Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inhibition of Mitochondrial Respiration

Cancer cells are under intrinsic increased oxidative stress and vulnerable to free radical-induced apoptosis. Here, we report a strategy to hinder mitochondrial electron transport and increase superoxide \batchmode \documentclass[fleqn,10pt,legalpaper]{article} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amsmath} \pagestyle{empty} \begin{document} \(\mathrm{O}_{2}^{{\bar{{\cdot}}}}\) \end{document} radical generation in human leukemia cells as a novel mechanism to enhance apoptosis induced by anticancer agents. This strategy was first tested in a proof-of-principle study using rotenone, a specific inhibitor of mitochondrial electron transport complex I. Partial inhibition of mitochondrial respiration enhances electron leakage from the transport chain, leading to an increase in \batchmode \documentclass[fleqn,10pt,legalpaper]{article} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amsmath} \pagestyle{empty} \begin{document} \(\mathrm{O}_{2}^{{\bar{{\cdot}}}}\) \end{document} generation and sensitization of the leukemia cells to anticancer agents whose action involve free radical generation. Using leukemia cells with genetic alterations in mitochondrial DNA and biochemical approaches, we further demonstrated that As2O3, a clinically active anti-leukemia agent, inhibits mitochondrial respiratory function, increases free radical generation, and enhances the activity of another \batchmode \documentclass[fleqn,10pt,legalpaper]{article} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amsmath} \pagestyle{empty} \begin{document} \(\mathrm{O}_{2}^{{\bar{{\cdot}}}}-\mathrm{generating}\) \end{document} agent against cultured leukemia cells and primary leukemia cells isolated from patients. Our study shows that interfering mitochondrial respiration is a novel mechanism by which As2O3 increases generation of free radicals. This novel mechanism of action provides a biochemical basis for developing new drug combination strategies using As2O3 to enhance the activity of anticancer agents by promoting generation of free radicals.
A high-speed bipolar technology featuring self-aligned single-poly base and submicrometer emitter contacts

An experimental bipolar transistor structure with self-aligned base-emitter contacts formed using one polysilicon layer is presented with geometries and frequency performance comparable to those of double-polysilicon structures. This structure, called STRIPE (self-aligned trench-isolated polysilicon electrodes), provides a 0.2- mu m emitter-base polysilicon contact separation. A 0.4- mu m emitter width is achieved with conventional 0.8- mu m optical lithography. Scaling of the emitter width of 0.3 mu m has been performed with minimal degradation of device performance, and scaling of the emitter width pattern to 0.2 mu m has been demonstrated. These dimensions are the smallest achieved in single-polysilicon structures with polysilicon base contacts and are comparable to those achieved in double-polysilicon structures. The STRIPE structure has been used to fabricate transistors with f/sub t/ as high as 33.8 GHz. <<ETX>>
The Use of ENT-Prescribed Home Sleep Studies for Patients with Suspected Obstructive Sleep Apnea

Sleep disordered breathing, including obstructive sleep apnea, is a common and morbid health problem. Traditionally, sleep disordered breathing is diagnosed by complex sleep studies. However, newer, easy-to-use, highly sensitive, and highly specific home sleep study equipment is now available. The present study was undertaken to determine whether an otolaryngologist could easily and effectively dispense home sleep equipment from the office. We used a portable AutoSet home sleep machine. Our experience with the first 100 consecutively presenting patients was recorded and analyzed under institutional review board approval. Ninety-nine of the 100 tests were completed successfully on the first attempt; the one failure was successful on the second attempt. Our results were consistent with those reported from in-house polysomnogram sleep studies; 71 % of our patients had an apnea-hypopnea index (AH1) of 15 or higher, and 93% had an AHI of at least 5. We conclude that an otolaryngologist, using state-of-the-art home sleep testing equipment, can accurately and cost-effectively prescribe home sleep studies.
Plyometric Training Effects on Athletic Performance in Youth Soccer Athletes: A Systematic Review

