Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pathogenesis of severe asthma

Patients with severe asthma have asthma symptoms which are difficult to control, require high dosages of medication, and continue to experience persistent symptoms, asthma exacerbations or airflow obstruction. Epidemiological and clinical evidences point to the fact that severe asthma is not a single phenotype. Cluster analyses have identified subclasses of severe asthma using parameters such as patient characteristics, and cytokine profiles have also been useful in classifying moderate and severe asthma. The IL‐4/IL‐13 signalling pathway accounts for the symptoms experienced by a subset of severe asthmatics with allergen‐associated symptoms and high serum immunoglobulin E (IgE) levels, and these patients are generally responsive to anti‐IgE treatment. The IL‐5/IL‐33 signalling pathway is likely to play a key role in the disease pathogenesis of those who are resistant to high doses of inhaled corticosteroid but responsive to systemic corticosteroids and anti‐IL5 therapy. The IL‐17 signalling pathway is thought to contribute to ‘neutrophilic asthma’. Although traditionally viewed as players in the defence mechanism against viral and intracellular bacterial infection, mounting evidence supports a role for Th1 cytokines such as IL‐18 and IFN‐γ in severe asthma pathogenesis. Furthermore, these cytokine signalling pathways interact to contribute to the spectrum of clinical pathological outcomes in severe asthma. To date, glucocorticoids are the most effective anti‐asthma drugs available, yet severe asthma patients are typically resistant to the effects of glucocorticoids. Glucocorticoid receptor dysfunction and histone deacetylase activity reduction are likely to contribute to glucocorticoid resistance in severe asthma patients. This review discusses recent development in different cytokine signalling pathways, their interactions and steroid resistance, in the context of severe asthma pathogenesis.
Purification and characterization of rat hepatic microsomal low molecular weight fatty acid ethyl ester synthase and its relationship to carboxylesterases

We reported purification of a high molecular weight (HMW) (ca. 180 kD) and a low molecular weight (LMW) (ca. 60 kD) protein fractions from digitonized rat liver microsomes using ammonium sulfate precipitation followed by ion exchange and gel filtration column chromatography. Both fractions expressed fatty acid ethyl ester (FAEE) synthase as well as p‐nitrophenyl acetate (PNPA)–hydrolyzing (esterase) activities. The HMW fraction was found to be a trimer with subunit molecular weight ca. 60 kD and structurally and functionally similar to rat hepatic microsomal carboxylesterase (CE, pI 6.1) and adipose tissue FAEE synthase. In this article, we report further purification and characterization of the LMW (minor) fraction expressing FAEE synthase activity and its structural and functional relationship to hepatic microsomal CEs. Using isoelectric focusing (IEF) followed by gel filtration–high‐performance liquid chromatography (GF‐HPLC), five proteins were purified, which expressed FAEE synthase as well as PNPA‐hydrolyzing activity. The isoelectric point values of 6.5, 5.8, 5.6, 5.3, and 5.0 were found for the purified LMW proteins by IEF and each showed a peak corresponding to ca. 60 kD molecular weight by GF‐HPLC, which expressed FAEE synthase as well as PNPA‐hydrolyzing activity. Sodium dodecyl sulfate–polyacrylamide gel elecrophoresis (SDS‐PAGE) analysis of the GF‐HPLC purified LMW proteins revealed that these proteins are monomers (ca. 60 kD). All the purified LMW proteins cross‐reacted with antibodies to rat adipose tissue FAEE synthase. Coelution of PNPA‐hydrolyzing and FAEE synthase activity at each step of purification and cross‐reactivity with rat adipose tissue FAEE synthase antibodies suggest that the purified proteins are related to various hepatic microsomal CEs. This conclusion is further supported by the homology of N‐terminal amino acid sequence of the purified LMW proteins to various hepatic microsomal CEs and protease precursors. Therefore, LMW FAEE synthase activity most probably is expressed by various isozymes of hepatic microsomal CEs, which are also involved in the biotransformation of xenobiotic alcohols and amines. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Biochem Mol Toxicol 15:165–171, 2001
Subband filtering scheme for analog and mixed-signal circuit testing

