Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Expression of integrins and E-cadherin in cells from menstrual effluent, endometrium, peritoneal fluid, peritoneum, and endometriosis.

OBJECTIVE To detect the expression of integrins and E-cadherin in cells from peritoneal fluid (PF), endometrium, menstrual effluent, peritoneum, and endometriotic lesions during the early follicular phase of the menstrual cycle. DESIGN An immunohistochemical study. SETTING Tertiary care university medical center. PATIENTS Sixteen patients undergoing a diagnostic laparoscopy as part of a subfertility work-up. All patients had regular and ovulatory cycles. INTERVENTIONS A laparoscopy was performed in the early follicular phase (days 2 to 5). Simultaneously, samples were taken from endometrium, menstrual effluent, and PF, and a representative biopsy of an endometriotic lesion was obtained. If endometriosis was not noted, a peritoneal biopsy was obtained instead. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The expression of cell adhesion molecules, including the integrin alpha 2 beta 1, alpha 3 beta 1, alpha 4 beta 1, alpha 5 beta 1, and alpha 6 beta 1 and E-cadherin, as determined by immunohistochemistry on frozen sections. RESULTS All integrins tested could be detected in the endometrium samples and in endometriotic lesions. In menstrual effluent samples, positive staining for the integrins alpha 2 beta 1 and alpha 3 beta 1 was found in epithelial cells in 13 of 16 cases. Integrin alpha 5 beta 1 was detected in 11 of 16 samples, and integrins alpha 4 beta 1 and alpha 6 beta 1 were detected in 5 of 16 samples. In PF, integrin alpha 3 beta 1 was found in epithelial cells in 12 of 16 samples, integrin alpha 5 beta 1 in 5 of 16, and integrins alpha 4 beta 1 in 2 of 16. The antibody for E-cadherin showed positive staining of epithelial cells in 6 of 16 menstrual effluent samples. All endometrial tissue samples showed positive staining for E-cadherin. In PF, E-cadherin was detected in the epithelial cells of one sample. One peritoneum biopsy revealed positive staining for E-cadherin. CONCLUSION Integrins alpha 2 beta 1, alpha 3 beta 1, alpha 4 beta 1, alpha 5 beta 1, and E-cadherin, important cell adhesion molecules, are expressed in endometriotic lesions and in cells and tissues that are potentially involved in the development of endometriosis. These cell adhesion molecules could be involved in the shedding of endometrial tissue during menstruation and the attachment of endometrial tissue fragments to the peritoneum.
Regulation of Cellular Oncosis by Uncoupling Protein 2*

Cell death can proceed through at least two distinct pathways. Apoptosis is an energy-dependent process characterized morphologically by cell shrinkage, whereas oncosis is a form of cell death induced by energy depletion and initially characterized by cell swelling. We demonstrate in HeLa cells but not in normal diploid fibroblasts that modest increases in the expression level of uncoupling protein 2 (UCP-2) leads to a rapid and dramatic fall in mitochondrial membrane potential and to a reduction of mitochondrial NADH and intracellular ATP. In HeLa cells, increased UCP-2 expression leads to a form of cell death that is not inhibited by the anti-apoptotic gene product Bcl-2 and that morphologically resembles cellular oncosis. We further describe the creation of a dominant interfering mutant of UCP-2 whose expression increases resting mitochondrial membrane potential and selectively increases the resistance to cell death following oncotic but not apoptotic stimuli. These results suggest that distinct genetic programs may regulate the cellular response to either apoptotic or oncotic stimuli.
Mosaic Staphylococcal Cassette Chromosome mec Containing Two Recombinase Loci and a New mec Complex, B2

ABSTRACT A novel staphylococcal cassette chromosome (SCC) mec from a clinical methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus isolate (ST100/CC5) had a mosaic structure, composed of SCC DNA from several different backgrounds. It harbored two complete ccr loci and a new variant of mec complex B, with ΔmecR1 interrupted by the aminoglycoside resistance transposon Tn4001.
Tunable bandpass filters with constant absolute bandwidth and high linearity

