Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exposure of airway epithelium to bile acids associated with gastroesophageal reflux symptoms: a relation to transforming growth factor-beta1 production and fibroblast proliferation.

RATIONALE Gastroesophageal reflux (GER) is common in patients with various airway diseases. Airway epithelial cells can release growth factors that promote fibroblast proliferation. Exposure of airway epithelium to bile acids may induce a fibrotic response. OBJECTIVES To determine how bile acids interact with airway epithelium; particularly, whether transforming growth factor-beta1 secretion and fibroblast proliferation are affected. METHODS Induced sputum from patients with asthma, GER, or asthma associated with GER symptoms, or from healthy control subjects was collected. Total bile acids were measured by a spectrophotometric enzymatic assay. The major components of bile acids, chenodeoxycholic acid (CD) and glycochenodeoxycholic acid (GCD), were used to stimulate primary airway epithelial cells. Quantitative polymerase chain reaction and Western blotting were applied for messenger RNA expression and signal pathway analysis, respectively. Conditioned medium following CD stimulation was coincubated with fibroblasts for proliferation study. RESULTS The amount of total bile acids in induced sputum was significantly higher in patients with GER and asthma-associated GER symptoms compared to that of healthy control subjects (p<0.005). CD, but not GCD, significantly induced TGF-beta1 production. TGF-beta1 messenger RNA expression was 2.5-fold increased compared to unstimulated cells. This occurred via p38 mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase and activating transcription factor-2 activation. Pretreatment with dexamethasone inhibited TGF-beta1 production at both messenger RNA and protein levels by inhibiting p38 MAP kinase phosphorylation. Conditioned medium from CD-treated epithelial cells enhanced fibroblast proliferation. CONCLUSIONS Aspiration of bile acids may induce airway fibrosis through the production of TGF-beta1 and fibroblast proliferation. Early intervention to attenuate these processes may reduce fibrogenesis in various airway diseases associated with GER.
The use of 35S-labelled Toxocara canis to determine larval numbers in tissues

ABSTRACT The potential of using 35S-labelled larvae to determine the number of second-stage Toxocara canis larvae present in the tissues of infected animals was assessed. Infective larvae were labelled by in vitro culture with medium containing 35S-methionine. The amount of radiolabel attached to larvae decayed exponentially with time and had an in vitro mean half life of 3·54±0·65 days. The ‘lost’ radiolabel was incorporated into proteins which formed part of the worm's excretory/secretory products. The levels of radioactivity present in different organs of BALB/c mice, infected with 35S-labelled T. canis larvae, varied over the course of infection. Initially most of the radioactivity was present in liver, but over the course of infection 35S liver levels gradually decreased and brain levels increased. By day 14 post-infection the majority of the isotope was present in the brain (p<0·01). Assessment of antibody levels on day 14 post-infection showed that infection with 35S labelled T. canis larvae induced the production of parasite-specific IgM, IgG and IgG1 antibodies.
Detection of Rotaviruses and Intestinal Lesions in Broiler Chicks from Flocks with Runting and Stunting Syndrome (RSS)

Abstract The intestinal tract and intestinal contents were collected from 34 stunted, 5-to-14-day-old broiler chicks from eight flocks with runting and stunting syndrome (RSS) in Northern Germany to investigate intestinal lesions and the presence of enteric pathogens with a special focus on rotaviruses (RVs). Seven chicks from a healthy flock were used as controls. Severe villous atrophy was seen in chicks from six flocks with RSS but not in the control flock. Lesions were often “regionally” distributed in the middle-to-distal small intestine. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), polyacrylamide-gel electrophoresis (PAGE), reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), and seminested RT-PCR were used for detection and characterization of RVs. The PAGE allows discrimination of different RV groups, and the RT-PCR was used to verify the presence of group (gp) A RVs. RVs were detected (by all methods) in 32 of 34 chicks from the flocks with RSS. By TEM (negative staining), RV particles were observed in intestinal contents of 28 chicks from the flocks with RSS. PAGE analysis showed four RV groups: gpA, gpD, gpF, and gpG. Group A RVs were detected in four chicks from two flocks with RSS, without intestinal lesions. GpD RVs were detected in 12 chicks of five flocks with RSS, 10 of them with severe villous atrophy. GpF RVs were confirmed in four chicks from three flocks with RSS and in two birds in the control flock. GpG RVs were verified in two chicks from two flocks with RSS, one with, and one without, intestinal lesions. At present, PCR methods are only available for detection of gpA RVs. Using RT-PCR, gpA RVs were identified in samples from 22 chicks including samples of two chicks from the control flock. Statistical analysis revealed a positive correlation between presence of gpD RV and severe villous atrophy in flocks with RSS. The results suggest that gpD RV plays a major role in the pathogenesis of RSS.
Allelopathic and Bloom-Forming Picocyanobacteria in a Changing World

