Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prolonged Estradiol Infusion Causes a Marked and Sustained Increase in Pulmonary Blood Flow in Fetal Lambs • 1717

Estradiol (E2), a steroid hormone which causes vasodilation of many adult tissues, is present in high levels in the fetus and surges just prior to delivery. However, whether E2 contributes to the marked increase in pulmonary blood flow (PBF) which characterizes the normal transitional circulation at birth is not known. Because the surge in E2 immediately preceeds the fall in pulmonary vascular resistance (PVR), we hypothesized that E2 modulates the increase in PBF at birth. To study whether E2 causes pulmonary vasodilation in fetal lambs, we treated chronically prepared lambs with intrapulmonary infusions of E2 or vehicle (V) and measured their hemodynamic responses. Fetal surgery was performed at 128 d (term=147 d) and catheters were placed in the aorta, main pulmonary artery, and left atrium for pressure measurements and the left pulmonary artery (LPA) for local infusions of E2. An ultrasonic flow transducer was placed around the left pulmonary artery to measure blood flow. Aortic and pulmonary artery pressure (PAP), left atrial pressure (LAP), and left pulmonary blood flow (Qp) were measured daily. PVR in the left lung was calculated by (PAP-LAP)/Qp. After recovery from surgery, E2 (250 ng/hr; n=9) or vehicle (0.025% ethanol; n=4) was infused continuously into the LPA for 8 days or until PBF increased. E2 treatment increased left lung blood flow(195±44 vs. 55±12 ml/min, E2 vs. V, p<0.05) and decreased left lung PVR (0.31±0.07 vs. 0.93±0.20 mmHg/ml/min, E2 vs. V, p<0.05). The response of individual animals varied markedly and treated females responded earlier than did males (change in left lung PVR at 48 hours,-44±16 vs. 15±10%, female vs. male, p<0.05). In a second set of extremely premature animals (n=4), fetal surgery was performed at 114 d and E2 infusions started 3 d after surgery. 2 of these 4 animals responded, with PBF increasing from 53 and 73 to 186 and 173 ml/min, respectively. We conclude that continuous infusion of E2 causes marked and sustained pulmonary vasodilation in near-term fetal lambs, and that this effect can also be demonstrated in very premature fetal lambs. Because E2 causes acute nitric oxide (NO) release and endothelial nitric oxide synthase upregulation in isolated pulmonary artery endothelial cells from fetal lambs, we speculate that E2 mediates its vasoactive effects through endogenous NO release.
A 32.8 dB gain, 3.5 dB NF, 7 mW, 20.35 GHz LNA with embedded 30 GHz band-stop filter

This paper presents a 20.35 GHz low power, high gain, low-noise amplifier (LNA) with a 30 GHz band-stop filter embedded in the matching network. Designed in a 0.25 μm SiGe:C BiCMOS technology, it meets the specifications imposed by a full-duplex K/Ka-band shared aperture active phased-array antennas for satellite communications. The LNA exhibits a measured gain of 32.8 dB at 20.35 GHz and a 3 dB bandwidth of 2.25 GHz. The measured IIP3, IP1dB, and OP1dB are −21.2, −34.3 and −2.5 dBm, respectively. Including the losses due to the band-stop filter and the bondwire interconnects between chip and board, it achieves 3.5 dB NF at the center frequency. Among published K-band counterparts in Silicon technologies, the LNA has the highest gain and the best figure of merit, considering noise, gain, and linearity. It consumes only 7 mW, with a chip area of 407 × 287 μm2.
Alternative models of disorders of traumatic stress based on the new ICD‐11 proposals

Although there is emerging evidence for the factorial validity of the distinction between post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complex PTSD (CPTSD) proposed in ICD‐11, such evidence has been predominantly based on using selected items from individual scales that describe these factors. We have attempted to address this gap in the literature by testing a range of alternative models of disorders of traumatic stress using a broader range of symptoms and standardized measures.
Gender effects on blood pressures obtained during an on‐campus screening.