Abstract Bedoya, AA, Miltenberger, MR, and Lopez, RM. Plyometric training effects on athletic performance in youth soccer athletes: A systematic review. J Strength Cond Res 29(8): 2351–2360, 2015—The purpose of this systematic review was to critically analyze the literature to determine the effectiveness of plyometric training on athletic performance in youth soccer athletes. A total of 7 studies were included in this review after meeting the following criteria: (a) used plyometric training programs to assess athletic performance, (b) subjects were soccer athletes aged preadolescent up to 17 years, and (c) were published from 2000 to January 2014. Study methods were assessed using the PEDro scale with scores ranging from 4 to 6. Results showed similarities and differences in methodologies and procedures among the included studies. Athletic performance consisting of kicking distance, speed, jumping ability, and agility significantly improved because of plyometric training interventions. The current evidence suggests that plyometric training should be completed 2 days per week for 8–10 weeks during soccer practice with a 72-hour rest period between plyometric training days. The initial number of foot contacts should be 50–60 per session and increase to no more than 80–120 foot contacts per session for this age group to prevent overuse injuries. A total of 3–4 plyometric training exercises should be performed 2–4 sets for 6–15 repetitions per training session. The evidence and the literature suggest that plyometric training for this age group should only be implemented using recommended safety guidelines such as those published by the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology and the National Strength and Conditioning Association and under appropriate supervision by trained personnel.
Pandemics, Avian Influenza A (H5N1), and a Strategy for Pharmacists

Epidemics of influenza occur annually and account for more morbidity in the developed world than all other respiratory diseases combined. On average, 36,000 Americans die from influenza or its complications each year. Pandemics occur when influenza viruses undergo either antigenic drift or antigenic shift that results in a new viral strain that infects humans, when they are capable of sustained transmission from person‐to‐person, and when they are introduced in populations with little or no preexisting immunity. The influenza pandemic of 1918 caused an estimated 20–40 million deaths worldwide. An avian influenza A (H5N1) virus, currently circulating in Asia, has pandemic potential. However, no evidence currently exists that a pandemic is occurring. Pharmacists are uniquely positioned to initiate near‐term practice changes that may positively impact both seasonal and potential pandemic morbidity and mortality. Pharmacists must be immunization advocates and provide pharmaceutical care that includes evaluation of immunization status. Increasing immunization to prevent invasive pneumococcal disease, as well as seasonal influenza immunization, is encouraged. A pandemic vaccine represents the most effective strategy to mitigate the effects of a pandemic. Antiviral agents represent a treatment bridge until a pandemic‐specific vaccine is available. The neuraminidase inhibitors oseltamivir and zanamivir are active against H5N1, although oseltamivir resistance has been reported. Advances in vaccine research, development, and production through the use of reverse‐genetics systems represent the most effective technology to rapidly produce a pandemic influenza vaccine.
Environmental risks perception--a study of the awareness of families to threats in areas with increased health disorders in children.

INTRODUCTION Children are at greater risk than adults to experience adverse effects from environmental agents. Significant neurological damage to children can occur even at very low levels of exposure. Reliable protection of children living in areas with high environmental hazards is not possible without their parent's' understanding of where, how and why children's exposures occur. OBJECTIVES The aim of the presented study was to indicate families' awareness of environmental risks with increased health disorders in children in the chosen area of the Silesian Province. MATERIALS AND METHODS Rates of development disorders in general, including physical and psychomotor development disorders, in a population of children from the study area were estimated. A questionnaire was used in order to explore through a door-to-door survey the perceptions of environmental risk in a population of 2,491 residents. RESULTS The presented study shows that the parents' awareness of environmental health risks is not satisfactory. The majority expressed an opinion that the outdoor environment exerts a major influence upon the state of health, but less than 1% of the parents were aware of the indoor environmental risk. CONCLUSION The most effective way to prevent children's exposure is to teach the community to identify environmental threats and educate them on how to their protect children. The appropriate policies and programmes should be developed and implemented as this seems to be the most effective and cheapest way to prevent children's exposure to environmental risks.
Changes in plasma cystatin C after renal transplantation and acute rejection in adults.

