-linked to gC, gC to gD, and gD to gB were also identified. gH and gL were detected as a hetero-oligomeric pair and could be cross-linked to gD or gC but not to gB. We conclude that these glycoproteins are capable of forming associations with one another. These studies suggest that glycoproteins are closely associated in virions and have the potential to function as oligomeric complexes.
Susceptibility testing of Candida species for Auconazole: the role of buffering in the agar dilution assay

Summary. The role of buffering in the determination of the minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) of fluconazole was studied with Candida species. Agar dilution tests were performed on media (pH 7.25) buffered with either phosphate or morpholinopropane‐sulfonic acid (MOPS) or endomethylene‐tetrahydrophthalic acid (EMTA), 0.1 mol 1‐1 each, or on the unbuffered medium. It consisted of casitone and glucose supplemented with FeCl3, and MgSO4. The MICs recorded after 24 h at 37°C extended from 0.1 mg 1‐1 to × 100 mg 1‐1 on the phosphate and EMTA medium, being concordant on both media. On the MOPS medium and the unbuffered medium the readings were also concordant; the MICs, however, were mostly 25 mg 1‐1 or higher. This increase of the values—up to six dilution steps—could not be correlated with the amount of acid secreted by the single strains. EMTA proved to be an alternative to phosphate in this system, and because it allows a faster growth of the yeasts it might be superior to phosphate. The concordance of the MIC values in the presence of such different buffer compounds tends to suggest that they indeed indicate the strongest inhibition attainable in vitro by fluconazole. MOPS was confirmed to be of no use in this system.
NOVEL NANOEMULSION AS VEHICLES FOR TRANSDERMAL DELIVERY OF CLOZAPINE: IN VITRO AND IN VIVO STUDIES

Objective: The purpose of the present study is to develop and evaluate the potential of nanoemulsions for increasing the solubility and the in vitro transdermal delivery of clozapine. Methods: Clozapine is practically insoluble in water and low (27%) bioavailability mainly due to first pass metabolism. An optimized oil-in-water nanoemulsion of Clozapine was prepared by the spontaneous emulsification method. Pseudoternary phase diagrams were constructed to obtain the nanoemulsion region. Oleic acid was chosen as the oil phase, Tween 20 and Transcutol-P were used as surfactant and cosurfactant respectively, on the basis of solubility studies, in formulation of nanoemulsion. The optimized nanoemulsion was characterized for pH, viscosity, droplet size, droplet shape, and refractive index. The formulations were evaluated for thermodynamic stability testing, in vitro rat skin permeation, skin irritation test and in vivo study. Results: Significant difference in the steady state flux (Jss), permeability coefficient (Kp) and enhancement ratio (Er) was observed in nanoemulsion formulations and control (P* < 0.05). The composition of optimized formulation F1 (Oleic acid 4.54% w/w) showed highest value of flux 391.3357 µg cm-2h-1. At the 24 h post application plasma clozapine was increased 4.4 fold to marketed dosage form. Conclusion: The study suggested that nanoemulsion significantly enhanced bioavailability of transdermally applied clozapine and eliminated the first pass metabolism.
Design and control of human assisted walking robot

The study aims to reduce the complexity of autonomous walking robots by involving the human in the operation of the machine. By taking advantage of the intelligence of the operator, the complexity of bipedal locomotion was reduced to tractable problem. The result of this research is that a two-legged, single actuated degree of freedom, walking machine was designed, built, and tested. The robot successfully navigated terrain including steep inclines and stairs. Additionally, a mechatronic control system was added to provide for smooth speed control and regulation. The leg driving architecture, the double four-bar linkage, designed for this machine can be extended to produce simplified fourand six-legged walking machines. The preliminary results can be used to extend this concept to a machine with an actuated balance assist system based on the human operator's interaction with the machine.
Remarkably different phylogeographic structure in two closely related lizard species in a zone of sympatry in south‐eastern Australia