&NA; In a blood pressure screening of 167 male and female college students, we varied the gender of the screener to evaluate gender effects on blood pressure. Four repeated determinations of resting systolic and diastolic blood pressure were obtained with an automated oscillometric device in a quiet semi‐darkened room. Analysis of systolic blood pressure indicated a significant interaction between screener gender, subject gender, and repeated determinations. Screener/subject gender concordance produced relatively stable systolic blood pressures across four repeated determinations. Gender discordance resulted in larger changes in systolic pressures across the four determinations. This pattern was not obtained with diastolic pressures. Measures of recent stress and somatic anxiety interacted with gender effects on blood pressure. These gender effects on systolic blood pressure may explain, in part, higher reported incidence of “white coat hypertension” in females.
Mechanisms of Klebsiella pneumoniae resistance to complement-mediated killing

The different mechanisms of Klebsiella pneumoniae resistance to complement-mediated killing were investigated by using different strains and isogenic mutants previously characterized for their surface components. We found that strains from serotypes whose K antigen masks the lipopolysaccharide (LPS) molecules (such as serotypes K1, K10, and K16) fail to activate complement, while strains with smooth LPS exposed at the cell surface (with or without K antigen) activate complement but are resistant to complement-mediated killing. The reasons for this resistance are that C3b binds far from the cell membrane and that the lytic final complex C5b-9 (membrane attack complex) is not formed. Isogenic rough mutants (K+ or K-) are serum sensitive because they bind C3b close to the cell membrane and the lytic complex (C5b-9) is formed.
Adaptation in motor imagery brain-computer interfaces and its implication in rehabilitation

In BCI based stroke rehabilitation systems, motor imagery is detected and fed back to patients via various modalities, being visual, robotic, haptic, and so on. Higher rate of detecting motor imagery is desired for potentially better rehabilitation outcome, as it affects training intensity, patients' engagement and contingent feedback effect. It is a long-standing challenge in BCI research as how to develop a robust BCI system, which can produce highly accurate detection results across multiple sessions despite large variations and interferences in real-world environments. Although some of the factors causing performance to vary can be minimized or mitigated, by for example using wireless portable brain signal recoding equipment, restraining body movements etc, many other factors, especially endogenous ones, are unavoidable. Therefore, methods which are able to keep tracking variations in brain signal and adapting models for motor imagery detection are highly useful. In this talk, we will discuss various adaption schemes and their implications in stroke rehabilitation using EEG based braincomputer interface.
Acute methylprednisolone administration induces a transient alteration of glucose tolerance and pyruvate dehydrogenase in humans

Glucocorticoid administration induces alteration of glucose tolerance, and impairment of glucose oxidation may contribute to glucocorticoid‐induced derangement of glucose metabolism. We investigated glucose tolerance following methylprednisolone administration in humans. In the same model, we evaluated pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH), the rate limiting enzyme of glucose oxidation, in peripheral blood mononuclear cells.
A Lightweight Integrity Authentication Scheme based on Reversible Watermark for Wireless Body Area Networks

Integrity authentication of biometric data in Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) is a critical issue because the sensitive data transmitted over broadcast wireless channels could be attacked easily. However, traditional cryptograph-based integrity authentication schemes are not suitable for WBAN as they consume much computational resource on the sensor nodes with limited memory, computational capability and power. To address this problem, a novel lightweight integrity authentication scheme based on reversible watermark is proposed for WBAN and implemented on a TinyOS-based WBAN test bed in this paper. In the proposed scheme, the data is divided into groups with a fixed size to improve grouping efficiency; the histogram shifting technique is adopted to avoid possible underflow or overflow; local maps are generated to restore the shifted data; and the watermarks are generated and embedded in a chaining way for integrity authentication. Our analytic and experimental results demonstrate that the integrity of biometric data can be reliably authenticated with low cost, and the data can be entirely recovered for healthcare applications by using our proposed scheme.
Brain tissue loss occurs after suppression of enhancement in patients with multiple sclerosis treated with autologous haematopoietic stem cell transplantation

To assess whether brain tissue loss occurs after profound and sustained suppression of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) enhancement, we measured brain volume changes from 10 patients with rapidly evolving secondary progressive multiple sclerosis (MS) treated with autologous haematopoietic stem cell transplantation and followed up for 24 months. An average yearly decrease of brain volume of about 1.9% was observed despite only five enhancing lesions seen on triple dose follow up scans of two patients. This indicates that, in MS, progressive loss of tissue can occur independently of concomitant MRI-visible inflammation.
Current therapy of acute microcrystalline arthritis and the role of corticosteroids.