A new technique is proposed to analyze and compress the output responses from analog circuits. We first describe the subband filtering scheme to decompose responses from the analog circuit under test (CUT). A subband filter or wavelet takes the response, then generates the decomposed signals for each frequency band. The decomposed signal for each frequency band is fed into its respective integrator. Two kinds of wavelets are used to decompose the test response and effectively detect the faults in the circuit. Implementation issues including hardware overhead are also discussed.
COCH5B2 Is a Target Antigen of Anti-Inner Ear Antibodies in Autoimmune Inner Ear Diseases

Objective This study was designed to identify the 58-kDa inner ear protein against which the sera of some patients with idiopathic, progressive sensorineural hearing loss or Ménière's disease strongly react. Background We and other groups have previously demonstrated that a 58-kDa protein extracted from guinea pig or bovine inner ear tissue is a target of antibodies in serum samples from some patients with autoimmune inner ear diseases. Methods After separation of inner ear proteins by 10% sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, the bands corresponding to 58 kDa were localized and excised from the gel. The concentrated protein was then digested with trypsin, and the peptide fragments were separated by high-pressure liquid chromatography. Three fractions were subjected to amino acid sequencing by the classic Edman degradation. Results The sequence of a stretch of 14 amino acids of the first fragment was identical to that of amino acids 526 to 539 of the COCH5B2 protein. The sequences of 11 and 10 amino acids of the second and third fragments, respectively, also were identical to residues 417 to 427 and 396 to 405 of the COCH5B2 protein. These data, together with two-dimensional gel electrophoresis followed by Western blot experiments, confirmed that the 58-kDa inner ear protein is the COCH5B2 protein. Discussion These findings indicate that the 58-kDa target protein of antibodies in serum samples of patients with autoimmune inner ear diseases is the COCH5B2 protein, a molecule that is highly and specifically expressed in the cochlea and vestibule.
Percutaneous Endoscopic Transforaminal Lumbar Discectomy: A Critical Appraisal

Percutaneous endoscopic transforaminal lumbar discectomy (PETD) is one of the surgical techniques for the treatment of the lumbar disc herniations. Fenestration of the annulus and partial resection of the nuclear substance are achieved percutaneously by a posterolateral approach under local anaesthesia. The results of the first 42 patients are evaluated regarding the learning curve and indications for this procedure. The mean follow-up time was 15 months. Excellent and good results were evaluated as successful and the overall success rate is 77 %. All six patients with foraminal disc herniations in whom a free fragment could be removed had excellent results. Military personnel can return to work quickly without deficits with the use of this technique.
Axoplasm isolation from peripheral nerve

Localized changes in the composition of axonal cytoplasm (axoplasm) are critical for many biological processes, including axon guidance, responses to injury, neurite outgrowth, and axon‐glia interactions. Biochemical and molecular studies of these mechanisms have been heavily focused on in vitro systems because of the difficulty of obtaining subcellular extracts from mammalian tissues in vivo. As in vitro systems might not replicate the in vivo situation, reliable methods of axoplasm extraction from whole nerve would be helpful for mechanistic studies on axons. Here we develop and evaluate a new procedure for preparation of axoplasm from rat peripheral nerve, based on incubation of separated short segements of nerve fascicles in hypotonic medium to separate myelin and lyse nonaxonal structures, followed by extraction of the remaining axon‐enriched material. We show that this new procedure reduces serum and glial cell contamination and facilitates proteomic analyses of axonal contents. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Develop Neurobiol, 2010
N-polar GaN Cap MISHEMT with record 6.7 W/mm at 94 GHz

In this work a record output power density for any III-N based transistor at W-band is demonstrated. The output power of this N-polar technology exceeds that of any reported Ga-polar device by a significant margin (Fig. 5) and scales exceptionally well with drain bias. Moreover, a large design space remains for further optimization of this N-polar MISHEMT technology. Significant performance enhancements in power density, efficiency, and gain are expected with further vertical and lateral scaling of the device dimensions. Additional improvement will be realized with improved layout of the pad design.
Effects of Porphyromonas gingivalis antigens and proinflammatory cytokines on human coronary artery endothelial cells.