BACKGROUND Cystatin C has recently been proposed as an alternative marker of glomerular filtration rate. The diagnostic value of plasma cystatin C for the longitudinal assessment of kidney function after renal transplantation, however, has not been addressed. METHODS Renal function was evaluated in 30 adults receiving renal transplants (46 +/- 9 years, mean +/- SD) and in 56 healthy controls (38 +/- 10 years) using cystatin C. Plasma cystatin C was determined daily starting the day of surgery and for 3 weeks after surgery by an immunonephelometric assay. RESULTS Plasma concentration significantly decreased during the first week (-44% vs -29% for creatinine). Plasma cystatin C correlated with plasma creatinine (r = 0.741; P <0.0001) and the reciprocal of the creatinine clearance estimated by the Cockcroft-Gault formula (r = 0.882; P <0.001). In all three cases of acute renal impairment, the increase in plasma cystatin C values was more prominent than that of creatinine. CONCLUSIONS Plasma cystatin C is an alternative and accurate marker of allograft function in adult transplant patients. Increased sensitivity compared with creatinine for the detection of acute reduction in glomerular filtration rate allows in some cases a more rapid diagnosis of acute rejection or treatment nephrotoxicity.
Inhibition of E2 Binding to Brd4 Enhances Viral Genome Loss and Phenotypic Reversion of Bovine Papillomavirus-Transformed Cells

ABSTRACT The bovine papillomavirus E2 protein tethers the viral genomes to mitotic chromosomes in dividing cells through binding to the C-terminal domain (CTD) of Brd4. Expression of the Brd4-CTD competes the binding of E2 to endogenous Brd4 in cells. Here we extend our previous study that identified Brd4 as the E2 mitotic chromosome receptor to show that Brd4-CTD expression released the viral DNA from mitotic chromosomes in BPV-1 transformed cells. Furthermore, stable expression of Brd4-CTD enhanced the frequency of morphological reversion of BPV-1 transformed C127 cells resulting in the complete elimination of the viral DNA in the resulting flat revertants.
Enhancing Tree-Based ORAM Using Batched Request Reordering

We explore a new design space for tree-based oblivious RAM (ORAM) constructions, which has not received much attention from the research community. Concretely, our approach is to dynamically reorder the sequence of input requests into batches, such that the portion of the paths shared by the requests in the batch is maximized. In this way, the amount of data fetched per ORAM access can be significantly diminished, thus saving I/O bandwidth. Our results show that the average performance gain is of between 5%–35% over the baseline ORAM, even in real workloads with causal dependencies, which confirms the practical utility of dynamic batching.
Expression of the mouse cerberus-related gene, Cerr1, suggests a role in anterior neural induction and somitogenesis.

The Xenopus cerberus gene encodes a secreted factor that is expressed in the anterior endomesoderm of gastrula stage embryos and can induce the formation of ectopic heads when its mRNA is injected into Xenopus embryos [Bouwmeester, T. , Kim, S. , Lu, B. & De Robertis, E. M. (1996) Nature (London) 382, 595-601]. Here we describe the existence of a cerberus-related gene, Cerr1, in the mouse. Cerr1 encodes a putative secreted protein that is 48% identical to cerberus over a 110-amino acid region. Analysis of a mouse interspecific backcross panel demonstrated that Cerr1 mapped to the central portion of mouse chromosome 4. In early gastrula stage mouse embryos, Cerr1 is expressed in the anterior visceral endoderm and in the anterior definitive endoderm. In somite stage embryos, Cerr1 expression is restricted to the most recently formed somites and in the anterior presomitic mesoderm. Germ layer explant recombination assays demonstrated that Cerr1-expressing somitic-presomitic mesoderm, but not older Cerr1-nonexpressing somitic mesoderm, was able to mimic the anterior neuralizing ability of anterior mesendoderm and maintain Otx2 expression in competent ectoderm. In most Lim1-/- headless embryos, Cerr1 expression in the anterior endoderm was weak or absent. These results suggest that Cerr1 may play a role in anterior neural induction and somite formation during mouse development.
Development of a new multispectral imaging system consisting of a liquid crystal tunable filter

