Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Protective effect of nitric oxide on hepatopulmonary syndrome from ischemia-reperfusion injury.

AIM To evaluate immunological protection of nitric oxide (NO) in hepatopulmonary syndrome and probable mechanisms of ischemia-reperfusion (IR) injury in rat liver transplantation. METHODS Sixty-six healthy male Wistar rats were randomly divided into three groups (11 donor/recipient pairs). In group II, organ preservation solution was lactated Ringer's solution with heparin 10, 000/μL at 4 °C. In groups I and III, the preservation solution added, respectively, L-arginine or N(G)-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME) (1 mmol/L) based on group II, and recipients were injected with L-arginine or L-NAME (50 mg/kg) in the anhepatic phase. Grafted livers in each group were stored for 6 h and implanted into recipients. Five rats were used for observation of postoperative survival in each group. The other six rats in each group were used to obtain tissue samples, and executed at 3 h and 24 h after transplantation. The levels of alanine aminotransferase (ALT), tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α and NO metabolites (NOx) were detected, and expression of NO synthase, TNF-α and intercellular adhesion molecule 1 (ICAM-1) was examined by triphosphopyridine nucleotide diaphorase histochemical and immunohistochemical staining. RESULTS By supplementing L-arginine to strengthen the NO pathway, a high survival rate was achieved and hepatic function was improved. One-week survival rate of grafted liver recipients in group I was significantly increased (28.8 ± 36.6 d vs 4 ± 1.7 d, P < 0.01) as compared with groups II and III. Serum levels of ALT in group I were 2-7 times less than those in groups II and III (P < 0.01). The cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) levels in liver tissue and NOx in group I were 3-4 times higher than those of group II after 3 h and 24 h reperfusion, while in group III, they were significantly reduced as compared with those in group II (P < 0.01). The levels of TNF-α in group I were significantly lower than in group II after 3 h and 24 h reperfusion (P < 0.01), while being significantly higher in group III than group II (P < 0.01). Histopathology revealed more severe tissue damage in graft liver and lung tissues, and a more severe inflammatory response of the recipient after using NO synthase inhibitor, while the pathological damage to grafted liver and the recipient's lung tissues was significantly reduced in group I after 3 h and 24 h reperfusion. A small amount of constitutive NO synthase (cNOS) was expressed in liver endothelial cells after 6 h cold storage, but there was no expression of inducible NO synthase (iNOS). Expression of cNOS was particularly significant in vascular endothelial cells and liver cells at 3 h and 24 h after reperfusion in group II, but expression of iNOS and ICAM-1 was low in group I. There was diffuse strong expression of ICAM-1 and TNF-α in group III at 3 h after reperfusion. CONCLUSION The NO/cGMP pathway may be critical in successful organ transplantation, especially in treating hepatopulmonary syndrome during cold IR injury in rat orthotopic liver transplantation.
Coreference resolution with multiple semantic information based on emergency news

Effectively collecting and extracting useful information from the relevant news reports are the keys to raise the response capabilities to handle emergencies. So an important subtask is how to resolve the coreference phenomenon. In this paper, we present a coreference resolution approach based on maximum entropy model in paroxysmal events news reports. The pronouns, nouns and noun phrases which refer to the same entity in a Chinese news report can be extracted by the approach. A group of semantic features are used to coreference resolution, which includes the semantic class features, the semantic role features based on the pronoun refining, the semantic-related features, the redirection features and context features based on Wikipedia. We compare their performance on the testing corpus. The training corpus contains 200,000 Chinese characters and the testing corpus contains 50,000. The experimental results show the improvement of coreference resolution after adding selected semantic knowledge.
Significance of soluble interleukin‐2 receptor levels for evaluation of the progression of adult T‐cell leukemia

Background. The authors conducted a survey of a large cohort of patients with adult T‐cell leukemia (ATL) and a group of human T‐cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV‐1) carriers to elucidate whether measurements of soluble interleukin‐2 receptor (sIL‐2R) levels are indicative of ATL tumor burden and correlate with clinical progression.
Contributions of the Anterior Forebrain Pathway to Vocal Plasticity

Abstract: The anterior forebrain pathway (AFP) is a basal ganglia‐dorsal forebrain circuit that is prominent specifically in birds that learn to sing. This circuit is interconnected with the song motor pathway, is active during song production, and contains neurons that are selective for the sound of the bird's own song, suggesting an important role for the AFP in vocal behavior. However, interruption of the AFP by lesions in adult birds has little overt effect on the production of learned song. In contrast, lesions in juvenile birds prevent the normal progression of song learning. Moreover, lesions in adults, while not disrupting production, can prevent experience‐dependent plasticity of song. Such data implicate the AFP specifically in song learning and vocal plasticity. This chapter reviews some of the experimental evidence supporting a role for the AFP in these processes and discusses potential instructive and permissive functions of the AFP in vocal plasticity.
Effects of dimensional scaling on the electronic transport properties of silicon nanofilms and nanowires

