Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pelopuradazole, a new imidazole derivative alkaloid from the marine bacteria Pelomonas puraquae sp. nov.

One new imidazole derivative alkaloid pelopuradazole (1), together with three known alkaloids as in 3H-imidazole-4-carboxylic acid (2), 1H-pyrrole-2-carboxylic acid (3) and 2-methyl-3H-imidazole-4-carboxylic acid (4) and two known cyclo-dipeptides pelopurin A (5) and pelopurin B (6), has been isolated from the marine bacterium Pelomonas puraquae sp. nov. Pelopuradazole (1) was a new imidazole derivative alkaloid, while compounds 2, 3, 5 and 6 were firstly obtained as natural products. Compounds 1–6 were isolated from P. puraquae sp. nov. for the first time.
SOLID LIPID NANOPARTICLES: A REVIEW

Solid lipid nanoparticles (SLN) are at the forefront of the rapidly developing field of nanotechnology with several potential applications in drug delivery and research. Due to their unique size dependent properties, lipid nanoparticles offer possibility to develop new therapeutics. The ability to incorporate drugs into nanocarriers offers a new prototype in drug delivery that could use for drug targeting. Hence solid lipid nanoparticles hold great promise for reaching the goal of controlled and site specific drug delivery and hence attracted wide attention of researchers. This review presents a broad treatment of solid lipid nanoparticles discussing their aims, production procedures, advantages, limitations and their possible remedies. Appropriate analytical techniques for the characterization of SLN like photon correlation spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, differential scanning calorimetry are highlighted. Aspects of SLN route of administration and the in vivo fate of the carriers are also discussed.
ACCEPTING THE STANDARDIZED PRECIPITATION INDEX: A CALCULATION ALGORITHM 1

ABSTRACT: The Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) has been calculated for about 30 years as a means of providing a single measure of meteorological drought severity. It was intended to retrospectively look at wet and dry conditions using water balance techniques. The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) is a probability index that was developed to give a better representation of abnormal wetness and dryness than the Palmer indices. Before the user community will accept the SPI as an alternative to the Palmer indices, a standard method must be developed for computing the index. Standardization is necessary so that all users of the index will have a common basis for both spatial and temporal comparison of index values. If different probability distributions and models are used to describe an observed series of precipitation, then different SPI values may be obtained. This article describes the effect on the SPI values computed from different probability models as well as the effects on dry event characteristics. It is concluded that the Pearson Type III distribution is the “best” universal model, and that the reliability of the SPI is sample size dependent. It is also concluded that because of data limitations, SPIs with time scales longer than 24 months may be unreliable. An internet link is provided that will allow users to access Fortran 77 source code for calculating the SPI.
Contractile properties of aging skeletal muscle.

W.R. Frontera and L.S. Krivickas are with the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston, MA 02114. V.A. Hughes, R. Roubenoff, and Frontera are with the Nutrition, Exercise Physiology, and Sarcopenia Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, Boston, MA. Contractile Properties of Aging Skeletal Muscle
Spécificités de l'acquisition des consonnes en français et en drehu : influence de la langue ambiante

L'etude que nous presentons s'inscrit dans le cadre d'une collaboration interlinguistique sur le developpement phonologique. L'objectif est de comparer les productions de consonnes a l'initiale des mots dans plusieurs langues presentant des consonnes comparables mais distinctes par leurs frequences intrinseques ou dans les frequences auxquelles elles apparaissent en contexte vocalique similaire. En comparant plusieurs langues, l'influence sur la maitrise des consonnes des repartitions distributionnelles specifiques a la langue peut etre separee de celle des effets des contraintes phonetiques plus generales sur le developpement. Nous avons compare les productions de consonnes a l'initiale de mots en francais et en drehu aux frequences dans la langue ambiante, dans des tâches de repetitions de mots et de non-mots chez des enfants de deux a cinq ans francophones et locuteurs du drehu. Les resultats montrent que les frequences dans la langue ambiante sont correlees aux scores de production correcte des consonnes a l'initiale des mots, surtout chez les enfants les plus jeunes. Les groupes d'enfants monolingues francophones et bilingues francais-drehu ont des scores globaux similaires mais presentent des differences pour certaines consonnes de frequences differentes dans les deux langues.
Multiple‐choice procedure: an efficient approach for investigating drug reinforcement in humans

