Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adhesive Interactions Between Lactic Acid Bacteria and β-Lactoglobulin: Specificity and Impact on Bacterial Location in Whey Protein Isolate

In the last decade, there has been an increasing interest in the potential health effects associated with the consumption of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) in foods. Some of these bacteria such as Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG (LGG) are known to adhere to milk components, which may impact their distribution and protection within dairy matrices and therefore is likely to modulate the efficiency of their delivery. However, the adhesive behavior of most LAB, as well as its effect on food structuration and on the final bacterial distribution within the food matrix remain very poorly studied. Using a recently developed high-throughput approach, we have screened a collection of 73 LAB strains for their adhesive behavior toward the major whey protein β-lactoglobulin. Adhesion was then studied by genomics in relation to common bacterial surface characteristics such as pili and adhesion-related domain containing proteins. Representative adhesive and non-adhesive strains have been studied in further depth through biophysical measurement using atomic force microscopy (AFM) and a relation with bacterial distribution in whey protein isolate (WPI) solution has been established. AFM measurements have revealed that bacterial adhesion to β-lactoglobulin is highly specific and cannot be predicted accurately using only genomic information. Non-adhesive strains were found to remain homogeneously distributed in solution whereas adhesive strains gathered in flocs. These findings show that several LAB strains are able to adhere to β-lactoglobulin, whereas this had only been previously observed on LGG. We also show that these adhesive interactions present similar characteristics and are likely to impact bacterial location and distribution in dairy matrices containing β-lactoglobulin. This may help with designing more efficient dairy food matrices for optimized LAB delivery.
Innate Immune Recognition: An Issue More Complex Than Expected

Primary interaction of an intracellular bacterium with its host cell is initiated by activation of multiple signaling pathways in response to bacterium recognition itself or as cellular responses to stress induced by the bacterium. The leading molecules in these processes are cell surface membrane receptors as well as cytosolic pattern recognition receptors recognizing pathogen-associated molecular patterns or damage-associated molecular patterns induced by the invading bacterium. In this review, we demonstrate possible sequences of events leading to recognition of Francisella tularensis, present findings on known mechanisms for manipulating cell responses to protect Francisella from being killed, and discuss newly published data from the perspective of early stages of host–pathogen interaction.
Immune Profile in Blood Following Non-convulsive Epileptic Seizures in Rats

Non-convulsive status epilepticus (NCSE) is a prolonged epileptic seizure with subtle symptoms that may delay clinical diagnosis. Emerging experimental evidence shows brain pathology and epilepsy development following NCSE. New diagnostic/prognostic tools are therefore needed for earlier and better stratification of treatment. Here we examined whether NCSE initiates a peripheral immune response in blood serum from rats that experienced electrically-induced NCSE. ELISA analysis showed an acute transient increase in serum protein levels including interleukin-6 6 h post-NCSE, similar to the immune reaction in the brain. At 4 weeks post-NCSE, when 75% of rats subjected to NCSE had also developed spontaneous seizures, several immune proteins were altered. In particular, markers associated with microglia, macrophages and antigen presenting cells, such as CD68, MHCII, and galectin-3, were increased and the T-cell marker CD4 was decreased in serum compared to both non-stimulated controls and NCSE rats without spontaneous seizures, without correlation to interictal epileptiform activity. Analyses of serum following intracerebral injection of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) showed an acute increase in interleukin-6, but at 4 weeks unaltered levels of MHCII and galectin-3, an increase in CD8 and CD11b and a decrease in CD68. None of the increased serum protein levels after NCSE or LPS could be confirmed in spleen tissue. Our data identifies the possibility to detect peripheral changes in serum protein levels following NCSE, which may be related to the development of subsequent spontaneous seizures.
From Hiring to Firing: Activation of Inhibitory Neurons and Their Recruitment in Behavior