This paper presents a frequency-agile bandpass filter with constant absolute bandwidth and high linearity. The proposed resonator is composed of an open-ended transmission line with back-to-back varactor diodes loaded at one end. A novel mixed electric and magnetic coupling scheme is proposed to contorll the coupling coefficients in order to keep the bandwidth constant when the frequency is tuned. Moreover, the back-to-back varactor diodes are used to enhance the linearity of the filter, which is better than that of the single varactor counterparts. For validation, a demonstration filter is implemented. The design methodology and the experimental results are presented.
Vegetative predictors of primate abundance: utility and limitations of a fine‐scale analysis

Determining ecological predictors of primate abundance is important for both theoretical and applied conservation management. For forest primates, research has focused on comparisons of primate abundance and vegetation in different forest blocks or forest compartments with different management histories. However, great variation in primate abundance often occurs within single forests, especially in mountainous areas or in areas with habitat mosaics due to past disturbance. Here we assess, for the first time, the usefulness and limitations of small‐scale, within‐transect analysis of vegetative parameters as predictors of primate abundance in a very heterogeneous forest habitat in the Udzungwa Mountains of Tanzania. Relative abundance of four species of diurnal primates was recorded over a period of 2.5 years by walking three census transects 48 times each. Tree size, density, species composition, and food plants were measured along the same census lines. The fine‐scale relationship between primate abundance and vegetative variables was analyzed through generalized linear modeling applied to 58 segments of these three census lines. Each segment was 200 m in length. For all four primate species, we found significant associations between their abundance and selected vegetative variables. The abundance of the endemic and endangered Udzungwa red colobus Procolobus gordonorum was positively related to mean basal area of large trees (diameter at breast height greater than 20 cm) and to the species richness of their food plants. Considering the very great variation in primate abundance that was recorded among segments of the census lines, our approach proved useful in predicting the relationship between primate abundance and small‐scale habitat differences. The main limitation of this study, however, was the relatively low‐predictive power of the models for some species, especially the Angolan colobus Colobus angolensis. We discuss the potential reasons for this problem and suggest possible improvements for future studies. Am. J. Primatol. 69:1242–1256, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
STAT5b-deficient Mice Are Growth Hormone Pulse-resistant

The signal transducer and transcriptional activator STAT5b is required to maintain the adult male pattern of liver gene expression and whole body pubertal growth rates, as demonstrated by the loss of these growth hormone (GH) pulse-dependent responses in mice with a targeted disruption of the STAT5b gene. The present study investigates whether these phenotypes of STAT5b-deficient mice result from impaired intracellular GH signaling associated with a loss of GH pulse responsiveness, as contrasted with a feminization of the pituitary GH secretory profile leading to the observed feminization of body growth and liver gene expression. Pulsatile GH replacement in hypophysectomized mice stimulated body weight gain in wild-type but not in STAT5b-deficient mice. Expression of the male-specific liver P450 enzyme CYP2D9, which is reduced to female levels in hypophysectomized male mice, was restored to male levels by GH pulse replacement in wild-type but not in STAT5b-deficient mice. Similarly, a female-specific liver CYP2B P450 enzyme that was up-regulated to female levels following hypophysectomy of males was suppressed to normal basal male levels by GH pulses only in wild-type hypophysectomized mice. Finally, urinary excretion of the male-specific, GH pulse-induced major urinary protein was restored to normal male levels following pulsatile GH treatment only in the case of wild-type hypophysectomized mice. STAT5b-deficient mice are thus GH pulse-resistant, supporting the proposed role of STAT5b as a key intracellular mediator of the stimulatory effects of plasma GH pulses on the male pattern of liver gene expression.
The changing standard of care in Parkinson's disease

