Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tenomodulin Is Necessary for Tenocyte Proliferation and Tendon Maturation

ABSTRACT Tenomodulin (Tnmd) is a member of a new family of type II transmembrane glycoproteins. It is predominantly expressed in tendons, ligaments, and eyes, whereas the only other family member, chondromodulin I (ChM-I), is highly expressed in cartilage and at lower levels in the eye and thymus. The C-terminal extracellular domains of both proteins were shown to modulate endothelial-cell proliferation and tube formation in vitro and in vivo. We analyzed Tnmd function in vivo and provide evidence that Tnmd is processed in vivo and that the proteolytically cleaved C-terminal domain can be found in tendon extracts. Loss of Tnmd expression in gene targeted mice abated tenocyte proliferation and led to a reduced tenocyte density. The deposited amounts of extracellular matrix proteins, including collagen types I, II, III, and VI and decorin, lumican, aggrecan, and matrilin-2, were not affected, but the calibers of collagen fibrils varied significantly and exhibited increased maximal diameters. Tnmd-deficient mice did not have changes in tendon vessel density, and mice lacking both Tnmd and ChM-I had normal retinal vascularization and neovascularization after oxygen-induced retinopathy. These results suggest that Tnmd is a regulator of tenocyte proliferation and is involved in collagen fibril maturation but do not confirm an in vivo involvement of Tnmd in angiogenesis.
Zaburzenia odporności komórkowej u chorych na stwardnienie rozsiane

W patogenezie stwardnienia rozsianego (SM, sclerosis multiplex ) istotną role odgrywają zaburzenia odporności komorkowej. Aktywacja autoreaktywnych wobec antygenow mielinowych limfocytow T na obwodzie wymaga 2 sygnalow. Sygnal 1 jest swoisty i wobec braku antygenu mieliny moze byc realizowany w procesie molekularnej mimikry i/lub reakcji z superantygenem. Sygnal 2 - antygenowo nieswoisty - jest realizowany przez cząsteczki kostymulujące i ich ligandy. W niniejszym przeglądzie przedstawiono wyniki badan dotyczące zmian ekspresji molekul kostymulujących CD28 i CTLA-4 oraz ich liganda B7 w odniesieniu do rozwoju i przebiegu zwierzecego modelu SM oraz dane dokumentujące dysregulacje tych molekul u chorych z rozpoznaniem SM. Polski Przegląd Neurologiczny 2008; 4 (1): 20-25
Evaluation of Organic and Inorganic Amendments on Maize Growth and Uptake of Cd and Zn from Contaminated Paddy Soils

Pot and field experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of soil amendments (cow manure, rice straw, zeolite, dicalcium phosphate) on the growth and metal uptake (Cd, Zn) of maize (Zea mays) grown in Cd/Zn contaminated soil. The addition of cow manure and rice straw significantly increased the dry biomass, shoot and root length, and grain yield of maize when compared with the control. In pot study, cow manure, rice straw, and dicalcium phosphate all proved effective in reducing Cd and Zn concentrations in shoots and roots. Cd and Zn concentrations in the grains of maize grown in field study plots with cow manure and dicalcium phosphate amendments to highly contaminated soil (Cd 36.5 mg kg−1 and Zn 1520.8 mg kg−1) conformed to acceptable standards for animal feed. Additionally both cow manure and dicalcium phosphate amendments resulted in the significant decrease of Cd and Zn concentrations in shoots of maize.
The multidrug resistance and cystic fibrosis genes have complementary patterns of epithelial expression.