The management of acute gout, and other acute microcrystalline arthritides, can be difficult in aged patients, and in those with multiple medical illnesses contraindicating therapy with either nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or colchicine. Intra-articular corticosteroid therapy is particularly useful for the treatment of acute mono-or oligo-articular micro-crystalline synovitis in these patients. Oral corticosteroids (e.g., prednisone), and both parenteral corticotrophin (adrenocorticotrophic hormone) (ACTH) and corticosteroids (e.g., triamcinolone acetonide, methylprednisolone acetate), are useful alternate treatment modalities in those patients with acute polyarticular attacks. Although ACTH has demonstrated comparable clinical efficacy to corticosteroids in the treatment of acute micro-crystalline events, corticosteroids are preferred by many physicians for many reasons: administration can be oral, dose can be regulated precisely, effectiveness does not depend on adrenocortical responsiveness, and incidence of certain side effects, such as hypertension and fluid overload, is lower.
Novel 2D Fingerprints for Ligand-Based Virtual Screening

This paper describes the development of a set of new 2D fingerprints for the purposes of virtual screening in a pharmaceutical environment. The new fingerprints are based on established ones: the changes in their design included the introduction of overlapping pharmacophore feature types, feature counts for pharmacophore and structural fingerprints, as well as changes in the resolution in property description for property fingerprints. The effects of each of these changes on virtual screening performance were monitored using two types of training sets, emulating different stages in the drug discovery process. The results demonstrate that these changes all lead to an improvement in virtual screening performance.
SILK FIBROIN AND POTENTIAL USES IN REGENERATIVE DENTISTRY - A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Professor Maria Greabu, PhD, Head of Department Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Dental Medicine, „Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Bucharest, Romania 8 Blvd. Eroii Sanitari, Sector 5, RO-050474 Bucharest, Romania Tel: +40721274932, Fax: +4021 3110984. e-mail: mariagreabu@yahoo.com Silk fibroin is an organic polymer isolated from cocoon silk fibers. Recently it has been studied as a substrate for tissue engineered cartilage, bone , ligaments, nerves, cornea and also for drug delivery applications. The current review focuses on recent advance in silk fibroin and its potential uses in regeneration therapies, mainly in the dental field. Data extraction was carried out according to the standard Cochrane systematic review methodology and the following databases were used: PubMed, Google Scholar, Medline and the Google library. Out of the 151 related articles that were critically assessed, only 57 articles were included in the critical appraisal. There is evidence that silk fibroin is a biocompatible polymer and has been proved to be cytocompatible with a wide variety of cells. Composite silk fibroin with hydoxyapaptite, bioglass, gold or silica can be used in a variety of applications. Regenerative dentistry may profit from the silk fibroin due to possible future uses in implant therapy, mineralized tissue formation or healing of the wounds of the buccal mucosa.
Screening in crystalline liquids protects energetic carriers in hybrid perovskites

Hybrid lead halide perovskites exhibit carrier properties that resemble those of pristine nonpolar semiconductors despite static and dynamic disorder, but how carriers are protected from efficient scattering with charged defects and optical phonons is unknown. Here, we reveal the carrier protection mechanism by comparing three single-crystal lead bromide perovskites: CH3NH3PbBr3, CH(NH2)2PbBr3, and CsPbBr3. We observed hot fluorescence emission from energetic carriers with ~102-picosecond lifetimes in CH3NH3PbBr3 or CH(NH2)2PbBr3, but not in CsPbBr3. The hot fluorescence is correlated with liquid-like molecular reorientational motions, suggesting that dynamic screening protects energetic carriers via solvation or large polaron formation on time scales competitive with that of ultrafast cooling. Similar protections likely exist for band-edge carriers. The long-lived energetic carriers may enable hot-carrier solar cells with efficiencies exceeding the Shockley-Queisser limit.
The edible mushroom Laetiporus sulphureus as potential source of natural antioxidants