A detailed investigation focused upon evaluating the effects of dimensional cross-sectional nanoscaling of silicon features on the electronic transport properties is presented. The feature dimensions ranged from /spl sim/200 nm down to /spl sim/10 nm. This range represents transition region from bulk properties towards the onset of quantization. The structures were fabricated on silicon-on-insulator using interferometric lithography, reactive-ion-etching and thermal oxidation methods. In order to investigate the optical and electronic properties, the nanostructures were configured in a two terminal test device configuration. Characterization methods included; dark and illuminated steady-state DC measurements and optically pulsed transient time response measurements using a modified version of the Haynes-Shockley experiment for evaluating the carrier mobility as a function of scaling the feature cross-section. Results showed that the total carrier drift-diffusion dependent conduction increases as the feature cross-sectional dimensions are reduced from /spl sim/200 nm to /spl sim/10 nm due to carrier confinement effects and clear differences between 1D (nanofilms) versus 2D (nanowires) scaling effects are observed.
Design and modelling of decentralised task allocation mechanisms in groups of mobile agents

Division of labour is a fundamental field of research within the context of multi-agent (particularly swarm based systems) and multi-robot systems. Eusocial insects, for instance ants and bees, are known to display remarkable capabilities of allocating tasks to nest mates when the colony gets perturbed by any internal and/or external factors. Proper understanding of the underlying mechanisms of division of labour among these social insects would enable more effective designing and developing of artificial swarm based systems which in turn can be used in tackling various real world problems. At the same time, a properly built model can be used to serve as a platform for the biologists to test their research hypotheses. These key benefits have been the prime motivations of this thesis. The thesis is based on the behaviour of ant colonies and especially on how they allocate tasks in different situations. The objectives of the thesis are twofold: (1) to develop an artificial simulated system that is ant-like and (2) to explore, identify, develop and analyse task allocation strategies within the realms of colony performance. The first objective of the thesis is approached by investigating the behaviour of ant colonies from the existing literature and modelling their behaviours using an agent based modelling approach. To determine whether the model has met the first objective, three questions are posed: (A) Is the emergent system scalable? (B) Is the emergent system flexible? and (C) Is the system robust? For a system to be ant-like, the system has to not only give the appearance of ant-like behaviour but also has to meet these three criteria. As a part of the second objective of the thesis, three task allocation strategies based on ant colony behaviour are proposed. Furthermore, the strategies are critically analysed to investigate the benefits of each of the strategies and also to discover under what circumstances which strategies would perform better. The research reported in this thesis is intended to provide a better understanding of the design issues of task allocation strategies thus enabling researchers to use this as a guide to design effective task allocation strategies within the concerned multi-agent systems.
Circulating Th2 memory cells in IgG4‐related disease are restricted to a defined subset of subjects with atopy

IgG4‐related disease (IgG4‐RD) is characterized by a lymphoplasmacytic infiltrate composed of IgG4+ plasma cells, tumefactive lesions, obliterative phlebitis, and mild to moderate eosinophilia. It has been suggested that IgG4‐RD is characterized by allergic manifestations and is potentially driven by enhanced T‐helper type 2 (Th2) responses. We aimed to investigate the potential contribution of atopy to enhanced Th2 responses in IgG4‐RD. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells from 39 patients were isolated and subjected to in vitro mitogenic stimulation with PMA and ionomycin. Following stimulation, gated CD3+CD4+ T cells were analyzed for production of the Th2 cytokines IL‐4, IL‐5, and IL‐13. Among the 39 patients analyzed, only the 18 patients who had a history of atopy showed increases in circulating Th2 memory cells. Our results indicate that Th2 responses that have been reported in IgG4‐RD may result from concomitant atopic manifestations in disease subjects.
A Note on the Existence of Optimal Policies in Total Reward Dynamic Programs with Compact Action Sets

This work deals with Markov decision processes (MDPs) with expected total rewards, discrete state spaces, and compact action sets. Within this framework, a question on the existence of optimal stationary policies, formulated by Puterman (1994, p. 326), is considered. The paper concerns the possibility of obtaining an affirmative answer when additional assumptions are imposed on the decision model. Three conditions ensuring the existence ofaverage optimal stationary policies infinite-state MDPs are analyzed, and it is shown that only the so-called structural continuity condition is a natural sufficient assumption under which the existence of total-reward optimal stationary policies can be guaranteed. In particular, this existence result holds for unichain MDPs with finite state space, but an example is provided to show that this general conclusion does not have an extension to the denumerable state space case.
The human polyomaviruses: from orphans and mutants to patchwork family