The cystic fibrosis gene product, CFTR, and the multidrug resistance P‐glycoprotein (encoded by the MDR1 gene) are structurally related proteins and both are associated with epithelial chloride channel activities. We have compared their cell‐specific expression in the rat by in situ hybridization. In all tissues examined the two genes were found to have complementary patterns of expression, demonstrating exquisite regulation in both cell‐specific and temporal fashions. Additionally, a switch in expression from one gene to the other was observed in certain tissues. For example, expression in the intestine switches from CFTR to MDR1 as the cells migrate across the crypt‐villus boundary. A switch from CFTR to MDR1 expression was also observed in the uterine epithelium upon pregnancy. These data suggest that CFTR and P‐glycoprotein serve analogous roles in epithelial cells and provide additional evidence that P‐glycoprotein has a physiological role in regulating epithelial cell volume. The patterns of expression suggest that the regulation of these two genes is coordinately controlled.
Temporary Pseudochronic Lesions During the Recovery of Acute Necrohemorrhagic Pancreatitis in Rabbits

Acute necrohemorrhagic pancreatitis was induced in rabbits by multiple interstitial trypsin injections in the body of the pancreas. The time course of regeneration was followed for 12 weeks. Chronic pancreatitis-like changes persisted for 4 weeks in all experimental animals, and the recovery was complete after 12 weeks. Reversible fibrosis and regressive acinar changes (“tubular complexes”) were most severe in the region of the trypsin injections. Three-dimensional reconstruction of the pancreas showed an anastomosing tubular arrangement in the areas of “pseudochronic pancreatitis” but not in the normal pancreas.
Coding for caching: fundamental limits and practical challenges

Caching is an essential technique to improve throughput and latency in a vast variety of applications. The core idea is to duplicate content in memories distributed across the network, which can then be exploited to deliver requested content with less congestion and delay. The traditional role of cache memories is to deliver the maximal amount of requested content locally rather than from a remote server. While this approach is optimal for single-cache systems, it has recently been shown to be significantly suboptimal for systems with multiple caches (i.e., cache networks). Instead, cache memories should be used to enable a coded multicasting gain. In this article, we survey these recent developments. We discuss both the fundamental performance limits of cache networks and the practical challenges that need to be overcome in real-life scenarios.
THE LOCI OF REPEATED EVOLUTION: A CATALOG OF GENETIC HOTSPOTS OF PHENOTYPIC VARIATION

What is the nature of the genetic changes underlying phenotypic evolution? We have catalogued 1008 alleles described in the literature that cause phenotypic differences among animals, plants, and yeasts. Surprisingly, evolution of similar traits in distinct lineages often involves mutations in the same gene (“gene reuse”). This compilation yields three important qualitative implications about repeated evolution. First, the apparent evolution of similar traits by gene reuse can be traced back to two alternatives, either several independent causative mutations or a single original mutational event followed by sorting processes. Second, hotspots of evolution—defined as the repeated occurrence of de novo mutations at orthologous loci and causing similar phenotypic variation—are omnipresent in the literature with more than 100 examples covering various levels of analysis, including numerous gain‐of‐function events. Finally, several alleles of large effect have been shown to result from the aggregation of multiple small‐effect mutations at the same hotspot locus, thus reconciling micromutationist theories of adaptation with the empirical observation of large‐effect variants. Although data heterogeneity and experimental biases prevented us from extracting quantitative trends, our synthesis highlights the existence of genetic paths of least resistance leading to viable evolutionary change.
Guts & Glory H. pylori: Cause of Peptic Ulcer

Summary Due to the 1983 discovery of H. pylori bacteria as the leading cause of peptic ulcers, the understanding of the disease dramatically changed. We now know that stress and spicy foods are not the leading causes of peptic ulcers. Symptoms including acute abdominal pain, vomiting of blood, and weight loss are characteristic of peptic ulcers. Ulcers form because of the inflammation caused by H. pylori leading to sensitivity of gastric cells to the acid secreted by the infected patient’s stomach. Although more than half of the world’s population is infected with H. pylori , most people remain asymptomatic. Current research suggests that several bacterial virulence genes such as CagA and VacA, as well as the individual host’s genetic predisposition, are factors that influence progression of disease. The mechanism of H. pylori infection has been recently examined in detail clarifying the morphological changes of the host cell and how this promotes the formation of a peptic ulcer. Present studies to explain the persistence of H. pylori and propose how this bacterium evolved key mechanisms to evade the host’s immune response. Due to the advances in the understanding of peptic ulcers, effective treatments have been proposed to treat and eliminate this disease. History
Hyperactivity and conduct problems as risk factors for adolescent development.

