Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A clinical perspective of IL‐1β as the gatekeeper of inflammation

An expanding spectrum of acute and chronic non‐infectious inflammatory diseases is uniquely responsive to IL‐1β neutralization. IL‐1β‐mediated diseases are often called “auto‐inflammatory” and the dominant finding is the release of the active form of IL‐1β driven by endogenous molecules acting on the monocyte/macrophage. IL‐1β activity is tightly controlled and requires the conversion of the primary transcript, the inactive IL‐1β precursor, to the active cytokine by limited proteolysis. Limited proteolysis can take place extracellularly by serine proteases, released in particular by infiltrating neutrophils or intracellularly by the cysteine protease caspase‐1. Therefore, blocking IL‐1β resolves inflammation regardless of how the cytokine is released from the cell or how the precursor is cleaved. Endogenous stimulants such as oxidized fatty acids and lipoproteins, high glucose concentrations, uric acid crystals, activated complement, contents of necrotic cells, and cytokines, particularly IL‐1 itself, induce the synthesis of the inactive IL‐1β precursor, which awaits processing to the active form. Although bursts of IL‐1β precipitate acute attacks of systemic or local inflammation, IL‐1β also contributes to several chronic diseases. For example, ischemic injury, such as myocardial infarction or stroke, causes acute and extensive damage, and slowly progressive inflammatory processes take place in atherosclerosis, type 2 diabetes, osteoarthritis and smoldering myeloma. Evidence for the involvement of IL‐1β and the clinical results of reducing IL‐1β activity in this broad spectrum of inflammatory diseases are the focus of this review.
Pedigree reconstruction from SNP data: parentage assignment, sibship clustering and beyond

Data on hundreds or thousands of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) provide detailed information about the relationships between individuals, but currently few tools can turn this information into a multigenerational pedigree. I present the r package sequoia, which assigns parents, clusters half‐siblings sharing an unsampled parent and assigns grandparents to half‐sibships. Assignments are made after consideration of the likelihoods of all possible first‐, second‐ and third‐degree relationships between the focal individuals, as well as the traditional alternative of being unrelated. This careful exploration of the local likelihood surface is implemented in a fast, heuristic hill‐climbing algorithm. Distinction between the various categories of second‐degree relatives is possible when likelihoods are calculated conditional on at least one parent of each focal individual. Performance was tested on simulated data sets with realistic genotyping error rate and missingness, based on three different large pedigrees (N = 1000–2000). This included a complex pedigree with overlapping generations, occasional close inbreeding and some unknown birth years. Parentage assignment was highly accurate down to about 100 independent SNPs (error rate <0.1%) and fast (<1 min) as most pairs can be excluded from being parent–offspring based on opposite homozygosity. For full pedigree reconstruction, 40% of parents were assumed nongenotyped. Reconstruction resulted in low error rates (<0.3%), high assignment rates (>99%) in limited computation time (typically <1 h) when at least 200 independent SNPs were used. In three empirical data sets, relatedness estimated from the inferred pedigree was strongly correlated to genomic relatedness.
Optical Density of the Crystalline Lens

Abstract The optical density for the noncataractous crystalline lens is written as a sum of two terms, each with a specific dependence on wavelength. The first term, proportional to 1 / &lgr;2, represents all lightscattering processes in the lens. The second term, assumed significant only for &lgr; ≤ 500 nm, accounts for absorption by lens pigments. By analyzing transmittance data on lenses of subjects aged 21 to 63 years, a spectrum for light absorption by lens pigment is derived and it is shown to be essentially the same for all of the lenses.
Activation of TRPV4 on dural afferents produces headache-related behavior in a preclinical rat model

Background: The mechanisms contributing to the pain of migraine are poorly understood although activation of afferent nociceptors in the trigeminovascular system has been proposed as a key event. Prior studies have shown that dural-afferent nociceptors are sensitive to both osmotic and mechanical stimuli. Based on the sensitivity to these stimuli we hypothesized that dural afferents express the osmo/mechano-sensitive channel transient receptor-potential vanilloid 4 (TRPV4). Methods: These studies used in vitro patch-clamp electrophysiology of trigeminal neurons retrogradely labeled from the dura to examine the functional expression of TRPV4. Additionally, we used a rat headache model in which facial/hind paw allodynia following dural stimulation is measured to determine whether activation of meningeal TRPV4 produces responses consistent with migraine. Results: These studies found that 56% and 49% of identified dural afferents generate currents in response to hypotonic solutions and 4α-PDD, respectively. The response to these stimuli indicates that dural afferents express TRPV4. Activation of meningeal TPRV4 using hypotonic solution or 4α-PDD in vivo resulted in both facial and hind paw allodynia that was blocked by the TRPV4 antagonist RN1734. Conclusion: These data indicate that activation of TRPV4 within the meninges produces afferent nociceptive signaling from the head that may contribute to migraine headache.
The IMB Jena Image Library of Biological Macromolecules: 2002 update