Phylogeographic structure is a product of a species’ life history and dispersal patterns, geographic history, climatic history and chance. Comparative phylogeography, using carefully chosen model species, can highlight the relative contribution of each of these factors and identify common processes affecting communities. In this study we compare and contrast fine-scale phylogeographic patterns in two ground-dwelling species of water skink, Eulamprus heatwolei and Eulamprus tympanum, from the biogeographically well-characterized Tallaganda region in south-eastern Australia, and compare them against data from a number of invertebrate species from the same region. Using variation in mitochondrial sequence, we have uncovered dramatically different biogeographic histories for the two species, despite their marked behavioural and morphological similarity. Eulamprus tympanum shows an average corrected sequence divergence of 0.014 and patterns of geographic variation in haplotypes consistent with historical vegetational changes resulting from past glaciation cycles. In contrast, E. heatwolei shows an average divergence of only 0.0075, and geographic structure that reflects a recent and rapid colonization, perhaps following an ice age local extinction. These two contrasting patterns of variation have also been identified in invertebrate taxa as disparate as collembolans and spiders; these species show either deep structure, associated with local persistence, or little variation of structure, which we attribute to recent extinction and re-colonization. We argue that historical persistence versus extinction is a consequence of (often minor) differences in lifestyle and local habitat preference.
UTILITY OF CYSTICERCUS FASCIOLARIS ANTIGEN IN DOT ELISA FOR THE DIAGNOSIS OF NEUROCYSTICERCOSIS

BACKGROUND: For any radiologist, intra-observer agreement in observing and decision making in diagnosis of any disease is of great importance, and so is observing and reading ultrasound pictures of ovarian masses and distinguishing amongst their categories. AIMS: In this study, the reliability and consistency of ultrasound diagnosis of ovarian tumors have been evaluated. SETTINGS AND DESIGN: Two experienced and three less experienced radiologists assessed ultrasounds of 40 patients of Mirza Koochak Khan Hospital in Tehran, Iran, in 2005. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this prospective observational study, the ultrasounds were performed by an expert radiologist, with a single apparatus. These ultrasounds have been evaluated separately and independently in two periods (with a 1-week interval). STATISTICAL ANALYSIS USED: Weighted kappa was used to calculate intra-observer agreement (reliability), and two statistical models were applied to assess category distinguishability (consistency). SPSS version 10, SAS version 8, and EXCEL 2003 have been used to do an appropriate statistical analysis. RESULTS: Mean of weighted kappa was 0.81, and mean of distinguishability was 0.995 for our experienced radiologists, due to their superior results. Because of weaker results obtained by the less experienced radiologists, mean of weighted kappa and mean of distinguishability were 0.65 and 0.967 respectively. Overall mean of distinguishability for benign and borderline categories was 0.969; and for malignant and borderline categories, it was 0.987. CONCLUSION: Although experienced radiologists functioned better than the less experienced radiologists, all of them showed appropriate distinguishability and intra-observer agreement in diagnosis and categorization of the ovarian masses. Distinguishing benign category from borderline was more difficult than distinguishing malignant category from borderline. In general, experienced radiologists showed better results compared to less experienced radiologists.
Análisis de las competencias profesionales y de las estructuras organizativas en el entorno de las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación

Las principales formas de conseguir una ventaja competitiva sostenible en mercados dinamicos, como es el de las tecnologias de la informacion y la comunicacion (TIC), es a traves de la innovacion y de la flexibilidad estrategica. Las competencias asociadas a los trabajadores de este sector son elementos clave para dotar a la organizacion de ambas. Asi, este trabajo plantea, para una de las empresas lider del mercado espanol tras la liberalizacion de las telecomunicaciones, la evaluacion de las competencias clave necesarias que aseguren el cumplimiento de sus objetivos, atendiendo al enfoque de las capacidades dinamicas como metodo de establecimiento estrategico.
Corticotropin-Releasing Factor (CRF) and Endocrine Responses to Stress: CRF Receptors, Binding Protein, and Related Peptides

Abstract Corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) is a 41 -amino acid neuropeptide, which is recognized as a critical mediator of complimentary, stress-related endocrine, autonomic, and behavioral responses in mammalian species. CRF belongs to a family of structurally related peptides including frogskin sauvagine and fish urotensin I. The effects of CRF and related peptides are mediated by two distinct receptors, which differ in their anatomical distribution, as well as in their pharmacological characteristics. In addition, CRF is bound with high affinity by a CRF binding protein (CRF-BP), which is a putative inhibitor of CRF action. CRF is probably not the sole endogenous ligand for CRF receptors or the CRF-BP, since a second mammalian member of the CRF family, urocortin, has recently been identified. This article describes recent findings with respect to CRF, its receptors, binding protein, and CRF-related peptides, which provide further insights into the role and mechanisms of CRF action in stress responses.
Correlation between the Reduced Circulating Endothelial Progenitor Cell Counts and Elevated Intraocular Pressure-Induced Retinal Ganglion Cell Apoptosis