OBJECTIVE To clarify the developmental risk associated with hyperactive behavior, especially the relationship between hyperactive and conduct problems, in a longitudinal epidemiological design. METHOD A follow-up study of children who were identified, by parent and teacher ratings in a large community survey of 6- and 7-year-olds, as showing pervasive hyperactivity or conduct problems or the comorbid mixture of both problems or neither problem. They were later investigated, at the age of 16 to 18 years, with detailed interview techniques as well as parental and self-report ratings and cognitive tests. RESULTS Hyperactivity was a risk factor for later development, even allowing for the coexistence of conduct problems. Its sequelae included a high likelihood of psychiatric diagnosis, persisting hyperactivity, violence and other antisocial behaviors, and social and peer problems. CONCLUSIONS The results suggested a developmental pathway through which hyperactivity raised the likelihood of impaired social adjustment, including the development of psychiatric disorders, independently of the existence of conduct problems.
Clustering de visages : vers la construction automatique d'un album photo à partir d'une s equence vidé o

Cet article presente une methode de regroupement de detections d'un meme objet vu sur une sequence video, en se placant dans le cadre applicatif plus precis de la construction automatique d'un album photo. Nous utilisons une methode d'analyse globale, basee sur une formalisation probabiliste du probleme d'association de donnees. La solution du probleme est alors donnee par une estimation du Maximum A Posteriori (MAP). La principale contribution concerne l'utilisation d'une methode de suivi locale avant-arriere appliquee a chaque detection. Cela afin d'enrichir l'information d'apparence issue de la detection, par une information spatiale provenant de la construction de pistes locales. Nous introduisons une nouvelle mesure de vraisemblance basee sur la dissimilarite spatio-temporelle entre les pistes. L'algorithme obtenu est alors capable d'adresser des situations ou les detections de visages sont eparses. Nous proposons d'utiliser des criteres derives de la purete et la purete inverse d'un clustering pour evaluer les performances de la methode proposee. La methode est ensuite comparee a un clustering ascendant hierarchique, sur deux sequences test reelles.
The Role of DNA and Actin Polymers on the Polymer Structure and Rheology of Cystic Fibrosis Sputum and Depolymerization by Gelsolin or Thymosin Beta 4

Abstract: Mucus clearance is the first line of pulmonary defense against inhaled irritants, microorganisms, and allergens. In health, the gel‐forming mucins are the principal polymeric components of airway mucus but in cystic fibrosis (CF), the necrotic death of inflammatory and epithelial cells releases a network of copolymerized extracellular DNA and filamentous (F‐) actin‐producing secretions that are similar to pus and difficult to clear by cilia or airflow. The large amounts of F‐actin in CF sputum suggested that thymosin β4 (Tβ4) or gelsolin could depolymerize the secondary polymer network of CF sputum. Dose‐dependent CF sputum rheology and polymer structure were measured before and after the addition of excipient, dornase alfa, Tβ4, gelsolin, and Tβ4 or gelsolin with dornase for 30 min. Sputum was also incubated with Tβ4 30 μg/mL, gelsolin 10 μg/mL or excipient for 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, or 60 min. There was a dose‐dependent decrease in cohesivity with Tβ4 and a time‐dependent decrease in cohesivity at 30 μg/mL. With the combination of dornase alfa and Tβ4 at 1.5 μg/mL, there was a 65% decrease in elasticity (P= 0.013). There was a time‐dependent decrease in cohesivity (P= 0.0004) and elasticity (P= 0.047) with gelsolin and a dose‐dependent fall in cohesivity (P= 0.0008). An apparent synergy of Tβ4 or gelsolin on actin and dornase on DNA may be explained by the combined effect of actin depolymerization and DNA filament severing or by virtue of actin depolymerization increasing the effectiveness of dornase alfa.
Implementation of a New MRAS Speed Sensorless Vector Control of Induction Machine