The IMB Jena Image Library of Biological Macromolecules (http://www.imb-jena.de/IMAGE.html) is aimed at a better dissemination of information on three-dimensional biopolymer structures with an emphasis on visualization and analysis. It provides access to all structure entries deposited at the Protein Data Bank (PDB) and Nucleic Acid Database (NDB). In addition, basic information on the architecture of biological macromolecules is offered. Recent developments include a site database and an analysis tool that identifies all residues surrounding hetero components or sites according to geometrical criteria. This enables one to search for all structures with a certain pattern of amino acids/nucleotides/water adjacent to hetero components or sites. A new PDB/SWISS-PROT cross-reference database combines information from both PDB and SWISS-PROT, thus providing significantly more cross-references than either PDB or SWISS-PROT. The existing brief descriptions of X-ray, NMR and FTIR methods for structure determination are supplemented by information on circular dichroism.
An improved watershed segmentation by flooding and pruning algorithm for assessment of diabetic wound healing

Assessment of wound in diabetes patient is essential step in the management of therapeutic intervention. The objective of this work is to improve the accuracy of segmenting the diabetic wound and assessment of diabetic wound healing process by incorporating the proposed method of improved watershed segmentation by flooding and pruning technique. The technique has been proposed in concatenation with pruning. The process of pruning helps us to avoid the problem of over-segmentation. The over-segmentation can be avoided by recognizing the set of pixels, which exhibit the properties of segmentation. The properties of segmentation include flooding and receiving the flooded response with the neighboring pixels of an image. The flooding with pruning helps in estimating the boundary of an object and assesses the regions of segmented image. Further, the objects of an image are processed with the morphological operations like erosion and dilation to improve the accuracy of the proposed method. The Proposed method has been designed with an improved watershed algorithm to assess the segmented objects and to boost an algorithm during the process of avoiding over-segmentation. The efficacy of this proposed method can be visualized from the proposed algorithm.
Liquid water quanti fi cation in the cathode side gas channels of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell through two-phase fl ow visualization

Water management is crucial to the performance of PEM fuel cells. Water is generated as part of the electrochemical reaction, and is removed through the reactant channels. This results in two-phase flow in the reactant channels. Increased understanding of the behavior of the liquid water in the channels allows us to devise better strategies for managing the water content inside the fuel cell. Most previous work has been focused on qualitative information regarding flow pattern maps. The current work presents new algorithms developed in MATLAB to quantify the liquid water and to identify the flow patterns in the cathode side reactant channels. Parallel channels with dimensions matching those of commercial stacks have been used in this study. The liquid water present in the reactant channels is quantified for different temperature, inlet RH and current density conditions, and the results are presented in terms of area coverage ratio. The dominant flow patterns for the different conditions have been mapped, and trends interpreted on the basis of air flow velocities and saturation conditions within the
Oligomerization of oncoprotein p53

Cellular phosphoprotein p53, which seems to be a multifunctional protein, may be assigned to different structural subclasses. Recently established immortalized or transformed cell lines that overexpress p53 allowed us to perform a detailed analysis of the quaternary structure of p53. By means of sucrose density gradient centrifugation, we found in simian virus 40-transformed cells that overexpress p53, in addition to high-molecular-weight T-p53 complexes, low-molecular-weight forms. The level of T-p53 complexes within simian virus 40-transformed cells seemed to be determined by the intracellular concentration of p53. However, the presence of uncomplexed T antigen and p53 indicated that an appropriate modification of at least one of the two proteins appears to be necessary for complex formation. Using different monoclonal antibodies that distinguish between (i) p53 associated with T antigen or heat shock proteins and (ii) p53 in apparently free form, we found p53 from transformed cells always in high-molecular-weight forms. p53 from normal and immortalized cells, however, was found mainly in low-molecular-weight forms. Pulse-labeling experiments revealed that oligomerization of p53 is a very rapid process. Monomeric forms of p53 which could be detected only by 2 min of pulse-labeling were rapidly converted to stable, high-molecular-weight oligomers. Furthermore, our data indicate a correlation between the occurrence of p53 in high-molecular-weight forms and the transformation state of the cell.
Reductions ofListeria innocuaandBrochothrix thermosphactaon beef following nisin spray treatments and vacuum packaging