Two experiments demonstrated the efficiency of assessing drug reinforcement in humans by using a novel multiple-choice procedure. The distinguishing characteristic of the procedure is that it arranges intermittent reinforcement for choices between pairs of potential reinforcers. The procedure has three key operations: (1) a subject is exposed to the potential reinforcers; (2) a subject then makes two or more choices on a questionnaire; for each choice, the subject is required to choose one of two potential reinforcers (e.g. drug vs. drug choices and/or drug vs. money choices); and (3) subsequently only one of the choices, randomly selected, is reinforced. In the present experiments, two variations of the multiple-choice procedure were evaluated in twelve male drug abusers. Both experiments assessed the reinforcing effects of three drug conditions (200 and 400 mg/70 kg pentobarbital and placebo) which were presented no more often than every other day. The experiments demonstrated dose-related choice of pentobarbital over money as well as choice of a higher dose of pentobarbital over a lower dose or placebo. Orderly data were generated with a single-session exposure to each drug condition. Multiple-choice procedures should have applicability, not only to the investigation of drug reinforcement, but also to the study of non-drug reinforcement in humans.
Designs for generalized linear models with random block effects via information matrix approximations

The selection of optimal designs for generalized linear mixed models is complicated by the fact that the Fisher information matrix, on which most optimality criteria depend, is computationally expensive to evaluate. We provide two novel approximations that reduce the computational cost of evaluating the information matrix by complete enumeration of response outcomes, or Monte Carlo approximations thereof: an asymptotic approximation that is accurate when there is strong dependence between observations in the same block; and an approximation via kriging interpolators. For logistic random intercept models, we show how interpolation can be especially effective for finding pseudo-Bayesian designs that incorporate uncertainty in the values of the model parameters. The new results are used to evaluate the efficiency, for estimating conditional models, of optimal designs from closed-form approximations to the information matrix derived from marginal models. Correcting for the marginal attenuation of parameters in binary-response models yields much improved designs, typically with very high efficiencies. However, in some experiments exhibiting strong dependence, designs for marginal models may still be inefficient for conditional modelling. Our asymptotic results provide some theoretical insights into why such inefficiencies occur.
Taking VANET to the clouds

The past decade has witnessed a growing interest in vehicular networking and its myriad potential applications. The initial view of practitioners and researchers was that radio-equipped vehicles could keep the drivers informed about potential safety risks and increase their awareness of road conditions. The view then expanded to include access to the Internet and associated services. More recently, the availability of bandwidth has seen vehicular peer-to-peer networking and multimedia content delivery. This paper puts forth a novel vision, namely that advances in vehicular networks, embedded devices, and cloud computing can be used to form what we may call Vehicular Cloud Computing, VC2 for short. In VC2, the underutilized vehicles resources such as computing power, Internet connectivity and storage can be shared between drivers or rented over the Internet to various customers, very much like usual cloud resources are.
Sift keypoint removal via convex relaxation

Due to the high robustness against various image transformations, Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) has been widely employed in many computer vision and multimedia security areas to extract image local features. Though SIFT has been extensively studied from various perspectives, its security against malicious attack has rarely been addressed. In this work, we demonstrate that the SIFT keypoints can be effectively removed, without introducing serious distortion on the image. This is achieved by formulating the SIFT keypoint removal as a constrained optimization problem, where the constraints are well-designed to suppress the existence of local extremum and prevent generating new keypoints within a local cuboid in the scale space. We show that such optimization problem in the ideal case is non-convex. To make the computation feasible, we propose a relaxation technique to convexify the original problem, while maximally preserving the solution space. As demonstrated experimentally, our proposed SIFT removal algorithm significantly outperforms the state-of-the-arts in terms of keypoint removal rate-distortion (KRR-D) performance. Our results imply that an authorization mechanism is required for SIFT-based systems to verify the validity of the input data, so as to achieve high reliability.
Prophylactic Insulin Treatment of Diabetes-prone BB/OK Rats by Application of a Sustained Release Insulin Implant