The investigation of GABAergic inhibitory circuits has substantially expanded over the past few years. The development of new tools and technology has allowed investigators to classify many diverse groups of inhibitory neurons by several delineating factors: these include their connectivity motifs, expression of specific molecular markers, receptor diversity, and ultimately their role in brain function. Despite this progress, however, there is still limited understanding of how GABAergic neurons are recruited by their input and how their activity is modulated by behavioral states. This limitation is primarily due to the fact that studies of GABAergic inhibition are mainly geared toward determining how, once activated, inhibitory circuits regulate the activity of excitatory neurons. In this review article, we will outline recent work investigating the anatomical and physiological properties of inputs that activate cortical GABAergic neurons, and discuss how these inhibitory cells are differentially recruited during behavior.
Geochemical Appraisal of Chemical Weathering and Metal Contamination in Coastal Surface Sediments, Off Northwest Hainan Island, the Gulf of Tonkin

Coastal sediments not only contain a majority of trace metals, but they also act as a source of dissolved metal ions to the overlying water column. Distinguishing the level of trace metal enrichment from the natural input in sediments is therefore important to determine the distribution and sources of land-derived detritus and pollutants in the coastal region. This study investigates fine (2) for As, Cd and Pb, suggesting that the sediments were likely enriched by these elements. A comparative study of trace metals concentrations and EF with other coastal regions of China however revealed that the study area is in a pristine environmental condition compared to other coastal regions of eastern China. Factor analysis identified three dominant sedimentological and geochemical associations, accounting for ~70% of total variance recognize terrigenous input, heavy mineral role and anthropogenic input in controlling the distribution of most elements in the study area.
Safety of performing transoesophageal echocardiography in patients with oesophageal varices

Introduction Oesophageal varices (EV) are one of the complications of liver cirrhosis that carries a risk of rupture and bleeding. The safety of performing transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) in patients with pre-existing EV is not well described in literature. Therefore, this retrospective study has been conducted to evaluate the safety of preforming TEE in this group of patients. Methods The study population was extracted from the 2016 Nationwide Readmissions Data using International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification/Procedure Coding System for EV, TEE and in-hospital outcomes. Study endpoints included in-hospital all-cause mortality, hospital length of stay, postprocedural gastrointestinal bleeding and oesophageal perforation. Results A total of 81 328 discharges with a diagnosis of EV were identified, among which 242 had a TEE performed during the index hospitalisation. Mean age was 58.3 years, 36.6% female. In comparison to the no-TEE group, the TEE group was associated with comparable in-hospital all-cause mortality (7.0% vs 6.7%, p=0.86) and bleeding (0.9% vs 1.1%, p=0.75); however, TEE group was associated with longer hospital stay (14.9 days vs 6.9 days, p<0.01). There were no reported oesophageal perforations. Conclusions TEE is not a common procedure performed in patients with pre-existing EV. TEE seems to be a safe diagnostic tool for evaluation of heart diseases in this group of patients.
Lifestyle medicine and physical activity knowledge of final year UK medical students

Objectives It has previously been reported in the British Journal of Sports Medicine that final year UK medical students are lacking knowledge of the physical activity guidelines. This study assesses whether the knowledge and training of final year UK medical students has improved, whether knowledge correlates with lifestyle choices and whether there is a need for lifestyle medicine training, which includes physical activity guidance, to be offered to this cohort. Methods A questionnaire consisting of nine key questions was sent to 1356 final year medical students from seven different UK medical schools. Results Completed questionnaires (n=158) were analysed and revealed that 52% were unaware of the current exercise guidelines in the UK. 80% stated they had not received training in lifestyle medicine over the last 2 years while 48.1% were unacquainted with motivational interviewing. 76% wanted more lifestyle medicine teaching to be incorporated into the medical school curriculum. Conclusions These findings suggest that final year UK medical students still lack knowledge of the physical activity guidelines. In addition, there is a demand among this cohort for increased lifestyle medicine training which may in turn be an effective way of improving physical activity knowledge.
Event Detection from Video Using Answer Set Programing