For almost 40 years, polyomavirus JC and BK were the only known human polyomaviruses but in the last 7 years, increased interest and innovative molecular screening techniques have led to the identification of 10 previously unknown polyomaviruses in humans. Two of these, Merkel cell polyomavirus and Trichodysplasia spinulosa polyomavirus, have also been found to cause disease in immunocompromised patients. Seroprevalence studies indicate that human polyomaviruses are transmitted independently of one another in humans and carry different risks of exposure and reexposure throughout life. The potential coexistence of 12 or more different polyomavirus species in the same host and possibly even in the same organ raises the question of potential interactions. Careful review of polyomavirus biology may facilitate new discoveries concerning these formerly underestimated viral agents and their influence on human health.
Displaced Proximal Humeral Fractures

A study of 117 three-part and four-part displaced proximal humeral fractures, followed for from one to sixteen years, is presented. The ages of the patients averaged 55.3 years. Treatment began with closed reduction in seventy-seven patients, the result of which were accepted in thirty-one. Open reduction was done in forty-three patients, and prosthetic replacement in forty-three patients. Their results were rated by a numerical system. Closed reduction was found inadequate for active, healthy patients in either group. This was because of uncontrollable rotatory displacement in three-part fractures and avascular necrosis of the detached head in four-part fractures. Most of the poor results of open reduction in three-part displacements were due to errors in reduction or fixation while those in four-part displacements were due to avascular necrosis of the head. It. was concluded that the preferable method for three-part fractures was open reduction and that for four-part fractures was prosthetic replacement. Using these indications, the typical result was satisfactory but imperfect and many months were required for maximum recovery. Surgical errors and technique are discussed.
Integrated power conditioning system for MTG and SOFC with improved power quality

This paper presented a power conditioning system integrating Microturbine (MTG) and solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) for Auxiliary Power Units (APU) applications. Cascaded multilevel inverters are applied to achieve the power conversion between MTG and SOFC. Two different switching schemes, i.e. independent switching scheme and unified switching scheme, are proposed to eliminate low-order harmonics of output voltage, improve power quality and increase system efficiency. The independent switching scheme can implement the constant power distribution between MTG and SOFC under different load requirement. The unified switching scheme can achieve lower total harmonic distortion (THD) than the independent switching scheme but the angles range are limited. A control system with the hybrid two switching schemes is designed to achieve flexible power distribution, steady ac bus voltage with different load and lower THD of voltage and current. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed control system can effectively implement good performance of the proposed power conditioning system.
Chromatin proteomic profiling reveals novel proteins associated with histone-marked genomic regions

Significance More than a thousand proteins are thought to contribute to mammalian chromatin and its regulation, but our understanding of the genomic occupancy and function of most of these proteins is limited. We have used a chromatin proteomic profiling approach to produce a catalogue of proteins associated with genomic regions whose chromatin is marked by specific modified histones. A substantial number of the newly identified proteins are associated with human disease. Future chromatin proteomic profiling studies should prove valuable for identifying additional chromatin-associated proteins in a broad spectrum of cell types. More than a thousand proteins are thought to contribute to mammalian chromatin and its regulation, but our understanding of the genomic occupancy and function of most of these proteins is limited. Here we describe an approach, which we call “chromatin proteomic profiling,” to identify proteins associated with genomic regions marked by specifically modified histones. We used ChIP-MS to identify proteins associated with genomic regions marked by histones modified at specific lysine residues, including H3K27ac, H3K4me3, H3K79me2, H3K36me3, H3K9me3, and H4K20me3, in ES cells. We identified 332 known and 114 novel proteins associated with these histone-marked genomic segments. Many of the novel candidates have been implicated in various diseases, and their chromatin association may provide clues to disease mechanisms. More than 100 histone modifications have been described, so similar chromatin proteomic profiling studies should prove to be valuable for identifying many additional chromatin-associated proteins in a broad spectrum of cell types.
A Multi-agent Supported Adaptive Mobile Collaborative Service Platform

In order to support multiple mobile users cooperate with others and provide them an integrated services, which including multiple services, a novel platform SMCSP (the platform supporting mobile collaboration services), was constructed. Firstly, it adopted the flexible layered configuration structure to adapt the dynamic complex mobile environment. Then, the mobile collaboration was depicted by the different cooperative semantic granularity of cooperative group. After that, the multi-agent supported architecture was given based on the cooperative process of multi-agent. In order to strengthen the Adaptation of the platform, a context awareness module was added to the platform. Finally, the prototype system of the SMCSP was displayed. The practice indicates the SMCSP platform can support the mobile collaboration work of multiple mobile users well.
Suicide and psychiatric diagnosis: a worldwide perspective.