Normoglycemic diabetes-prone BB/OK rats aged 33, 45 or 75 days were subjected to prophylactic insulin treatment by means of a single subcutaneous application of a sustained release insulin implant. The single application of a sustained release insulin implant decreased the incidence of diabetes or delayed the onset of the disease in BB/OK rats of all treatment groups. Prophylactic insulin administration caused a transient hypoglycemic period accompanied by an inhibition of glucose stimulated insulin secretion and a decrease of the insulin content of Langerhans' islets as detectable in vitro . Compared to islets of normoglycemic controls pancreatic islets isolated from hypoglycemic BB/OK rats within 7-21 days after the insulin application at 45 days of age displayed a decreased susceptibility of the cells to complement-dependent cytotoxicity of the monoclonal islet cell surface antibody (ICSA) K14D10 but not to the cytotoxic effect of the ICSA M3aG8. The appearance of complement-dependent antibody-mediated cytotoxicity to islet cells and pancreatic exocrine cells in serum regarded as a sign of immune dysregulation in BB/OK rats seems not to be affected by insulin prophylaxis and was detectable during hypoglycemia as well as in the subsequent normoglycemic state. In conclusion, BB/OK rats of different age can be protected from diabetes by a single application of a sustained release insulin implant. Insulin and/or hypoglycemia seem to influence the expression of cell surface antigens, thus render the islets of Langerhans less vulnerable to immune cytolysis, whereas the appearance of humoral immunological abnormalites is not affected.
Complementary, integrative, and holistic medicine: integrative approaches to pediatric ulcerative colitis.

1. Alycia Leiby, MD* 2. Minal Vazirani, MD† 1. *Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition, Goryeb Children's Hospital/Atlantic Health System, Morristown, NJ, and Department of Pediatrics, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY. 2. †Integrative Medicine, Barnabas Health Ambulatory Care Center, Siegler Center for Integrative Medicine, Livingston, NJ. * Abbreviations: IBD: : inflammatory bowel disease UC: : ulcerative colitis 5-ASA: : 5-aminosalicylate CAM: : complementary and alternative medicine QoL: : quality of life ECN: : E Coli Nissle Twenty-five percent of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) occurs in childhood, with 2 of 100,000 children age 1 to 17 years diagnosed as having ulcerative colitis (UC) in North America. (1) In a genetically predisposed individual, environmental factors lead to a dysregulated adaptive immune response to luminal commensal bacterial antigens, resulting in IBD. Although diet, infections, medications, and lack of breastfeeding have been implicated, further research is needed to elucidate the complex environmental and genetic interaction producing IBD. (2)(3)(4) Pediatric UC is often more extensive at initial presentation, with a 20% colectomy rate at 1 year in severe disease. (5) The risk of colorectal cancer, a potential long-term complication, is increased in those with a longer duration and earlier age of disease onset and greater extent of inflammation. (6) Conventional treatment of UC includes the use of corticosteroids to induce remission in moderate to severe disease and topical 5-aminosalicylate (5-ASA) as maintenance therapy. Recent prospective data confirmed the steroid-sparing effects of maintenance therapy with the immune-modulating thiopurine drugs 6-mercaptopurine and azathioprine in moderate to severe disease unresponsive to 5-ASA agents. (7) In children in whom conventional therapy fails, infliximab, a monoclonal antibody directed against tumor necrosis factor α, has been effective. (8) Despite evidence of benefit, the risk of infection and malignancy affect acceptance of administering these immune-modifying agents. The incidence of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use in pediatric IBD patients ranges from 40% to 70%. (9)(10)(11)(12) The common reason for using CAM is concern about adverse effects and the lack of efficacy of conventional therapies. Use of CAM was increased, particularly in patients with worse quality of life (QoL). (11)(13) This …
Reproducibility and clinical significance of exercise-induced increases in cardiac troponins and N-terminal pro brain natriuretic peptide in endurance athletes