Hot water extract (LN), partially purified polysaccharides (LP) and hot alkali extracted polysaccharides (LNa) obtained from fruiting bodies of the wild basidiomycete Laetiporus sulphureus were examined for their antioxidant activities. LNa was the most active antioxidant, as shown by the median effective concentrations (EC50 values) of 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) scavenging activity (0.5 ± 0.2 mg/ml), reducing power (4.0 ± 0.3 mg/ml) and ferrous ion-chelating ability (1.5 ± 0.1 mg/ml). LNa contained the highest level of α-glucan (17.3 ± 1.2 g/100 g dw), whereas LP contained mostly β-glucans (66.8 ± 1.3 g/100 g dw). The prevalent monosaccharide in all extracts was glucose. The EC50 values of all three antioxidant activity assays were well-correlated with the α-glucan content. Strong and significant correlation was found between total phenolic compounds and DPPH scavenging ability and also reducing power. The three investigated extracts (at concentrations of 0.1–10 mg/ml) were not toxic to HTR-8/SVneo trophoblast cell line.
Comparative Proteomics and Functional Analysis Reveal a Role of Plasmodium falciparum Osmiophilic Bodies in Malaria Parasite Transmission*

An essential step in the transmission of the malaria parasite to the Anopheles vector is the transformation of the mature gametocytes into gametes in the mosquito gut, where they egress from the erythrocytes and mate to produce a zygote, which matures into a motile ookinete. Osmiophilic bodies are electron dense secretory organelles of the female gametocytes which discharge their contents during gamete formation, suggestive of a role in gamete egress. Only one protein with no functional annotation, Pfg377, is described to specifically reside in osmiophilic bodies in Plasmodium falciparum. Importantly, Pfg377 defective gametocytes lack osmiophilic bodies and fail to infect mosquitoes, as confirmed here with newly produced pfg377 disrupted parasites. The unique feature of Pfg377 defective gametocytes of lacking osmiophilic bodies was here exploited to perform comparative, label free, global and affinity proteomics analyses of mutant and wild type gametocytes to identify components of these organelles. Subcellular localization studies with fluorescent reporter gene fusions and specific antibodies revealed an osmiophilic body localization for four out of five candidate gene products analyzed: the proteases PfSUB2 (subtilisin 2) and PfDPAP2 (Dipeptidyl aminopeptidase 2), the ortholog of the osmiophilic body component of the rodent malaria gametocytes PbGEST and a previously nonannotated 13 kDa protein. These results establish that osmiophilic bodies and their components are dispensable or marginally contribute (PfDPAP2) to gamete egress. Instead, this work reveals a previously unsuspected role of these organelles in P. falciparum development in the mosquito vector.
Stimulation or inhibition of the respiratory burst in cultured macrophages in a mycobacterium model: initial stimulation is followed by inhibition after phagocytosis

Microorganisms cause varying degrees of stimulation of superoxide (O2-) production (respiratory burst [RB]) in macrophages but in some cases apparently inhibit the RB induced in the same monolayers by a conventional stimulator. We have explored these differences. A mycobacterium model, the slowly multiplying mouse pathogen Mycobacterium microti, induced a modest RB in resident macrophage monolayers, compared with the substantial RB induced by opsonized zymosan (Zy). However, if the 1-h M. microti pulse immediately preceded the Zy assay (instead of being concurrent), the RB was consistently less than that elicited by the Zy alone. Cytochalasin (an inhibitor of phagocytosis) enhanced Zy-induced RB, supporting the view that the burst is cell surface mediated, but this agent apparently eliminated the inhibition of the Zy-induced RB caused by prior M. microti exposure, suggesting that this inhibition may have an intracellular origin. The inhibition described extended not only to another mycobacterium (Mycobacterium bovis BCG) but also to a previous application of Zy itself. The general implications for macrophage functions of these observations on timing and sites of initiation are briefly discussed.
Partial Polarization of Direct LED Backlight Module