Sections of UV sterilized lean and adipose tissues from the surfaces of post-rigor (24 h post-mortem) beef carcasses were inoculated withBrochothrix thermosphactaorListeria innocuato obtain approximately 4.50 log8cfu cm−2and subjected to spray treatments with sterile water or nisin (5000 AU ml−1). Untreated and spray treated samples were vacuum-packaged, and incubated at 4°C for up to 4 weeks. Bacterial populations from untreated vacuum-packaged tissues and spray treated, vacuum-packaged tissues were enumerated on non-selective and selective media at 0, 7, 14, 21 or 28 days. Nisin spray treatments of lean and adipose vacuum-packaged tissues reduced the numbers ofL. innocuaup to 2.83 log8cfu cm−2. Additionally, nisin sprays and vacuum packaging effectively suppressedL. innocuaduring the 4-week incubation such that the remaining bacteria did not grow to the same level as untreated or water-treated, vacuum-packaged tissues. Nisin spray treatments and vacuum packaging of lean and adipose tissues reducedB. thermosphactato undetectable levels. Data from this study demonstrate that nisin spray treatments followed by vacuum packaging under refrigerated conditions could increase the shelf life by suppressing or inhibiting the growth of undesirable bacteria present on fresh beef.
Influencia de la ubicación de las impedancias de regulación en los ensayos de cortocircuito

Se analiza la influencia de la ubicación de las impedancias de regulación para ensayos de cortocircuito, especialmente de interruptores de baja tensión. En la normativa internacional no se especifica si la impedancia de regulación debe estar antes o después del transformador de ensayos. Se pone de manifiesto el problema a través de mediciones reales en laboratorio y se analizan las posibles causas, mediante expresiones analíticas y simulaciones digitales. Se muestra la dependencia del problema en relación con el instante de cierre o establecimiento de la corriente de ensayo, respecto de la tensión en vacío.
Documents de Treball EARNINGS MANAGEMENT AND CULTURAL VALUES

Using theory and empirical data from social psychology to measure for cultural differences between countries, we study the effect of individualism as defined by Hofstede (1980) and egalitarianism as defined by Schwartz (1994, 1999, 2004) on earnings management. We find a significant influence of both cultural measures. In line with Licht et al. (2004), who argue that individualistic societies may be less susceptible to corruption, we find that countries scoring high on individualism tend to have lower levels of earnings management. In addition, we find that egalitarianism, defined as a society's cultural orientation with respect to intolerance for abuses of market and political power, is negatively related with earnings management. Our results are robust to different specifications and controls. The main message of this paper is that besides formal institutions, cultural differences are relevant to explain earnings management behaviour. We think that our work adds to the understanding of the importance of cultural values in managerial behaviour across countries contributing to the literature on earnings management and law and institutions.
Beneficial Effects of Tianeptine on Hippocampus-Dependent Long-Term Memory and Stress-Induced Alterations of Brain Structure and Function

Tianeptine is a well-described antidepressant which has been shown to prevent stress from producing deleterious effects on brain structure and function. Preclinical studies have shown that tianeptine blocks stress-induced alterations of neuronal morphology and synaptic plasticity. Moreover, tianeptine prevents stress from impairing learning and memory, and, importantly, demonstrates memory-enhancing properties in the absence of stress. Recent research has indicated that tianeptine works by normalizing glutamatergic neurotransmission, a mechanism of action that may underlie its effectiveness as an antidepressant. These findings emphasize the value in focusing on the mechanisms of action of tianeptine, and specifically, the glutamatergic system, in the development of novel pharmacotherapeutic strategies in the treatment of depression.
BSP in a Lazy Functional Context

The BSP model of computing allows parallel programs to be ported to a wide range of architectures with predictable runtime performance. We show how BSP may be implemented in a Haskell library in a way that preserves the cost predictability, and avoids the synchronisation-matching problem of low-level BSP. The library comprises interchangeable components, from which sequential and parallel implementations may be constructed, with a choice of local features including runtime cost-measurement.
Global depletion of groundwater resources

In regions with frequent water stress and large aquifer systems groundwater is often used as an additional water source. If groundwater abstraction exceeds the natural groundwater recharge for extensive areas and long times, overexploitation or persistent groundwater depletion occurs. Here we provide a global overview of groundwater depletion (here defined as abstraction in excess of recharge) by assessing groundwater recharge with a global hydrological model and subtracting estimates of groundwater abstraction. Restricting our analysis to sub‐humid to arid areas we estimate the total global groundwater depletion to have increased from 126 (±32) km3 a−1 in 1960 to 283 (±40) km3 a−1 in 2000. The latter equals 39 (±10)% of the global yearly groundwater abstraction, 2 (±0.6)% of the global yearly groundwater recharge, 0.8 (±0.1)% of the global yearly continental runoff and 0.4 (±0.06)% of the global yearly evaporation, contributing a considerable amount of 0.8 (±0.1) mm a−1 to current sea‐level rise.
Inhibition of angiogenesis at endothelial cell level