Background Cardiac troponins I and T and brain natriuretic peptide are the accepted standards to serologically identify myocardial necrosis and elevated wall stress. In addition, they allow risk stratification in cardiovascular patients. The clinical significance of increases in cardiac markers after strenuous endurance exercise in obviously healthy athletes is unclear. Design We therefore examined the reproducibility and clinical significance of exercise-induced increases in cardiac troponins I and T and N-terminal pro brain natriuretic peptide after two standardized endurance exercise trials in healthy endurance athletes with prior competition-induced elevations of cardiac troponins (I, 0.08–1.93 μg/l; T, 0.01–0.56 μg/l). Methods Twenty male athletes (36 ± 7 years; V O2max : 60 ± 5 ml/min per kg) completed a 1-h and a 3-h exercise study (exercise intensities 100 and 75%, respectively, of the individual anaerobic threshold) on two different days in randomized order to determine cardiac markers before, 30 min and 3h after exercise. In addition to pre- and post-exercise echocardiography including tissue Doppler imaging, delayed enhancement magnetic-resonance-imaging was performed after a 3-h exercise study to detect myocardial necrosis. Results A marginal increase in cardiac troponin I was documented after both exercise trials (from 0.02 to 0.03 μg/l; P>0.001). Cardiac troponin T remained without significant changes. N-terminal pro brain natriuretic peptide increased by 9 and 30 ng/l after 1-h and 3-h exercise studies, respectively (P>0.001). In contrast to cardiac troponins, increases in N-terminal pro brain natriuretic peptide after competition correlated with those after 1-h exercise study (ρ = 0.88) and 3-h exercise-study (ρ = 0.82). No pathologies were demonstrated by echocardiography or delayed-enhancement magnetic resonance imaging. Conclusions Due to the missing reproducibilty and evidence of myocardial damage, exercise-induced increases in cardiac troponins may represent a physiologic reaction under special conditions and seem to be without pathological significance in healthy athletes. Eur J Cardiovasc Prev Rehabil 13:388–397 © 2006 The European Society of Cardiology
Reflective properties of natural snow: approximate asymptotic theory versus in situ measurements

Results of measurements of the bidirectional reflection function of snow for the solar zenith angle close to 54/spl deg/ are compared with a recently developed snow optical model based on the representation of snow grains as fractal particles. The model has a high accuracy out of the principal plane for the observation zenith angles smaller than 60/spl deg/. However, the accuracy is reduced in the principal plane. Specular light reflection by partially oriented snow plates on the snow surface not accounted for by the model can play a role for measurements in the principal plane. The model discussed can be used for the grain size retrieval using both ground and spaceborne measurements of the snow reflectance. This is supported by a high accuracy of the model in a broad spectral range 545-2120 nm as demonstrated in this work.
Persistence of clonal T‐cell expansions following high‐dose chemotherapy and autologous peripheral blood progenitor cell rescue

Analysing the regeneration of T lymphocytes after high‐dose chemotherapy with autologous peripheral blood progenitor cell rescue (PBPCR) may help elucidate the mechanisms of immune recovery. The T‐cell receptor variable beta chain (TCRBV) repertoire of adult patients undergoing high‐dose chemotherapy was analysed by flow cytometry, before and after treatment. Four patients were found to have a stable expansion present (TCRBV3, 17, 21 and 22) ranging from 8% to 42% of the CD4+ or CD8+ repertoire. We demonstrated that, in these patients, following high‐dose chemotherapy and autologous stem cell transplantation, the clonal expansions reappeared in peripheral blood and returned to pretransplant levels. Three expansions (CD3+CD8+TCRBV3+, CD3+CD4+TCRBV21+ and CD3+CD8+TCRBV22+) were further defined by sequence analysis of the complementarity‐determining region (CDR)3 portion within the TCR rearrangements. These were shown to be predominantly clonal, with the same sequences being identified in peripheral blood before and after PBPCR, providing evidence that the overwhelming majority of T cells in these expansions arise from mature lymphocytes. This study demonstrated that patients undergoing autologous PBPCR for high‐dose chemotherapy regenerate clonal expansions, consistent with pretreatment levels. They also regenerate T‐cell repertoires with each TCRBV family represented to a similar level as that prior to high‐dose chemotherapy.
Endosomal disruptors in non-viral gene delivery