Picocyanobacteria are extremely important organisms in the world’s oceans and freshwater ecosystems. They play an essential role in primary production and their domination in phytoplankton biomass is common in both oligotrophic and eutrophic waters. Their role is expected to become even more relevant with the effect of climate change. However, this group of photoautotrophic organisms still remains insufficiently recognized. Only a few works have focused in detail on the occurrence of massive blooms of picocyanobacteria, their toxicity and allelopathic activity. Filling the gap in our knowledge about the mechanisms involved in the proliferation of these organisms could provide a better understanding of aquatic environments. In this review, we gathered and described recent information about allelopathic activity of picocyanobacteria and occurrence of their massive blooms in many aquatic ecosystems. We also examined the relationships between climate change and representative picocyanobacterial genera from freshwater, brackish and marine ecosystems. This work emphasizes the importance of studying the smallest picoplanktonic fractions of cyanobacteria.
Zonal distribution of sulfotransferase for phenol in olfactory sustentacular cells.

We have immunolocalized phenol sulfotransferase (PST)G, an isoform of PST in sustentacular cells which reside in the dorso‐medial portion of the nasal cavity of the mouse. The same topographical pattern of gene expression has been reported for some olfactory neuron‐specific genes. When several established (phenol‐containing) odorants were used as substrates, mouse nasal tissue cytosol showed a significant level of PST activity, as does mouse liver cytosol. This study is the first to demonstrate that gene expression in the olfactory sustentacular cells is also organized zonally, and indicates the involvement of sulfo‐conjugation in olfactory perireceptor processes, such as odorant clearance and xenobiotic detoxification.
Effects of Mass Distribution and Configuration on the Energetic Losses at Impacts of Bipedal Walking Systems

Understanding the dynamics of human walking is a complex task due to the interaction of the musculoskeletal and the central nervous systems. Nevertheless, the use of simple models can provide useful insight into the mechanical aspects of bipedal locomotion. Such models exploit the observations that human walking significantly relies on passive dynamics and inverted pendulum-like behaviour. The mechanical analysis of walking involves the study of the finite motion single support phase and the impulsive motion of the impacts that occur at heel strike. Such impacts are dominant events because they represent a sudden topology transition and moreover, they are the main cause of energy consumption during the gait cycle. The aim of this work is to gain insight into the dynamics and energetics of heel strike. We use a concept that decouples the dynamics of the biped to the spaces of admissible and constrained motions at the topology transition. This approach is then applied to a straight-legged biped with upper body. Detailed analysis and discussions are presented to quantify the effects of the mass distribution and the impact configuration on the energetics of walking.Copyright © 2008 by ASME
A Unified View of the Equations of Motion used for Control Design of Humanoid Robots The Role of the Base Frame in Free-Floating Mechanical Systems and its Connection to Centroidal Dynamics

This paper contributes towards the development of a unified standpoint on the equations of motion used for the control of free-floating mechanical systems. In particular, the contribution of the manuscript is twofold. First, we show how to write the system equations of motion for any choice of the base frame, without the need of re-applying algorithms for evaluating the mass, coriolis, and gravity matrix. A particular attention is paid to the properties associated with the mechanical systems, which are shown to be invariant with respect to the base frame choice. Secondly, we show that the so-called centroidal dynamics can be obtained from any expression of the equations of motion via an appropriate system state transformation. In this case, we show that the mass matrix associated with the new base frame is block diagonal, and the new base velocity corresponds to the so-called average 6D velocity.
An Empirical Evaluation of Resources for the Identification of Diseases and Adverse Effects in Biomedical Literature