ABSTRACT Purpose: To investigate the correlations between intraocular pressure (IOP) and circulating endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs), retinal ganglion cells (RGC) apoptosis and EPCs, and explore the possible role of EPCs in the elevated IOP-induced RGC apoptosis. Materials and methods: A rat model of IOP elevation was induced by photocoagulation of the limbus vein and episcleral veins using a 532-nm green laser. Twenty rats were randomly assigned to normal control (NC) group, 30 rats were randomly assigned to sham-treated control (STC) group and 50 rats were randomly assigned to laser-treated (LT) group. The IOPs were measured with a Tono-pen XL tonometer. Hematoxylin-eosin staining was performed to observe the effects of IOP elevation on the structure of retina. Retinal apoptotic cells were determined by in situ TUNEL staining, and peripheral blood EPCs (CD34+/CD133+) were detected by flow cytometry. Results: Compared with the NC group (9.9 ± 1.2 mmHg), the IOPs in the LT group were 37.4 ± 1.5, 31.8 ± 4.1, 25.9 ± 2.2, 23.1 ± 3.6 and 22.4 ± 3.0 mmHg on the third day, seventh day, third week, second month and third month, respectively, after the laser photocoagulation. There were significant differences in IOPs between the groups at the different time points (F = 110.02, p < 0.001). TUNEL analysis showed that only few apoptotic RGCs were found on the third and the seventh day after the laser treatment, and then many more apoptotic RGCs were found beginning on the third week after the laser treatment. The EPC counts were 121.3 ± 22.4, 81.3 ± 23.7, 46.1 ± 15.8, 54.4 ± 19.1 and 54.7 ± 15.9 /2 × 105 mononuclear cells (MNCs) on the third day, seventh day, third week, second month and third month, respectively, after the laser photocoagulation, compared with the NC group (62.1 ± 13.1)/2 × 105 MNCs. There were significant differences in EPC counts between the groups at the different time points (F = 22.09, p < 0.001). Conclusions: Elevated IOP-induced RGC apoptosis is associated with the reduced circulating EPC counts.
A Schrödinger cat living in two boxes

Quantum cats here and there The story of Schrödinger's cat being hidden away in a box and being both dead and alive is often invoked to illustrate the how peculiar the quantum world can be. On a twist of the dead/alive behavior, Wang et al. now show that the cat can be in two separate locations at the same time. Constructing their cat from coherent microwave photons, they show that the state of the “electromagnetic cat” can be shared by two separated cavities. Going beyond common-sense absurdities of the classical world, the ability to share quantum states in different locations could be a powerful resource for quantum information processing. Science, this issue p. 1087 A quantum cat can be both alive and dead and in two places at once. Quantum superpositions of distinct coherent states in a single-mode harmonic oscillator, known as “cat states,” have been an elegant demonstration of Schrödinger’s famous cat paradox. Here, we realize a two-mode cat state of electromagnetic fields in two microwave cavities bridged by a superconducting artificial atom, which can also be viewed as an entangled pair of single-cavity cat states. We present full quantum state tomography of this complex cat state over a Hilbert space exceeding 100 dimensions via quantum nondemolition measurements of the joint photon number parity. The ability to manipulate such multicavity quantum states paves the way for logical operations between redundantly encoded qubits for fault-tolerant quantum computation and communication.
Not logical : A distributional semantic account of negated adjectives

The meaning of a negated adjective does not always correspond to the one of its antonym (e.g., not small 6= large); indeed, linguistic theories and experimental data suggest that one of the functions of negation is to shift the meaning of the negated item but not necessarily flip it into the opposite (e.g. not small ≈ medium-sized). In this thesis, we study negated adjectives in English employing the perspective of Distributional Semantics. We first construct vectorial representations of these expressions based on their co-occurrences with contextual features in a large corpus. We then make use of these in a set of exploratory experiments aimed at clarifying their relationship with other expressions, such as antonyms (e.g. not small vs. large) and scale co-members (e.g., not small vs. tiny). In particular, we investigate negation in terms of pragmatic and “graded” notions which are apt to be studied in a distributional space: alternativehood, i.e., the degree of plausibility of alternatives to a negated item, and mitigation, i.e., the meaning shift from the original adjective. In addition, we design and evaluate a compositional method to model negation of adjectives as a function learnt directly from distributional data. Results suggest that negated adjectives have different profiles of use from other allegedly equivalent classes of expressions, and that, contrarily to what often is assumed, a data-driven modelling of negation is not entirely out of the scope of distributional methods. Overall, this thesis tackles research questions about the complex nature of negation and the open problem of modelling this phenomenon within Distributional Semantics.
Love and Money: Intergenerational Mobility and Marital Matching on Parental Income