The treatment of Parkinson's disease (PD) remains in the forefront of clinical neurology because of the constantly evolving symptomatic treatments available (several new drugs are being launched this year) and the controversies that have emerged from new therapeutic concepts such as"neuroprotection" and "restorative" treatments. PD is a model for neurodegeneration in general; as such, it is hoped that the treatment of this disease will provide insight on how the disabilities associated with other common disorders might ultimately be limited. PD is revisited in this Neurology supplement because of the availability of several new drugs for PD treatment and because of the many issues raised in determining the role of new and old drugs alike in …
Resource allocation for device-to-device broadcast communication in cellular networks

Resource allocation issue is studied for broadcast mode of device-to-device (D2D) communication in cellular networks. We design systematic methods for transmission sub-frame selection by broadcast UEs. Firstly, we design transmission patterns based on Hadamard matrix for the case with 8 D2D sub-frames per D2D period. Then, we expand transmission patterns to the 16 sub-frame case. Accordingly, we design a distributed scheduling scheme, which can be naturally applied with a well-designed transmission pattern set and takes into account spatial relationships between broadcast UEs. System level simulation shows the performance gain provided by the designed Hadamard-matrix-based transmission pattern set and the weighted collision minimization scheduling scheme.
Conservative treatment of keratoconus by riboflavin-uva-induced cross-linking of corneal collagen: qualitative investigation.

PURPOSE To assess corneal tissue modifications after riboflavin-UVA-induced cross-linking of corneal collagen in patients with progressive keratoconus as well as regeneration of epithelium and subepithelial nerve plexus by in vivo HRT II system confocal microscopy in humans. METHODS Ten patients with progressive keratoconus were treated by riboflavin-UVA-induced cross-linking of corneal collagen, involving assessment of ultrastructural modifications of the corneal epithelium and subepithelial nerve plexus by HRT II system confocal microscopy. Treatment included instillation of 0.1% riboflavin-20% dextrane solution 5 minutes before UVA irradiation and every 5 minutes for a total of 30 minutes. Radiant energy was 3 mW/cm 2 or 5.4 Joule/cm 2 and the source was dual UVA (370 nm) light-emitting LED. The protocol included the operation followed by antibiotic medication and eye dressing with a soft therapeutic contact lens. Changes in epithelium and subepithelial and stromal nerve plexus were assessed by HRT II system confocal microscopy in vivo. RESULTS After 5 days of soft contact lens wearing, corneal epithelium has a regular morphology and density. Disappearance of subepithelial stromal nerve fibers was observed in the central irradiated area where, 1 month after the operation, initial reinnervation was microscopically observed. No changes in nerve fibers were observed in the peripheral untreated with a clear lateral transition between the two areas. Six months after the operation, the anterior subepithelial stroma was recolonized by nerve fibers with restoration of corneal sensitivity. CONCLUSIONS HRT II system confocal microscopy confirms corneal epithelium restore and re-innervation after riboflavin-UVA-induced collagen cross-linking directly in vivo in humans.
Inactivation of the BSE agent by the heat and pressure process for manufacturing gelatine

Dietary exposure to the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) agent is the probable cause of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in people. The industrial manufacturing process for the production of gelatine and colloidal protein by the heat and pressure process was downscaled accurately and its capacity to remove or inactivate BSE infectivity was investigated. Gelatine was made from bones experimentally contaminated with mouse brain infected with the 301V strain of mouse-passaged BSE agent in which the infective titre was 108·7 ID50/g. No infectivity was detected in the extracted protein (≥100·45 ID50/g), and the calculated clearance factor was 106·5 ID50 or more.
Expanding the Bandwidth of Virtual Teams Via a Shared Social Construction