Importance of the field: Non-viral gene delivery for the treatment of genetic and non-genetic diseases has been under investigation for several decades, but there has been very little application in patients because of poor gene expression and toxicity. Areas covered in this review: As gene delivery almost invariably involves endocytosis, many of its limitations are related to compartmentalisation of the transgene within the endosomes. Gene expression enhancers have become an essential part of manipulating endosomal release, as well as protecting transgene from intracellular degradation. However, disruption of the endosomes can also release proteases that have been shown to activate apoptotic pathways. What the reader will gain: An understanding of the role that endosomal release plays in the toxicity of gene delivery vehicles will help identify new approaches to minimise adverse effects while enhancing non-viral gene expression. Take home message: The future of non-viral gene therapy needs to identify new approaches that limit endosome-induced toxicity while enhancing expression so that a pharmacological response can be reliably observed in vivo.
Air Pollution and Human Health: Perspectives for the ‘90s and Beyond

This paper considers the health effects of air pollution from three perspectives: historical, statistical, and public policy, and also as depicted by the recent epidemiology, primarily mortality studies. The historical perspectives establish the reality of population‐based health effects, and they provide data with which to evaluate more recent evidence. Statistical perspectives imply that, while there is strong evidence that associations between air quality and health persist, many details of these relationships remain obscure, especially as to the existence of concentration thresholds that might define safe exposure levels. Additional major questions include the effects of uncertainties in actual pollution exposures, the degree of prematurity of “excess” deaths, and whether the development of new cases of chronic disease is associated with air pollution. Public policy issues center around interpreting the new epidemiological studies in the light of these uncertainties and the analysis and management of the concomitant health risks.
Les mécanismes de diffusion de l'évaluation auprès des bénéficiaires de programmes fédéraux : étude de cas organisationnelle d'un ministère du gouvernement fédéral canadien

Les etudes dans le domaine de l'evaluation portent en grande partie sur l'utilisation des rapports et autres produits issus des evaluations par les gestionnaires des programmes plutot que par l'ensemble de la societe. L'etude presentee dans ce memoire se penche sur cette problematique dans le contexte federal canadien, et plus particulierement, sur la Politique sur l'evaluation (2009), qui exige la publication des rapports d'evaluation sur les sites Web des ministeres et agences afin d'en accroitre la visibilite et l'utilisation. L'etude vise ainsi a decouvrir dans quelle mesure les informations recueillies au sein des rapports d'evaluation rejoignent les beneficiaires des programmes, ainsi que les mesures prises pour leur rendre cette information accessible. Pour ce faire, une analyse du contenu des cinq rapports d'evaluation publies par un ministere du gouvernement federal entre 2012 et 2014 a ete effectuee. De plus, des entretiens semi-diriges ont ete menes aupres de trois gestionnaires d'evaluation et cinq representants des organismes beneficiaires des programmes evalues. Un cadre conceptuel hybride combinant des elements de ceux de Cousins et Leithwood (1986) et Landry, Amara et Lamari (2001) a permis d'operationnaliser les elements qualitatifs recherches. Les resultats de l'etude laissent paraitre que la publication en ligne des rapports d'evaluation ne constitue pas un mecanisme de diffusion efficace aupres des beneficiaires de programmes federaux. Pour renforcer cet outil important de reddition de comptes, la participation accrue des parties prenantes externes dans le processus d'evaluation permettrait de renforcer leurs connaissances de l'evaluation, et menerait, a terme, a une plus grande utilisation de l'evaluation et de ses produits.