This paper makes use of matched tax-return data for daughters, their parents, their partners and their partners' parents to investigate the interactions between intergenerational mobility and marital matching for young couples in Canada. We show how assortative mating contributes to intergenerational household income persistence. The strength of the association between sons-in-law's income and women's parental income means that the intergenerational link between household incomes is stronger than that found for daughters' own incomes alone. This is also the case when viewed from the other side, so that daughters' and their partners' earnings are related to partners' parental income. These results indicate that assortative matching magnifies individual-level intergenerational persistence. In the second part of the paper we consider assortative mating by parental income. We find that daughter's parental income has an elasticity of almost 0.2 with respect to her partner's parental income. This association is of approximately the same magnitude as the intergenerational link between parents' and children's incomes. We investigate variations in the correlation between the parental incomes across several measured dimensions; cohabiting couples have lower correlations, as do those who form partnerships early, those who live in rural areas and most interestingly, those who later divorce. We interpret this last result as evidence that, on average, couples with parental incomes that are more similar enjoy a more stable match.
Hexachlorobenzene (HCB) suppresses circulating progesterone concentrations during the luteal phase in the cynomolgus monkey

Hexachlorobenzene (HCB) is a known reproductive toxin. However, the full spectrum of its reproductive toxicity is unknown. Consequently, the effect of HCB on serum oestradiol (E2) and progesterone (P4) concentrations during the follicular (days 1–9), periovulatory (days 10–14) and luteal (days 15 to beginning of next menses) phases was investigated in the spontaneously cycling cynomolgus monkey. Adult female cynomolgus monkeys (n = 16) were randomly assigned to one of four treatment groups and orally dosed with gelatin capsules containing HCB (0.0, 0.1, 1.0 and 10.0 mg kg−1 body wt. day−1) mixed with glucose. A 10‐week acclimitization phase was followed by 13 weeks of dosing. HCB induced a dose‐dependent suppression of serum P4 concentrations during the luteal phase. However, circulating levels of P4 were unaffected during the follicular and periovulatory phases of the menstrual cycle. Serum E2 concentrations, body weight, menstrual cycle length and duration of menses were not affected by HCB treatment. The range of menstrual cycle length and duration range of menses, however, were broader in the highest dose group. We conclude that HCB interfers with mechanisms regulating ovarian steroidogenesis and suppresses P4 levels during the luteal phase in the cynomolgus monkey.
Two Proteases Defining a Melanization Cascade in the Immune System of Drosophila*

The melanization reaction is used as an immune mechanism in arthropods to encapsulate and kill microbial pathogens. In Drosophila, the serpin Spn27A regulates melanization apparently by inhibiting the protease that activates phenoloxidase, the key enzyme in melanin synthesis. Here, we have described the genetic characterization of two immune inducible serine proteases, MP1 and MP2, which act in a melanization cascade regulated by Spn27A. MP1 is required to activate melanization in response to both bacterial and fungal infection, whereas MP2 is mainly involved during fungal infection. Pathogenic bacteria and fungi may therefore trigger two different melanization cascades that use MP1 as a common downstream protease to activate phenoloxidase. We have also shown that the melanization reaction activated by MP1 and MP2 plays an important role in augmenting the effectiveness of other immune reactions, thereby promoting resistance of Drosophila to microbial infection.
The NIMH Child Emotional Faces Picture Set (NIMH‐ChEFS): a new set of children's facial emotion stimuli

With the emergence of new technologies, there has been an explosion of basic and clinical research on the affective and cognitive neuroscience of face processing and emotion perception. Adult emotional face stimuli are commonly used in these studies. For developmental research, there is a need for a validated set of child emotional faces. This paper describes the development of the National Institute of Mental Health Child Emotional Faces Picture Set (NIMH‐ChEFS), a relatively large stimulus set with high quality, color images of the emotional faces of children. The set includes 482 photographs of fearful, angry, happy, sad and neutral child faces with two gaze conditions: direct and averted gaze. In this paper we describe the development of the NIMH‐ChEFS and data on the set's validity based on ratings by 20 healthy adult raters. Agreement between the a priori emotion designation and the raters' labels was high and comparable with values reported for commonly used adult picture sets. Intensity, representativeness, and composite “goodness” ratings are also presented to guide researchers in their choice of specific stimuli for their studies. These data should give researchers confidence in the NIMH‐ChEFS's validity for use in affective and social neuroscience research. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.