OBJECTIVE Individuals with periodontitis have been cited as having a significantly increased risk of developing coronary heart disease. Although accumulating evidence suggests that periodontal infection is involved in the development and progression of atherosclerosis, the underlying mechanisms remain to be elucidated. In the present study, we examined how periodontal infection could contribute to endothelial dysfunction. METHODS Human coronary arterial endothelial cells were stimulated with tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha and interleukin (IL)-1beta, both of which are reported to be elevated in the serum of periodontitis patients. Cells were also stimulated with lipopolysaccharide, outer membrane protein and heat shock protein 60 derived from Porphyromonas gingivalis, a representative periodontopathic bacterium which is known to stimulate myeloid cells. RESULTS Although TNF-alpha and IL-1beta, at concentrations a little higher than those in sera of periodontitis patients, up-regulated the expression of intercellular adhesion molecule-1 and vascular cell adhesion molecule-1, P. gingivalis antigens had only a slight stimulatory effect. CONCLUSION Experiments in which the total pathogen burden is considered, rather than a single species of bacteria, would increase our understanding of the contribution of which periodontal infection to atherogenesis.
Issues in the Implementation of General Dual-Rate Systems

General dual-rate systems enhance the design free- dom by removing the structural dependencies and hence can be used in the incompatible nonuniform filter banks. Recently it was shown that realising these dual-rate systems using a simple linear time invariant (LTI) system, a conventional sampler and a block sampler, can reduce the circuit layout complexity. The dual- rate system specifications are obtained in the Multi Input Multi Output (MIMO) representation, in the design of the filter bank. This paper address the issue of designing the LTI system for the simple realisations from the MIMO specifications. We obtain the relationship between the polyphase decomposition of the LTI system and the transfer matrix of the MIMO representation. Our analysis show that the simple realisations are obtained from generalising the switching representations of linear periodically time varying (LPTV) systems. Index Terms—Multirate signal processing, MIMO representa- tion, general dual-rate systems. systems required in the proposed implementations. The one- one correspondence proved in (2), between the time indices is not useful in designing the required LTI systems. So in this paper we address the problem of relating the transfer matrix of MIMO representation to the transfer func- tion of the required LTI. The conventional samplers in the MIMO representations are moved from one side to the other using the Noble identities (7). Analysing the resulting systems revealed the relationship between the rows and columns of the transfer matrix to the polyphase decomposition of the required LTI systems. From our analysis the realisations in (2) were found to be a generalisation of the switching representations (4) of LPTV systems. This paper is organised as follows. Section-II reviews the linear dual-rate systems and their MIMO representations. In section-III we present the design advantage of general dual- rate structures in incompatible filter banks. Section-IV derives the relationship between the MIMO representation and the LTI systems in the proposed realisations. Section-V contains the conclusions. A. Notations
STING Algorithm Used English Sentiment Classification in a Parallel Environment

Sentiment classification is significant in everyday life of everyone, in political activities, activities of commodity production, commercial activities. In this research, we propose a new model for Big Data sentiment classification in the parallel network environment. Our new model uses STING Algorithm (SA) (in the data mining field) for English document-level sentiment classification with Hadoop Map (M)/Reduce (R) based on the 90,000 English sentences of the training data set in a Cloudera parallel network environment — a distributed system. In the world there is not any scientific study which is similar to this survey. Our new model can classify sentiment of millions of English documents with the shortest execution time in the parallel network environment. We test our new model on the 25,000 English documents of the testing data set and achieved on 61.2% accuracy. Our English training data set includes 45,000 positive English sentences and 45,000 negative English sentences.
Studying the impact of elevated neutral to earth voltage on distribution systems due to triplen harmonics