Understanding of the visual world is not limited to recognizing individual object instances, but also extends to how those objects interact in the scene, which implies recognizing events happening in the scene. In this paper we present an approach for identifying complex events in videos, starting from object detection using a state-of-the-art object detector (YOLO), providing a set of candidate objects. We provide a logic based representation of events by using a realization of the Event Calculus that allows us to define complex events in terms of logical rules. Axioms of the calculus are encoded in a logic program under Answer Set semantics in order to reason and query over the extracted events. The applicability of the framework is demonstrated over the scenario of recognizing car parking on a handicap slot.
Testing Symmetric Markov Chains Without Hitting

We study the problem of identity testing of symmetric markov chains. In this setting, we are given access to a single trajectory from a markov chain with unknown transition matrix Q and the goal is to determine whether Q = P for some known matrix P or Dist(P ,Q) ≥ where Dist is suitably defined. In recent work by Daskalakis et al. (2018a), it was shown that it is possible to distinguish between the two cases provided the length of the observed trajectory is at least super-linear in the hitting time of P which may be arbitrarily large. In this paper, we propose an algorithm that avoids this dependence on hitting time thus enabling efficient testing of markov chains even in cases where it is infeasible to observe every state in the chain. Our algorithm is based on combining classical ideas from approximation algorithms with techniques for the spectral analysis of markov chains.
PEAR: a Tool for Reasoning About Scenarios and Probabilities in Description Logics of Typicality (short paper)

In this work we describe PEAR, a tool for reasoning about prototypical properties in an extension of Description Logics of typicality with probabilities and scenarios. PEAR implements a non-monotonic procedure for the logic ALC + T P R , a recently introduced extension of the logic of typicality ALC + T R by inclusions of the form T ( C ) (cid:118) p D , where p is a real number between 0 and 1 capturing the intuition that “all the typical C s are D s, and the probability that a C is not a D is 1 − p ”. In this logic, diﬀerent scenarios are considered by taking into account several extension of the ABox, containing only some typicality assumptions about individuals. Each scenario has a probability depending on those equipping typicality inclusions, then entailment can be restricted to scenarios whose probabilities belong to a given and ﬁxed range. PEAR is implemented in Python, it computes all scenarios of a knowledge base and it allows the user to check the probability of a query by exploiting a translation into standard ALC .
The future of publishing scientific data: is it time to accept the wider publication of null data?

One of the most self-limiting dogmas’ which scientists submit themselves to is the avoidance of publishing negative data. This is well represented by a recent study in the social sciences [1] which examined 250 peer-reviewed survey based proposals on nationally representative adult samples. They found that 56 of 91 studies with strongly significant results were published while only 10 out of 48 null results were published. This reflected the fact that authors do not write up and submit null data. We know that bioscience undergraduate students often worry that if their lab practical doesn’t work they will be marked down on their assignment-indicating that the belief that negative data is less valuable than positive data is instilled in young scientists from an early stage in their careers, prior even to going to University. Perhaps our Universities need to demonstrate that negative data can be just as valuable as positive data, just as informative, just as well presented, just as easy to assess in peer-reviewed publications and that negative data needs to be represented in the Life Sciences following the same high standard of controlled, reproducible experiments as positive data.
The Bitwise Hashing Trick for Personalized Search

ABSTRACT Many real world problems require fast and efficient lexical comparison of large numbers of short text strings. Search personalization is one such domain. We introduce the use of feature bit vectors using the hashing trick for improving relevance in personalized search and other personalization applications. We present results of several lexical hashing and comparison methods. These methods are applied to a user’s historical behavior and are used to predict future behavior. Using a single bit per dimension instead of floating point results in an order of magnitude decrease in data structure size, while preserving or even improving quality. We use real data to simulate a search personalization task. A simple method for combining bit vectors demonstrates an order of magnitude improvement in compute time on the task with only a small decrease in accuracy.
FO Queries Strongly Distributing over Components in Arbitrary Cardinality