The aim of this study was to develop a new portable multispectral system basically composed of a monochrome digital camera, a liquid crystal tunable filter (LCTF) and a laptop. The system had a high spatial resolution (pixels of the camera) as well as a high spectral resolution, which was determined by the number of available spectral bands (from 400 to 720 nm with a 10-nm step). The software to control the system was developed, and its physical properties, especially the transmission of the spectral bands and the spatial uniformity, were characterized. Furthermore, the optimal objective lens was selected according to the desired requirements (field of view, angle-of-acceptance etc.). Using the developed setup, multispectral images of several scenes were captured and the spectral radiance and reflectance on any pixel were computed. This novel system is a good alternative to conventional spectrophotometers when high spatial resolution is required, nevertheless some arrangements are still needed to improve its performance.
Testosterone treatment in multiple sclerosis: a pilot study.

OBJECTIVE To study the effect of testosterone supplementation on men with multiple sclerosis (MS). DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Men are less susceptible to many autoimmune diseases, including MS. Possible causes for this include sex hormones and/or sex chromosome effects. Testosterone treatment ameliorates experimental allergic encephalomyelitis, an animal model of MS, but the effect of testosterone supplementation on men with MS is not known. Therefore, 10 men with relapsing-remitting MS were studied using a crossover design whereby each patient served as his own control. There was a 6-month pretreatment period followed by a 12-month period of daily treatment with 10 g of the gel containing 100 mg of testosterone. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Clinical measures of disability and cognition (the Multiple Sclerosis Functional Composite and the 7/24 Spatial Recall Test) and monthly magnetic resonance imaging measures of enhancing lesion activity and whole brain volumes. RESULTS One year of treatment with testosterone gel was associated with improvement in cognitive performance (P = .008) and a slowing of brain atrophy (P <.001). There was no significant effect of testosterone treatment on gadolinium-enhancing lesion numbers (P = .31) or volumes (P = .94). Lean body mass (muscle mass) was increased (P = .02). CONCLUSION These exploratory findings suggest that testosterone treatment is safe and well tolerated and has potential neuroprotective effects in men with relapsing-remitting MS.
Inflammatory response in the neonate re-examined.

The inflammatory response was studied in 84 neonates by the skin window technique. Slides were changed 2, 4, 6, and 24 hours after skin abrasion. Polymorphonuclear cells were the dominant cell in all windows but decreased with time. Mononuclear cells increased with time but never rose above 40%. Eosinophilia in the early exudate was not a consistent finding, but 13 of 61 babies over 24 hours of age had a marked early skin window eosinophilia. A possible correlation between early skin window eosinophilia and an allergic diathesis is suggested.
Diffusion‐weighted interleaved echo‐planar imaging with a pair of orthogonal navigator echoes

This work describes a diffusion‐weighted (DW) interleaved echo‐planar imaging (IEPI) method for use on either conventional whole‐body scanners or scanners equipped with highspeed gradient and receiver hardware. In combination with cardiac gating and motion correction with a pair of orthogonal navigator echoes, the presented method is time‐efficient, compensates for patient motions, and is less sensitive to image distortions than single‐shot methods. The motion‐correction scheme consists of correction for constant and linear phase terms found from the orthogonal navigator echoes. The correction for the linear phase term in the phase‐encode direction includes gridding the data to the Cartesian grid. The DW IEPI was used to image a phantom rotating about the slice‐select direction, and motion correction was performed to eliminate ghost artifacts arising from motion in either the readout‐ or phase‐encoding directions. DW IEPI with motion correction was performed on a normal volunteer and on a patient with a 26‐day‐old region of ischemia over much of the right hemisphere.
Is Percutaneous Aspiration Better Than Catheter Drainage In Liver Abscess? A Randomized Control Trial