Neutral-earth voltages have been a topic of investigation and research for many generations. Non-linear loads, and the harmonics that they generate have also been a topic of research in more recent years. An unexpected side effect of distributed nonlinear loads is an increase in neutral-earth voltages on distribution systems. A case study was presented that shows a correlation between high levels of zero sequence triplen (especially the 3rd) harmonics in distribution systems and an increase in neutral-earth voltages. A method of modeling distribution systems with distributed nonlinear loads was presented. These models were based upon circuit configurations, conductor data, grounding information, transformer data, and any previous measurement data gathered from the field. Additionally, some means for reducing neutral-earth voltages were presented
Atypical cortical responses underlie poor speech perception in children using cochlear implants

Variability in speech perception abilities after years of cochlear implant use could reflect differences in central auditory processing of the electrical input provided. Cortical responses were measured in 23 experienced pediatric cochlear implant users who were 12.3±3.1 years of age at testing and had used their implants for 6.0±2.9 years. All had prelingual onset of deafness. An observer identified blind three types of cortical waveforms ranging from those similar to previous reports to more atypical responses. Children displaying atypical types of responses were implanted at a wide range of ages and had significantly poorer behavioral speech perception scores (P<0.05) than their peers with expected waveforms. Results suggest a persistent immaturity and/or abnormal organization in the auditory cortex in some children.
Cocaine increases human immunodeficiency virus type 1 neuroinvasion through remodeling brain microvascular endothelial cells

Cocaine is a suspected cofactor in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-associated dementia but cocaine’s effects are not clear. Herein the authors describe investigations of the mechanisms by which cocaine increases HIV-1 invasion through brain microvascular endothelial cells (BMVECs). Cocaine binds to a site on BMVECs, which is not a biogenic amine transporter, a binding site for estrogen, or a muscarinic receptor and for which benztropine and tamoxifen have the highest affinity. Cocaine treatment of BMVECs disrupts intercellular junctions and induces cell ruffling, which could account for their increased permeability and decreased electrical resistance. HIV-1 enters BMVECs by macropinocytosis and is transported to lysosomes and inactivated. In cocaine-treated BMVECs, the virus enters and persists in large cytoplasmic “lakes. ” Cocaine exposure of BMVECs up-regulates transcription of genes important in cytoskeleton organization, signal transduction, cell swelling, vesicular trafficking, and cell adhesion. The toxicity of cocaine for the blood-brain barrier may lead to increased virus neuroinvasion and neurovascular complications of cocaine abuse.
Broadband Technologies on Residential Access

The diffusion of broadband technologies is a hot topic for developed and many developing countries. Although the provision of service has many similar aspects, the overall and specific penetration of broadband technologies varies significantly in these countries. This study aims to examine the place of users perceptions in the broadband issue by studying the development of the selected technologies and national policies in the light of the general information technology diffusion aspects.
Systemic effects of periodontal disease in cats