In previous works a coordination-free strategy to compute Datalog with negation queries over databases distributed over many computational nodes has been studied, providing a syntactic characterization and proving the undecidability of the problem of deciding whether a query distributes. In view of a recast for FO queries, we report about a work in progress, namely the study of FO queries strongly distributing over components. We prove that the decision problem of establishing whether a FO query strongly distributes over components is undecidable and highlight how some syntactic bonds typical of Datalog with negation, namely safeness, play a crucial role in specifying strongly distributive FO queries.
Glittering potentially malignant shell: Arecanut

Areca nut is consumed extensively throughout the world with significant public health and oral implications. This habit is more prevalent amid communities belonging to India and the South-East Asia region (SEAR). In the past few decades, surveys have reported that consuming areca nut has increased among population and a high proportion of school children use areca-nut daily in some form. Low cost, easy availability, advertising, role modeling, social acceptance and perception of areca nut as harmless is what contributes to its use. Areca nut users are at high risk of oral submucous fibrosis, a debilitating and potentially malignant condition and also suffer adverse health outcomes. Though industrially made areca nut products have been banned in all states and union territories of India, but it is still widely available. WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control provides evidence-based policies for reducing tobacco use, but no global policy exists for the control of areca nut use. Associative research is needed to sermon this nugatory global public health emergency and to mobilize efforts to control areca nut use. In addition, possible prevention and cessation programs for areca nut users, effective actions to increase awareness regarding health risks among general public and to minimize its use both at personal and government levels should be undertaken.
TeLeMaCo - A tool for the dissemination of teaching and learning materials

This paper presents TeLeMaCo, a collaborative portal for training and teaching materials relevant in linguistics and digital humanities hosted at the CLARIN-D centre at Saarland University in Saarbrucken. The portal is easy to use both for casual users who search for teaching and training material and for community members who want to contribute descriptions of their materials. We collect structured metadata of the described resources to provide advanced search and to integrate them in the wider CLARIN framework of resources.
Protective effects of oxymatrine against DSS-induced acute intestinal inflammation in mice via blocking the RhoA/ROCK signaling pathway

Oxymatrine (OMT) is an important quinoxaline alkaloid that has a wide range of pharmacological effects and has been shown to alleviate ulcerative colitis due to its profound anti-inflammatory effects. The RhoA/ROCK (Rho kinase) signaling pathway has been shown to be related to the pathogenesis of several autoimmune diseases; however, the specific mechanisms of RhoA/ROCK signaling in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) remain elusive. Therefore, we sought to determine whether OMT could ameliorate acute intestinal inflammation by targeting the RhoA/ROCK signaling pathway. The potential therapeutic effect of OMT on acute intestinal inflammation and its impact on the RhoA/ROCK signaling pathway were assessed in six groups of mice treated with low, medium and high doses of OMT (25, 50 and 100 mg/kg, respectively), and an inhibitor of ROCK, Y-27632, as a positive control, after initiating dextran sodium sulfate (DSS)-induced acute intestinal inflammation. The model group and normal group were injected intraperitoneally with equal doses of PBS. Our results showed that OMT treatment could protect the integrity of the epithelial barrier, relieve oxidative stress, inhibit the expression of inflammatory mediators and pro-inflammatory cytokines, restrain the differentiation of Th17 cells and promote the differentiation of Treg cells via inhibition of the RhoA/ROCK pathway, thus providing therapeutic benefits for ulcerative colitis (UC). Therefore, inhibiting the RhoA/ROCK pathway might be a new approach that can be used in UC therapy, which deserves to be investigated further.
Reparative Mineralized Tissue Characterization after Direct Pulp Capping with Calcium-Silicate-Based Cements