In this paper, a novel rotor speed estimation method using model reference adaptive system (MRAS) is proposed to improve the performance of a sensorless vector control in the very low and zero speed regions. In the classical MRAS method, the rotor flux of the adaptive model is compared with that of the reference model. The rotor speed is estimated from the fluxes difference of the two models using adequate adaptive mechanism. However, the performance of this technique at low speed remains uncertain and the MRAS loses its efficiency, but in the new MRAS method, two differences are used at the same time. The first is between rotor fluxes and the second between electromagnetic torques. The adaptive mechanism used in this new structure contains two parallel loops having Proportional-integral controller and low-pass filter. The first and the second loops are used to adjust the rotor flux and electromagnetic torque. To ensure good performance, a robust vector control using sliding mode control is proposed. The controllers are designed using the Lyapunov approach. Simulation and experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed speed estimation method at low and zero speed regions, and good robustness with respect to parameter variations, measurement errors, and noise is obtained.
Prolactin as a local growth promoter in patients with breast cancer: GCRI experience.

AIMS The aim of this study was to evaluate the prognostic value of pre-operative prolactin (PRL) in conjunction with established prognosticators, and the risk of disease relapse in patients with early and advanced breast cancer. To confirm the hypothesis that PRL is produced by breast tumours molecular analysis of PRL, using immunohistochemistry, mRNA by RT-PCR and direct sequencing, was performed. Furthermore, presence of prolactin receptors (PRLR) was evaluated by immunohistochemical localization in these patients. METHODS In 111 breast cancer patients, pre-operative PRL was determined by an immunoradiometric assay (IRMA) method. Immunohistochemical localization of PRL (IHL-PRL) and PRLR was performed on formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue sections. Expression of PRL mRNA was carried out by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). RT-PCR PRL amplimer was sequenced and compared with human pituitary PRL amplimer. RESULTS Fifty-eight per cent (64/111) of the patients had hyperprolactinaemia (PRL520.0 ng/ml). With increasing tumour size, a higher incidence of hyperprolactinaemia was noted which was statistically significant (r=0.34, P=0.0001). In stage III patients, and in node positive patients, the incidence of hyperprolactinaemia was significantly higher compared to their respective counterparts (stage II vs stage III, r=0.37, P=0.00006; node negative vs node positive, r=0.30, P=0.001). Hyperprolactinaemic patients had a significantly higher risk of developing recurrent/metastatic disease and a higher mortality risk as compared to patients with PRL <20.0 ng/ml. The multivariate survival analysis indicated that apart from disease stage, prognosis of patients with pre-operative hyperprolactinaemia was poorer than that of patients with PRL <20.0 ng/ml. Seventy-eight per cent (87/111) of the tumours showed positive immunoreactivity with PRL antibody indicating that PRL, or a similar molecule, is produced ectopically by breast tumours. PRL mRNA expression using RT-PCR confirmed the de novo synthesis of PRL. PRL mRNA expression was seen in 52% (33/63) of tumours. Sequence analysis of the 234 bp PRL amplimer revealed that the sequence was homologous to the sequence of exon 5 of human pituitary PRL mRNA. Furthermore, PRLR were present in 80% of tumours detected by immunohistochemical localization. A significant positive correlation was noted between IHL-PRL and PRLR (r=0.26, P=0.006). CONCLUSIONS This multifaceted study of PRL suggests that breast cancer cells produce PRL and that this ectopically produced PRL may act as a major local growth promoter via autocrine and paracrine mechanisms. It may provide new insights into endocrine treatment of breast cancer.
What drives activation-dependent shifts in the force–length curve?