The mentions of human health perturbations such as the diseases and adverse effects denote a special entity class in the biomedical literature. They help in understanding the underlying risk factors and develop a preventive rationale. The recognition of these named entities in texts through dictionary-based approaches relies on the availability of appropriate terminological resources. Although few resources are publicly available, not all are suitable for the text mining needs. Therefore, this work provides an overview of the well known resources with respect to human diseases and adverse effects such as the MeSH, MedDRA, ICD-10, SNOMED CT, and UMLS. Individual dictionaries are generated from these resources and their performance in recognizing the named entities is evaluated over a manually annotated corpus. In addition, the steps for curating the dictionaries, rule-based acronym disambiguation and their impact on the dictionary performance is discussed. The results show that the MedDRA and UMLS achieve the best recall. Besides this, MedDRA provides an additional benefit of achieving a higher precision. The combination of search results of all the dictionaries achieve a considerably high recall. The corpus is available on http://www.scai. fraunhofer.de/disease-ae-corpus.html
Statistical leakage analysis using the deterministic modeling of cell leakage current

This paper presents a new approach to estimate the n-sigma chip leakage current in the chip leakage probability density function of statistical leakage analysis (SLA) through gate-level deterministic leakage analysis (DLA). Although SLA provides accurate result than corner-based analysis, it is an impractical solution in recent technology comprising millions logic cells in a system since its computational complexity is O(N2). The proposed method uses DLA, and this makes it not only efficient but also suitable for use in the existing design environments. In addition, by providing the upper and lower bounds of SLA results, n-sigma chip leakage, the proposed method avoids the pessimism of existing DLA methods.
CORRELATION BETWEEN MACRO/MICRO STRUCTURE AND MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF DISSIMILAR RESISTANCE SPOT WELDS OF AISI 304 AUSTENITIC STAINLESS STEEL AND AISI 1008 LOW CARBON STEEL

Structure-properties relationships in dissimilar resistance spot welding of AISI 304 austenitic stainless steel (SS) and AISI 1008 low carbon steel (CS) are investigated. Differences in physical and mechanical properties of both steel sheets affect resistance spot weldability of this combination. Weld nugget shape is asymmetrical and the final fusion line shifts from sheet/sheet interface into the higher resistivity side (i.e. AISI 304). Fusion zone microstructure was ranged from Ferrite-Austenite-Martensite to full martensite depending on the melting/dilution ratio of base metals. Criteria for selection optimum welding condition for dissimilar combination are discussed. It was shown that generally there is a direct relation between mechanical performance (peak load and failure energy) and FZ size of low carbon steel side. The peak load of CS/CS and SS/LCS was nearly same due to the fact that the pullout failure mode of SS/CS welds is initiated from CS base metal. However, the failure energy of the later was greater than the former weld which is a function of higher ductility of SS that helps increasing plastic deformation during process of pullout failure.
Physical Interaction and Mutual Transrepression between CCAAT/Enhancer-binding Protein β and the p53 Tumor Suppressor*

The tumor suppressor protein p53 is not only involved in defending cells against genotoxic insults but is also implicated in differentiation processes, a function that it shares with the CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein β (C/EBPβ). We previously reported an up-regulation of both factors in the cycle-dependent differentiation process of human endometrial stromal cells, termed decidualization. C/EBPβ-mediated activation of a decidualization marker, the decidual prolactin promoter, was antagonized by p53. Here we report that C/EBPβ in turn represses the transcriptional activity of p53. Competition for limiting amounts of coactivator CREB-binding protein/p300 was ruled out as the underlying mechanism of transrepression. Physical interaction between p53 and C/EBPβ was demonstrated in vitro and in vivo and shown to depend on the C-terminal domains of both proteins. In gel shift experiments, C/EBPβ reduced complex formation between p53 and its response element. Conversely, p53 strongly inhibited binding of endogenous C/EBPβ from endometrial stromal cells to the C/EBP-responsive region in the decidual prolactin promoter. The observed negative cross-talk between p53 and C/EBPβ is likely to impact expression of their respective target genes.
Oligomeric alpha‐synuclein and its role in neuronal death