The World Health Organization (WHO) compiles and disseminates data on mortality and morbidity reported by its Member States, according to one of its mandates. Since the WHO's inception in 1948, the number of Member States has grown continually and so has the WHO mortality data bank. From 11 countries reporting data on mortality in 1950, the number of countries involved increased to 74 in the year 1985. More than 100 Member States reported on mortality at some point in time. Data from developed countries (mostly in the North of Europe and of America, and a few countries of the Western Pacific Region) are received on a mostly regular basis. Most developing countries (in Latin America, Asia and in the Eastern Mediterranean Region) report on an irregular basis; very few countries in Africa regularly report on mortality to WHO. Deaths associated with suicide are an integral part of the WHO mortality data bank. Throughout consecutive editions of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-6 to ICD-10), the category name and code of suicide have remained relatively stable. Suicide data are reported in absolute numbers along with the mid-year population of a country. The suicide rates are usually represented by country, year, sex, and age group. The most recent data available to the WHO can be accessed through its web site (www.who.int). The official figures made available to WHO by its Member States are based on death certificates signed by legally authorized personnel, usually doctors and, to a lesser extent, police officers. Generally speaking, these professionals do not misrepresent the information. However, suicide may be hidden and underreported for several reasons, e.g. as a result of prevailing social or religious attitudes. In some places, it is believed that suicide is underreported by a percentage between 20% and 100%. This underlines the importance of bringing about corrections and improvement on a world wide basis. In contrast to data on completed suicide, no country in the world reports to WHO official statistics on attempted suicide (and most probably countries do not collect them), which makes it impossible to relate national trends of suicide to national trends of attempted suicide. In the absence of national data, one is forced to rely on local studies, which vary considerably, for instance in terms of the operational definition of attempted suicide. The WHO/EURO Multicentre Study on Suicidal Behaviour (1) constitutes a major step forward in this area.
Macronutrients Content and Energy Value of Fiber Rich Biscuits

Summary Cereals and cereal based products are an important source of energy, fi bers and a range of macro- and micronutrients such as carbohydrates, proteins, minerals etc. Most of the evidences for health benefi ts of cereal foods are related to the fi ber rich wholegrain foods and its role in reducing risk of degenerative chronic diseases, so-called Western diseases (constipation, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, diverticulosis, obesity, and colon cancer). To evaluate fi ber-rich cereal products as a functional food, nine types of biscuits based on whole grain wheat fl our with enlarged share of dietary fi bers were experimentally prepared. Th e goal of this study was to present the contents of main macronutrients, such as total proteins, carbohydrates and total fat in mentioned biscuits and to estimate contributions of each individual component to biscuit’s energy value in relation to new reference values. Our results show that regarding Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI) given by the Food and Nutrition Board, USA (FNB 2005), examined biscuits can be considered as a good source of macronutrients and dietary fi bers in nutrition. Consumption of those biscuits ensure relatively balanced intake of energy originated from main macronutrients. Being high in total dietary fi bers (16.50 up to 46.77 g/1000 kcal) that is considerably higher than recommended by Adequate Intake (AI) for total dietary fi bers based on 14 g/1000 kcal of required energy (DRI 2005), investigated biscuits can signifi cantly contribute to the intake of those health enhancing components.
SiGe bipolar technology for automotive radar applications

A SiGe bipolar technology for automotive radar applications around 77 GHz has been developed. A cut-off frequency of 200 GHz, a maximum oscillation frequency of 275 GHz, and a gate delay of 3.5 ps have been obtained. First key building blocks for 77 GHz systems like VCOs and mixers have been realized with this technology.
Pharmacotherapy of obsessive-compulsive disorder: Evidence-based treatment and beyond

Background: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a neuropsychiatric disorder associated with a significant degree of functional disability and poor quality of life. Pharmacotherapy may have a substantial impact on the course and outcome of OCD. Method: We review the evidence supporting available strategies for the pharmacological treatment of OCD. Results: Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) remain the pharmacological treatment of choice and are associated with improved health-related quality of life. Discontinuation is associated with relapse and loss of quality of life, implying treatment should continue long-term. A substantial minority of patients who fail to respond to SSRI may benefit from dose elevation or adjunctive antipsychotics, though long-term trials validating the effectiveness and tolerability of these strategies are relatively lacking. Conclusion: The pharmacological evidence-base for the treatment of OCD is becoming increasingly robust. Treatment with SSRIs and clomipramine remains uncontroversial and improvements are sustained over time. Newer compounds targeting serotonin receptor subtypes and other neurotransmitter systems are undergoing evaluation.