Skeletal muscles are rarely recruited maximally during movement. However, much of our understanding of muscle properties is based on studies using maximal activation. The effect of activation level on skeletal muscle properties remains poorly understood. Muscle optimum length increases with decreased activation; however, the mechanism responsible is unclear. Here, we attempted to determine whether length-dependent calcium effects, or the effect of absolute force underpin this shift. Fixed-end contractions were performed in frog plantaris muscles at a range of lengths using maximal tetanic (high force, high calcium), submaximal tetanic (low force, high calcium) and twitch (low force, low calcium) stimulation conditions. Peak force and optimum length were determined in each condition. Optimum length increased with decreasing peak force, irrespective of stimulation condition. Assuming calcium concentration varied as predicted, this suggests that absolute force, rather than calcium concentration, underpins the effect of activation level on optimum length. We suggest that the effect of absolute force is due to the varying effect of the internal mechanics of the muscle at different activation levels. These findings have implications for our understanding of in vivo muscle function and suggest that mechanical interactions within muscle may be important determinants of force at lower levels of activation.
A real-time approach to the lip-motion extraction in video sequence

A three-stage method to extract the visual pronunciation feature of lip movements is presented in this paper. Firstly, an approach using the "Red Exclusion + Fisher Transformation'' to enhance the chromatic images in video sequences is presented, then an algorithm for segmenting the enhanced gray images with adaptive thresholding is proposed to get the box of the lip regions. Secondly, the authors classify the lip sub-images in the obtained boxes according to the visual-pronunciation features, and two formulae are presented to normalize the dimensions and the gray values of these sub-images, then a method based on SVD is used to extract features from the normalized images. Finally, the matching template based on Mahalanobis distance is applied to recognize lipshapes. The experimental results show that the features extracted by this method have the advantages of the lower dimension, more information and applicable in natural conditions over the available methods.
Comparative Analysis of Cryptographic Algorithms

Cyber security ensures a secure information exchange and enables communication through the Internet. The data needs to be protected from unauthorized access and transmitted to the intended receiver with confidentiality and integrity. Cryptography enhances security by encrypting and decrypting raw data in a secured network. Many cryptographic algorithms are available, and they fall under either symmetric or asymmetric techniques. To choose an algorithm for secure data communication, the candidate algorithm should provide higher accuracy, security and efficiency. This paper presents the implementation limitations of existing cryptographic algorithms such as DES, 3DES, CAST-128, BLOWFISH, IDEA, AES, and RC6 of symmetric techniques and RSA of asymmetric techniques. This paper also analyzes parameters like key exchange, flexibility and security issues of the algorithms which determines the efficiency of the cryptosystem.
Green innovation in the automobile industry

Purpose – Despite the stimulation provided by market demand and green issues on business performance, the exact nature of the relationships among these aspects remains an issue of contention. This study sought to bridge this gap in the research by examining the effects of market demand on firm performance using green innovation and environmental performance as mediators. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – The Taiwanese hybrid vehicle industry was targeted as the scope of research. Using random sampling method, survey questionnaires were distributed to retailers, wholesalers, and component sale firms in the industry through post and e-mails. AMOS 5.0 and the structural equation modeling (SEM) were used to test the hypotheses and the theoretical model. Findings – Except for the impact of market demand on environmental performance, all relationships were found to be significant. The mediating effect of green innovation which was proven to be significant, while that of envir.
A Wide Band Injection Locked Frequency Divider With Variable Inductor Load

This letter proposes a new wide band CMOS injection locked frequency divider (ILFD). The circuit is made of a two-stage differential CMOS ring oscillator and is based on MOS switches directly coupled to the differential outputs of the ring oscillator. A tuning circuit composed of inductors in series with a metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor is used to extend the locking range. The divide-by-two ILFD can provide wide locking range and the measured results show that at the supply voltage of 1.8 V, the free-running frequency of the ILFD is operating from 0.92 to 3.6 GHz while the Vtune is tuned from 0 to 1.8 V. At the incident power of 0 dBm, this ILFD has a wide locking range from 1.15 to 7.4 GHz