Background: To compare the efficacy of percutaneous catheter drainage (PCD) and percutaneous needle aspiration (PNA) in the management of liver abscess > 6 cm in diameter. Methods: Fifty patients were included in this comparative study. Computer generated randomization was done by double blind trial and the patients were divided into two groups, 25 patients in each PCD and PNA group respectively. Comparison of effectiveness was done between the two groups in terms of duration of hospital stay, time to achieve clinical improvement, duration of intravenous antibiotics needed, reduction in the size of abscess cavity and total /near total resolution of abscess cavity. Results: Percutaneous catheter drainage (PCD) was found to be superior then percutaneous needle aspiration in terms of duration of hospital stay, clinical recovery, reduction in abscess cavity size/ volume and duration for intravenous antibiotics. Conclusion: Percutaneous catheter drainage is better option as compared to percutaneous needle aspiration especially for large abscesses which are partially liquefied or with thick pus.
Support Vector Machines for Dyadic Data

We describe a new technique for the analysis of dyadic data, where two sets of objects (row and column objects) are characterized by a matrix of numerical values that describe their mutual relationships. The new technique, called potential support vector machine (P-SVM), is a large-margin method for the construction of classifiers and regression functions for the column objects. Contrary to standard support vector machine approaches, the P-SVM minimizes a scale-invariant capacity measure and requires a new set of constraints. As a result, the P-SVM method leads to a usually sparse expansion of the classification and regression functions in terms of the row rather than the column objects and can handle data and kernel matrices that are neither positive definite nor square. We then describe two complementary regularization schemes. The first scheme improves generalization performance for classification and regression tasks; the second scheme leads to the selection of a small, informative set of row support objects and can be applied to feature selection. Benchmarks for classification, regression, and feature selection tasks are performed with toy data as well as with several real-world data sets. The results show that the new method is at least competitive with but often performs better than the benchmarked standard methods for standard vectorial as well as true dyadic data sets. In addition, a theoretical justification is provided for the new approach.
Effect of Up-regulating Individual Steps in the Reverse Cholesterol Transport Pathway on Reverse Cholesterol Transport in Normolipidemic Mice*

Cholesterol acquired by extrahepatic tissues (from de novo synthesis or lipoproteins) is returned to the liver for excretion in a process called reverse cholesterol transport (RCT). We undertook studies to determine if RCT could be enhanced by up-regulating individual steps in the RCT pathway. Overexpression of 7α-hydroxylase, Scavenger receptor B1, lecithin:cholesterol acyltransferase (LCAT), or apoA-I in the liver did not stimulate cholesterol efflux from any extrahepatic tissue. In contrast, infusion of apoA-I·phospholipid complexes (rHDL) that resemble nascent HDL markedly stimulated cholesterol efflux from tissues into plasma. Cholesterol effluxed to rHDL was initially unesterified but by 24 h this cholesterol was largely esterified and had shifted to normal HDL (in mice lacking cholesteryl ester transfer protein) or to apoB containing lipoproteins (in cholesteryl ester transfer protein transgenic mice). Most of the cholesterol effluxed into plasma in response to rHDL came from the liver. However, an even greater proportion of effluxed cholesterol was cleared by the liver resulting in a transient increase in liver cholesterol concentrations. Fecal sterol excretion was not increased by rHDL. Thus, although rHDL stimulated cholesterol efflux from most tissues and increased net cholesterol movement from extrahepatic tissues to the liver, cholesterol flux through the entire RCT pathway was not increased.