Background: Periodontal disease in cats is a local disease that may have systemic consequences that are affected by treatment. Objective: To test the hypotheses that systemic health indices would be correlated with the severity of periodontitis, and would improve with treatment. Animals and methods: Apparently otherwise healthy cats from an in-bred colony were randomly assigned to a treatment group (n = 30), or a control group (n = 18), which was left untreated for 3 months. Periodontal disease was scored at baseline in the treatment group according to calculus, gingivitis, and alveolar bone loss measured from dental radiographs. Blood, urine and saliva were collected from both groups before, and 16, 45, and 90 days after dental treatment. Assays included haematology, urinalysis, serum biochemistry, serum IgG, salivary IgA, lymphocyte subsets and proliferation, and plasma malonyldialdehyde (MDA). Correlations between the severity of periodontitis and assays at baseline were assessed, and the effect of treatment determined using linear mixed model methodology. Results: The severity of periodontitis was associated with age, bodyweight, total globulins (Globs), Alanine aminotransferase, and IgG, and negatively associated with albumin, haemoglobin, haematocrit, and Aspartate aminotransferase (AST). Treatment significantly reduced IgG, total Globs, AST, and eosinophils, and increased cholesterol. Other leucocyte assays and plasma MDA concentrations were not affected by the treatment. Cats ate dry food faster 1 week after, than they did 1 week before treatment. Conclusions and clinical relevance: Although the clinical significance of these findings are unknown, we conclude that periodontitis is not simply a localized disease, but also impacts on systemic health and wellbeing.
Directional Plasmonic Nano-Antennas ́

We address 2D arrays of metallic nano-particles arranged in a honeycomb lattice in the proximity of a hetero-interface of two media with high dielectric contrast. These systems can function as antennas in the visible range of the spectrum. We demonstrate that their radiation patterns can be made very directional by appropriate choice of the system geometry and materials. We show also that if such an antenna is excited by evanescent waves, the direction of the main radiation lobe can be switched abruptly by changing the polarization of the incident light. Within the proposed excitation scheme the device converts an incident plane wave into a narrow beam, operating as a nanoscopic source of light with tunable directionality.
Current Trends in Continuous Glucose Monitoring

The market introduction of systems for continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) some 15 years ago did not immediately revolutionize the treatment of diabetes; however, for a given group of patients, it would almost be inconceivable nowadays to imagine life without CGM. One day the development of insulin pumps together with CGM could culminate in an artificial pancreas system. The performance of the glucose sensors used for glucose measurement in the interstitial fluid in the subcutaneous tissue and the algorithms employed to analyze these data have improved so much over the past decade that current CGM systems by far outperform those of the first generations. This commentary discusses a number of aspects about what we have learned since CGM systems entered the market and what current trends exist in their usage. Some of these are major hurdles facing a more widespread usage of CGM.
Matrix Metalloproteinases Expressed by Astrocytes Mediate Extracellular Amyloid-β Peptide Catabolism

It has been postulated that the development of amyloid plaques in Alzheimer's disease (AD) may result from an imbalance between the generation and clearance of the amyloid-β peptide (Aβ). Although familial AD appears to be caused by Aβ overproduction, sporadic AD (the most prevalent form) may result from impairment in clearance. Recent evidence suggests that several proteases may contribute to the degradation of Aβ. Furthermore, astrocytes have recently been implicated as a potential cellular mediator of Aβ degradation. In this study, we examined the possibility that matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), proteases known to be expressed and secreted by astrocytes, could play a role in extracellular Aβ degradation. We found that astrocytes surrounding amyloid plaques showed enhanced expression of MMP-2 and MMP-9 in aged amyloid precursor protein (APP)/presenilin 1 mice. Moreover, astrocyte-conditioned medium (ACM) degraded Aβ, lowering levels and producing several fragments after incubation with synthetic human Aβ1–40 and Aβ1–42. This activity was attenuated with specific inhibitors of MMP-2 and -9, as well as in ACM derived from mmp-2 or -9 knock-out (KO) mice. In vivo, significant increases in the steady-state levels of Aβ were found in the brains of mmp-2 and -9 KO mice compared with wild-type controls. Furthermore, pharmacological inhibition of the MMPs with N-[(2R)-2-(hydroxamidocarbonylmethyl)-4-methylpentanoyl]-l-tryptophan methylamide (GM 6001) increased brain interstitial fluid Aβ levels and elimination of half-life in APPsw mice. These results suggest that MMP-2 and -9 may contribute to extracellular brain Aβ clearance by promoting Aβ catabolism.