Computer-mediated communication systems (CMC) offer alternative means of communication within and across organisational contexts. Collaboration between virtual teams which meet via computer-mediated technologies, often takes place in a context where the teams are geographically distributed and the members in the teams have not met in a face-to-face meeting. In this context promoting effective communication using CMC is a fundamental issue for managers and researchers alike. Prior studies have found that CMC technologies could be used as effectively as face-to-face meetings for group decision making providing group members have the opportunity to build up a shared common understanding. However, CMC does not currently facilitate building a shared basis for effective communication among group members. This paper proposes that a theory-based framework can be adopted to help group members build such a common understanding for effective communication in a CMC environment. Results from an experiment show that groups that used this framework had better group decision outcomes than those that did not in both a face-to-face and a videoconferencing environment. Videoconferencing can be used as effectively as face-to-face meetings for group decision satisfaction. Videoconferencing groups demonstrated greater improvement in group outcomes by using the framework. Therefore, the dialogue technique appears to be a useful framework for group members, especially virtual teams, to build a common understanding and consequently work more effectively via CMC technologies.
Relay Opportunistic Spectrum Sharing Based on the Full‐Duplex Transceiver

Opportunistic spectrum sharing (OSS) and cooperative spectrum sharing (CSS) are typical dynamic spectrum accessing (DSA) technologies to effectively improve spectrum efficiency (SE) and energy efficiency (EE). However, OSS provides no benefit to the primary user, whereas CSS, although simultaneously improving SE of the primary user and the secondary user, needs a proper cooperative mechanism with negotiation cost. To overcome these drawbacks, two kinds of relay OSS (ROSS) models are proposed to maximize SE and EE, respectively. When full-duplex transceiver is adopted by the secondary user, the proposed ROSS models can simultaneously improve the performance of both the primary user and the secondary user without requiring any negotiation. To make the study more complete, we consider both perfect channel state information (CSI) and imperfect CSI scenarios. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed models and show that the performance of both the primary user and the secondary user can be improved under ROSS models.
Is auditory imagery defective in patients with auditory hallucinations?

Background. A variant of the ‘inner speech’ theory of auditory verbal hallucinations in schizophrenia suggests that there is an abnormality of the relationship between the ‘inner voice’ and ‘inner ear’, such that hallucinators are unable to distinguish inner ‘imagined’ speech from real external speech, and so misrecognize inner speech as alien. Methods. Five experiments were carried out comparing 12 schizophrenic patients who were highly prone to hallucinate, with seven patients who were not, on a series of auditory imagery tasks that are differentially dependent on inner voice/inner ear partnership for successful performance: parsing meaningful letter/number strings; the verbal transformation effect; phoneme judgements; pitch judgements, and homophony and rhyme judgements. Results. Contrary to our hypothesis, there was no evidence that the group with the propensity to hallucinate were impaired on tasks requiring normal inner ear/inner voice partnership. Conclusions. Together with previous work indicating no impairment of the phonological loop in patients who hallucinate, these results suggest that inner speech and auditory verbal hallucinations are not connected in a simplistic or direct way. Indeed, a reappraisal of psychological models of hallucinations in general may be warranted.
New Insights on Molecular Mechanisms of Renal Aging

Long‐term transplant outcome is importantly influenced by the age of the organ donor. The mechanisms how age carries out its pathophysiological impact on graft survival are still not understood. One major contributing factor for the observed poor performance of old donor kidneys seems in particular the age‐related loss in renal regenerative capacity. In this review, we will summarize recent findings about the molecular basis of renal aging with specific focus on the potential role of somatic cellular senescence and mitochondrial aging in renal transplant outcome.
Binocular Spatial Localization in the Praying Mantis

The way in which mantids localize the direction and the distance of their prey has been analysed, to clarify the importance of binocular interactions. The results suggest the following major points: 1. Binocular interactions coordinate monocular directional information, such that the direction in which a mantid fixates its prey is intermediate between the image directions in the two eyes (Figs 3, 4). 2. Binocular interactions elaborate the disparity between the monocular images, thus providing the mantid with a means of estimating the distance of its prey (Fig. 5; Tables 1, 2). The above findings, together with the known visual recognition tasks performed by the mantid, finally allow the formulation of a simple neuronal model of binocular vision.
Compartment syndrome as a complication of arthroscopy