Alpha‐synuclein is a natively unfolded protein associated with a number of neurodegenerative disorders that include Parkinson's disease. In the past, research has focused on the fibrillar form of the protein. Current research now indicates that oligomeric alpha‐synuclein is the form of the protein most likely to causes neuronal death. Recent research has suggested that a unique oligomer associated with the copper binding capacity of the protein is the neurotoxic form of the protein. This review looks at the evidence for this possibility. © 2010 IUBMB IUBMB Life, 62(5): 334–339, 2010
Pseudo CT estimation from MRI using patch-based random forest

Recently, MR simulators gain popularity because of unnecessary radiation exposure of CT simulators being used in radiation therapy planning. We propose a method for pseudo CT estimation from MR images based on a patch-based random forest. Patient-specific anatomical features are extracted from the aligned training images and adopted as signatures for each voxel. The most robust and informative features are identified using feature selection to train the random forest. The well-trained random forest is used to predict the pseudo CT of a new patient. This prediction technique was tested with human brain images and the prediction accuracy was assessed using the original CT images. Peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and feature similarity (FSIM) indexes were used to quantify the differences between the pseudo and original CT images. The experimental results showed the proposed method could accurately generate pseudo CT images from MR images. In summary, we have developed a new pseudo CT prediction method based on patch-based random forest, demonstrated its clinical feasibility, and validated its prediction accuracy. This pseudo CT prediction technique could be a useful tool for MRI-based radiation treatment planning and attenuation correction in a PET/MRI scanner.
Bindung des monoklonalen Antikörpers BW 250/183 an menschliche Granulozyten

Zusammenfassung Für den szintigraphischen Nachweis entzündlicher Herde wird seit einiger Zeit die spezifische Bindung geeigneter monoklonaler Antikörper an menschliche Granulozyten ausgenutzt. Mit dem Antikörper BW 250/183 wurde versucht, die hierbei zugrundeliegende Bindungskinetik aufzuklären. Als wichtigste Voraussetzung für eine spezifische Zellbindung konnte gezeigt werden, daß der Markierungsvorgang die Immunreaktivität nicht beeinflußt. Bindungsstudien ergaben für den Antikörper eine Affinitätskonstante von 2 × 109l/mol. Üblicherweise werden pro Patient 0,25-1,0 mg des 99mTc-markierten Antikörpers eingesetzt. Nach intravenöser Applikation stellte sich bei den beschriebenen Untersuchungen rasch ein Gleichgewichtszustand im Blut ein, bei dem etwa 1/4 der Aktivität in zellgebundener Form vorlag. Der übrige Aktivitätsanteil fand sich in Form des markierten IgG im Plasma und konnte so direkt mit den Granulozyten, die bereits im Entzündungsherd kumuliert waren, reagieren. Auch eine drastische Reduktion der applizierten Antikörpermenge änderte an diesem Gleichgewichtszustand nichts, das Massenwirkungsgesetz scheint hier nicht unmittelbar anwendbar zu sein. Interferenzen mit Plasmabestandteilen können als Ursache für dieses Verhalten ausgeschlossen werden. Appliziert man statt der Antikörper Granulozyten, die in vitro mit dem Antikörper markiert wurden und bei denen der nicht gebundene Antikörperanteil durch Waschschritte entfernt wurde, so stellt sich bereits innerhalb der ersten 10 min ebenfalls dasselbe Bindungsgleichgewicht im Plasma ein. Interessanterweise verlängerte sich die intravasale Verweildauer der Aktivität hierbei deutlich.
Influenza Vaccine Antibody Response and 6-month Persistence in Lung Transplant Recipients Using Two Definitions of Seroprotection