Targeting of proliferating endothelial cells may allow a new therapeutic strategy against malignant tumors. Endothelial cells are easily accessible through the blood stream and genetically stable, reducing the possibility of acquiring drug resistance. There are numerous candidates for angiogenesis targets of drug development, e.g. a single endothelial cell has 2,000–20,000 different receptors on a cell membrane and inside a cell there are hundreds of second messengers. Inhibitors that are active at endothelial cells can be placed in three main groups inducing blockage of endothelial cell activator, direct inhibition of endothelial cells, inhibition of endothelial specific signaling. This review summarizes different approaches already in clinical trials. Specific effort is taken to give a view of and a new perspective over clinically relevant basic mechanisms, e.g. VEGF, ETS and radionanotargeting. It is clear that aggressive development work both at the preclinical and clinical levels is still needed; however, breakthroughs in applied therapies are expected at any time. Microsc. Res. Tech. 60:85–97, 2003. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Demographer: Extremely Simple Name Demographics

The lack of demographic information available when conducting passive analysis of social media content can make it difﬁcult to compare results to traditional survey results. We present D EMOGRAPHER , 1 a tool that predicts gender from names, using name lists and a classiﬁer with simple character-level features. By relying only on a name, our tool can make predictions even without extensive user-authored content. We compare D EMOG - RAPHER to other available tools and discuss differences in performance. In particular, we show that D EMOGRAPHER performs well on Twitter data, making it useful for simple and rapid social media demographic inference.
The relationship between promoter methylation of p16 gene and bladder cancer risk: a meta-analysis.

PURPOSE Many scientific evidences suggested that the methylation of p16INK4a (p16) was associated with bladder cancer, but some existing studies have yielded inconclusive results about the relationship between p16 promoter methylation and pathological features or the tumor grade of bladder cancer. This meta-analysis of studies aims to evaluate the clinical and prognostic significance of p16 methylation in bladder carcinogenesis. METHODS Studies were systemically searched via PubMed and Google Scholar in English up to Sept 2015 and a total of ten appropriate studies (693 cases and 290 controls) with an average NOS score of 6.8 were included. The quality of the appropriate studies was measured by the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) assessment. RESULTS The meta-analysis results revealed that the methylation state of p16 was statistically significantly associated with an increased risk of bladder cancer (OR=6.71, 95% CI=3.79-11.87) compared to control, and there is no statistically significantly association between the p16 methylation and the tumor pTNM staging (OR=0.59, 95% CI=0.22-1.60) or the tumor grade (OR=1.01, 95% CI=0.52-1.94) in p16 methylated patients compared to unmethylated patients. CONCLUSIONS our meta-analysis indicates that p16 promoter methylation may be a promising biomarker for the diagnosis of bladder cancer and the inactivation of p16 may be an early event in bladder carcinogenesis. More studies with larger numbers of participants worldwide are needed to further identify the obvious association above.
Neurogenesis in adult human

THIS report describes neurogenesis in the adult human olfactory epithelium in vitro. Olfactory epithelium was collected at autopsy and by biopsy, and grown in serum-free medium. Basic fibroblast growth factor induced the differentiation of bipolar cells which were immunopositive for several neuronal proteins but not glial proteins. [3H]thymidine autoradiography confirmed that these neurones were born in vitro. The results demonstrate that the adult human olfactory epithelium retains the capacity for neurogenesis and neuronal differentiation, at least until the age of 72 years. It is now possible to examine neurones and neurogenesis in biopsies from patients with disorders that may involve a neurodevelopmental or neurodegenerative aetiology such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and Alzheimer's disease.
Using Visualization and Text Mining to Improve Qualitative Analysis

Context: Qualitative analysis is a scientific way to deeply understand qualitative data and to aid in its analysis. However, qualitative analysis is a laborious, time-consuming and subjective process. Aim: The authors propose the use of visualization and text mining to improve the qualitative analysis process. The objective of this paper is to explain how the use of visualization can support the Coding in multiple documents simultaneously, which may allow codes standardization thus making the process more efficient. Method: The Insight tool is being developed to make the proposal feasible and a feasibility study was performed to verify if the proposal offers benefits to the process and improves its results. Results: The study shows that the subjects who applied the proposal got more standardized codes and were more efficient than the ones who applied the process manually. Conclusions: The results derived from the use of visualization and text mining, even in a feasibility study, encourage proceeding with the project, which aims to combine both techniques to obtain more benefits on qualitative analysis conduction.