Nowadays, the preservation of dental pulp vitality is an integral part of our daily therapies. The success of these treatments depends on the clinical situation as well as the biomaterials used. Mineral Trioxide aggregate and BiodentineTM are commonly used as pulp capping materials. One objective of vital pulp therapy is the repair/regeneration of the pulp. In addition to the initial inflammatory status of the pulp, the nature and quality of the new mineralized tissue obtained after pulp capping directly influence the success of the treatment. In order to characterize the reparative dentin, in the current study, the chemical composition and microstructure of the dentin bridge after direct pulp capping using Biodentine™ and mineral trioxide aggregate (MTA) was studied by using Raman microspectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy, respectively. The results showed that the reparative dentin bridge observed in both groups presented dentin tubules and chemical composition similar to primary dentin. With the limitations of this study, the calcium-silicate-based cements used as pulp capping materials provide an optimal environment for pulp healing, resulting in a reparative dentin resembling on certain points of the primary dentin and the regeneration of the pulp.
Preparation of Micro-Nano Material Composed of Oyster Shell/Fe3O4 Nanoparticles/Humic Acid and Its Application in Selective Removal of Hg(II)

Micro-nano composite material was prepared to adsorb Hg(II) ions via the co-precipitation method. Oyster shell (OS), Fe3O4 nanoparticles, and humic acid (HA) were used as the raw materials. The adhesion of nanoparticles to OS displayed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), the appearance of the (311) plane of standard Fe3O4 derived from X-ray diffraction (XRD), and the transformation of pore sizes to 50 nm and 20 μm by mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP) jointly revealed the successful grafting of HA-functionalized Fe3O4 onto the oyster shell surface. The vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) results showed superparamagnetic properties of the novel adsorbent. The adsorption mechanism was investigated based on X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) techniques, which showed the process of physicochemical adsorption while mercury was adsorbed as Hg(II). The effects of pH (3–7), initial solution concentration (2.5–30 mg·L−1), and contact time (0–5 h) on the adsorption of Hg(II) ions were studied in detail. The experimental data were well fitted to the Langmuir isotherm equation (R2 = 0.991) and were shown to follow a pseudo-second-order reaction model (R2 = 0.998). The maximum adsorption capacity of Hg(II) was shown to be 141.57 mg·g−1. In addition, this new adsorbent exhibited excellent selectivity.
Estimated Incubation Period and Serial Interval for Human-to-Human Influenza A(H7N9) Virus Transmission

We estimated the incubation period and serial interval for human-to-human–transmitted avian influenza A(H7N9) virus infection using case-patient clusters from epidemics in China during 2013–2017. The median incubation period was 4 days and serial interval 9 days. China’s 10-day monitoring period for close contacts of case-patients should detect most secondary infections.
Rapid Catalytic Reduction of 4-Nitrophenol and Clock Reaction of Methylene Blue using Copper Nanowires

Copper nanowires (CuNWs) with a high aspect ratio of ~2600 have been successfully synthesized by using a facile hydrothermal method. The reductions of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) to 4-aminophenol (4-AP) and methylene blue (MB) to leucomethylene blue (LMB) by using sodium borohydride (NaBH4) were used as models to test the catalytic activity of CuNWs. We showed that by increasing the CuNWs content, the rate of reduction increased as well. The CuNWs showed an excellent catalytic performance where 99% reduction of 4-NP to 4-AP occurred in just 60 s by using only 0.1 pg of CuNWs after treatment with glacial acetic acid (GAA). The rate constant (kapp) and activity factor (K) of this study is 18 and ~1010 fold in comparison to previous study done with no GAA treatment applied, respectively. The CuNWs showed an outstanding catalytic activity for at least ten consecutive reusability tests with a consistent result in 4-NP reduction. In clock reaction of MB, approximately 99% of reduction of MB into LMB was achieved in ~5 s by using 2 μg CuNWs. Moreover, the addition of NaOH can improve the rate and degree of recolorization of LMB to MB.