Background Lung transplant recipients are among those with the highest risk of influenza infection and complications each year. A few studies show adequate responses after influenza immunization; no studies examined the season-long protection. Methods Influenza antibody concentrations were measured using hemagglutination inhibition assays before immunization, 2 to 4 weeks after immunization, and 6 months after immunization in 25 healthy controls and 54 lung transplant patients. Two definitions of seroprotection (40 hemagglutination units (HAU) and 160 HAU which confers about 95% protection) were used. Results Influenza vaccine responses were high in both groups postimmunization (100% at 40 HAU and 60% healthy and 61% lung transplant at 160 HAU; P = 1.0; chi-square). At 6 months after immunization, seroprotection rates at 40 HAU (95% healthy and 97% lung transplant; P = 1.0) and at 160 HAU (24% healthy and 36% lung transplant; P = 0.40) were observed. Conclusion Seroprotection rates do not differ between healthy and transplant groups over 6 months when 40 HAU or 160 HAU is used. However, the seroprotection rates are disappointingly low when 160 HAU (the antibody concentration associated with 95% protection from infection) is used. Annual influenza vaccine should continue to be a high priority for lung transplant patients.
Redundancy resolution of manipulators through torque optimization

Methods for resolving kinematic redundancies of manipulators by the effect on joint torque are examined. When the generalized inverse is formulated in terms of accelerations and incorporated into the dynamics, the effect of redundancy resolution on joint torque can be directly reflected. One method chooses the joint acceleration null-space vector to minimize joint torque in a least squares sense; when the least squares is weighted by allowable torque range, the joint torques tend to be kept within their limits. Contrasting methods employing only the pseudoinverse with and without weighting by the inertia matrix are presented. The results show an unexpected stability problem during long trajectories for the null-space methods and for the inertia-weighted pseudoinverse method, but rarely for the unweighted pseudoinverse method. Evidently a whiplash action develops over time that thrusts the endpoint off the intended path, and extremely high torques are required to overcome these natural movement dynamics.
Multidirectional power flow control among double winding six-phase induction machine winding sets

This paper presents an indirect rotor-field oriented control (IRFOC) algorithm for symmetrical six-phase double-winding induction machines with four three-phase sub-winding sets. The presented algorithm introduces the ability to control the power flow between different sub-winding sets. Multiple three-phase induction machines are utilised for critical applications such as more-electric aircrafts, due to their high reliability and fault tolerant capabilities. In this paper, the proposed control scheme is utilising the auxiliary currents of each six-phase sub-motor to achieve full control of the sub-winding sets current amplitudes and consequently the power flow direction for each sub-winding set. A six-phase induction machine with double winding is utilised to validate the proposed control scheme. Four isolated voltage source inverters (VSIs) are used to supply each winding set of the machine. The double-winding six-phase induction machine controlled by the proposed IRFOC algorithm is simulated using Matlab/Simulink. Presented simulation results validate the ability of the algorithm to appropriately control the power flow of each sub-winding set.
Current and Predicted Fertility using Poisson Regression Model: Evidence from 2008 Nigerian Demographic Health Survey

Nigeria with persistent high growth rate is among top ten most populous countries. Monitoring key mechanisms of population dynamics particularly fertility in Nigeria is long overdue. Periodical availability of data on fertility and other demographic indices is scarce, hence this study. Our objective was to build a non-linear model to identify fertility determinants and predict fertility using women’s background characteristics. We used 2008 Nigeria Demography and Health Survey dataset consisting of 33,385 women with 31.4% from urban area. Fertility was measured using children ever born (CEB) and fitted into multi-factors additive Poisson regression models. Respondents mean age was 28.64±9.59years, average CEB of 3.13±3.07 but higher among rural women than urban women (3.42±3.16 vs 2.53±2.79). Women aged 20-24years were about twice as likely to have higher CEB as those aged 15-19years (IRR=2.06, 95% CI: 1.95-2.18). Model with minimum deviance was selected and was used to predict CEB by the woman. (Afr J Reprod Health 2014; 18[1]: 71-83).