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have been widely used in liquid crystal display (LCD) backlight modules. In general, the light emitted by the LED backlight modules is not un-polarized light. However, our experiment results and analysis show that the light is partial polarization. The characteristics of partial polarization obtained in the experiment and analysis are utilized to increase the brightness of LCD backlight module, and then the results of this study demonstrate that the brightness can be increased by 46%. Thus, this study provides a method to increase the brightness of LCD backlight modules.
Modeling of Indoor Power Line for Home Application Using Broadband

— The objective of this paper is to study the feasibility of Broadband technologies for home application in an effective manner and to develop a simplified transfer characteristic model for the low voltage indoor power line for Broadband power line communication based on the transmission line theory using software simulation for generalization purpose as it is already known that there is no such thing as a standard “power line network”. A bottom-up approach based on the frequency-domain modeling and using scattering matrix is implemented for channel modeling in this paper.
Abstract Correction of OBJ-like Programs

Correction of OBJ-like Programs ? M. Alpuente, D. Ballis, S. Escobar, M. Falaschi, and S. Lucas 1 DSIC, Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, Camino de Vera s/n, Apdo. 22012, 46071 Valencia, Spain. {alpuente,sescobar,slucas}@dsic.upv. es. 2 Dip. Matematica e Informatica, Via delle Scienze 206, 33100 Udine, Italy. {demis,falaschi}@dimi.uniud. it. Abstract. Debussy is an (abstract) declarative diagnosis tool for functional programs which are written in OBJ style. The debugger does not require the user to either provide error symptoms in advance or answer Debussy is an (abstract) declarative diagnosis tool for functional programs which are written in OBJ style. The debugger does not require the user to either provide error symptoms in advance or answer any question concerning program correctness. In this paper, we formalize an inductive learning methodology for repairing program bugs in OBJlike programs. Correct program rules are automatically synthesized from examples which might be generated as an outcome by the Debussy di-
A Fast-Gated CMOS Image Sensor With a Vertical Overflow Drain Shutter Mechanism

This paper presents a fast-gated CMOS image sensor (CIS) with a vertical overflow drain (VOD) shutter mechanism. The prototype imager includes two novel features: 1) the adaptation of the VOD shutter structure into a 0.18-μm CIS process and 2) the application of the VOD shutter for the purposes of time-resolved imaging with down to 5-ns pulsewidth. A 360-pixel × 180-pixel array with several 5.4-μm × 5.4-μm pixel types was implemented and tested, demonstrating 2-ns shutter rise/fall times and the 1:20 shutter contrast ratio for 850-nm pulsed illumination. These parameters, together with the uniformity of the shutter and the large full-well capacity of the pixel, are on par with the state-of-the-art of indirect time-of-flight and time-resolved imagers. The device structure and the special mode of operation that enables a fast gating are studied through the TCAD simulations and experimental results. Important design features that affect the pixel performance are illustrated in detail.
Optical Character Recognition System for Urdu Words in Nastaliq Font

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) has been an attractive research area for the last three decades and mature OCR systems reporting near to 100% recognition rates are available for many scripts/languages today. Despite these develop-ments, research on recognition of text in many languages is still in its early days, Urdu being one of them. The limited existing literature on Urdu OCR is either limited to isolated characters or considers limited vocabularies in fixed font sizes. This research presents a segmentation free and size invariant technique for recognition of Urdu words in Nastaliq font using ligatures as units of recognition. Ligatures, separated into primary ligatures and diacritics, are recognized using right-to-left HMMs. Diacritics are then associated with the main body using position information and the resulting ligatures are validated using a dictionary. The system evaluated on Urdu words realized promising recognition rates at ligature and word levels.