Extravasation of fluid during arthroscopy is a well-known complieation.4-6 Significant problems with intrafascial fluid causing compartment syndrome have as yet not been reported. However, concomitant capsular and fascial defects can result in a devastating morbidity of compartment syndrome if not recognized. This paper describes a patient in whom fluid extravasated through a capsular defect into the calf and then through a fascial defect associated with a fibular fracture, causing a compartment syndrome. A cadaver was used to simulate this case and demonstrate the route of extravasated fluid to the compartment, with and without fascial defects. A pig was also used to test the physiologic ability of the body to absorb extravasated fluid both intrafascially and extrafascially while the compartment pressures were monitored. It also enabled both gross and microscopic examinations to be made.
A novel clustering technique for short texts

We describe a novel clustering technique for clustering short texts, such as URLs, without enriching it with the help of external knowledge sources. Our technique first performs feature clustering to identify the key features of the dataset and then reconstructs the dataset on the basis of the key features. Then, it computes the similarity of the short texts belonging to the reconstructed dataset using similarity measures such as Jaccard, Cosine and Dice measures. Finally, it performs short text clustering using Spectral Clustering. We compare our method with conventional Spectral Clustering method which runs directly on the original short text dataset. We performed experiments on a subset of ODP dataset as well as WebKB dataset. The empirical results demonstrate an improvement of 21% in terms of accuracy over the Spectral Clustering method for ODP dataset and 29.2% for the WebKB dataset.
Analysis and Removal of Spurious Response in SH0 Lithium Niobate MEMS Resonators

This paper reports on the analysis and removal of transverse spurious modes in shear horizontal (SH0) mode lithium niobate (LiNbO3) laterally vibrating resonators (LVRs). A length-controlled electrode configuration that employs an optimized overlapping length between the adjacent electrodes has been developed to subdue the spurious modes. The technique modifies the stress and electric field distribution in the resonator body, consequently enabling near zero electromechanical coupling (kt2) for the higher order transverse spurious modes. The length-controlled electrode configuration also reduces the loss at the interface between the metal electrodes and the piezoelectric layer, demonstrating a more than 2× enhancement in quality factors Q. The fabricated LiNbO3 LVR with the length-controlled electrode configuration has shown an unprecedented spectral range (100-200 MHz) of spurious-free response, a high kt2 value of 20.1%, a Q value of 1150, and, thereby, a remarkably high figure of merit of 230.
Detection of low‐level mosaicism by array CGH in routine diagnostic specimens

The advent of microarray‐based comparative genomic hybridization (array CGH) promises to revolutionize clinical cytogenetics because of its ability to rapidly screen the genome at an unprecedented resolution. Yet, the ability of array CGH to detect and evaluate low‐level mosaicism is not known. Our laboratory has analyzed over 3,600 clinical cases with the SignatureChip® which we developed for the detection of microdeletions, microduplications, aneuploidy, unbalanced translocations, and subtelomeric and pericentromeric copy number alterations. Here, we report 18 cases of mosaicism detected by array CGH in a routine diagnostic setting, 14 of which were not known to us at the time of the analysis. These 14 cases represent ∼8% of all abnormal cases identified in our laboratory. For each case, fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) analysis was performed on PHA‐stimulated cultures after mosaic chromosome abnormalities were suspected by array CGH. In all cases, FISH confirmed the mosaic chromosome abnormalities which included a variety of marker chromosomes, autosomal trisomies, terminal and interstitial deletions, and derivative chromosomes. Interestingly, confirmatory FISH analyses on direct blood smears indicated that the percentage of abnormal cells in unstimulated cultures was in some cases different than that found in PHA‐stimulated cells. We also report the detection of a previously unsuspected case of an isochromosome 12p (associated with Pallister–Killian syndrome) by array CGH using genomic DNA extracted from peripheral blood. These results support a growing body of data that suggests that stimulated peripheral blood cultures likely distort the percentage of abnormal cells and may, for some chromosome abnormalities, make their detection unlikely by conventional analysis. Thus, array CGH, which is based on genomic DNA extracted directly from uncultured peripheral blood, may be more likely to detect low‐level mosaicism for unbalanced chromosome abnormalities than traditional cytogenetic techniques. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.