Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reflections on the Insertion and Fracture Forces of Microneedles.

BACKGROUND The use of microneedles for transdermal drug delivery is a feasible alternative to injections and tablets. As different types of microneedles are being developed from a variety of materials, it is important to understand their insertion and fracture forces. In this review, it has been emphasized that for microneedles to be clinically useful, they must penetrate the skin without breaking. It means that the insertion force must be smaller than fracture force. METHODS Transdermal experiments involving these forces have been described and theoretical models highlighted. The knowledge of these forces is important for microneedle design and experimental/ clinical use. RESULTS From an experimental standpoint, different techniques are used to measure insertion and fracture forces. To measure insertion and failure forces, a texture analyzer can be used. In this review, the measurement of insertion and fracture forces has been discussed and their utility in transdermal experiments presented. CONCLUSION This review has focused on insertion and failure forces in transdermal drug delivery experiments. Although the question is complex since there is a wide variety of skin models and forces involved, studies carried out in the last few years have thrown more light to aid better understanding of these forces in transdermal drug delivery research.
Right ventricular perforation with cardiac tamponade associated with use of a temporary pacing wire and abciximab during complex coronary angioplasty

We describe our recent experience of right ventricular perforation leading to cardiac tamponade associated with a complex coronary angioplasty in which abciximab and a temporary pacing wire were used. This is to highlight the possibility that the combined use of temporary pacing wires and the IIb/IIIa receptor antagonists may be associated with an increased risk of this serious complication. Cathet. Cardiovasc. Intervent. 48:388‐389, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Mucins in the gastrointestinal tract in health and disease.

Mucins form part of the dynamic, interactive mucosal defensive system active at the mucosal surface of the gastrointestinal tract. They are carbohydrate rich glycoproteins with unique molecular structure and chemical properties. The family of mucin (MUC) genes has 13 members that can be divided into secreted and membrane-associated forms each with characteristic protein domains and tissue specific glycosylation. Biosynthetic pathways have been described for the secreted and membrane-associated mucins and their eventual degradation and turnover. Mucins are present at all mucosal surfaces throughout the body in typical combinations and relate to the demands of organ function. Patterns of MUC gene expression with gastrointestinal site specific glycosylation are clearly important but are not yet well defined. Mucin production during fetal development shows distinct patterns that may correlate in many cases with neoplastic expression in adult life. An increasing number of protective proteins have been identified that appear in the adherent mucus layer at the mucosal surface. These proteins are co-secreted with mucins in some cases, interact with mucins at a molecular level through peptide and carbohydrate sites or benefit from the viscoelastic, aqueous environment afforded by the mucus gel to effect their defensive roles. The mechanism of many of these interaction remains to be elucidated but is clearly part of an integrated innate and adaptive mucosal defensive system relying on the mucins as an integral component to provide a mucus gel. Recent improvements in the description of MUC gene expression and mature mucin synthesis in the healthy gastrointestinal tract has formed a basis for assessment of mucosal disease at sites throughout the tract. Pathological patterns of mucin expression in disease appear to follow tissue phenotype, so that gastric and intestinal types can be defined and appear in metaplasia in e.g. esophagus and stomach. Adaptation of previous mucin based, histochemical classification of intestinal metaplasia to assess MUC gene expression has proved helpful and promises greater value if reliably combined with mucin linked glycosylation markers. Few changes in MUC gene expression or polymorphism have been detected in inflammatory bowel diseases in contrast to malignant transformation. Glycosylation changes however, are evident in both types of disease and appear to be early events in disease pathogenesis. Review of the major mucosal diseases affecting the gastrointestinal tract in childhood reveals parallel patterns to those found in adult pathology, but with some novel conditions arising through the developmental stages at lactation and weaning. The impact of bacterial colonization and nutrition at these stages of life are important in the evaluation of mucosal responses in pediatric disease.
An implantable wireless neural interface for recording cortical circuit dynamics in moving primates

Objective. Neural interface technology suitable for clinical translation has the potential to significantly impact the lives of amputees, spinal cord injury victims and those living with severe neuromotor disease. Such systems must be chronically safe, durable and effective. Approach. We have designed and implemented a neural interface microsystem, housed in a compact, subcutaneous and hermetically sealed titanium enclosure. The implanted device interfaces the brain with a 510k-approved, 100-element silicon-based microelectrode array via a custom hermetic feedthrough design. Full spectrum neural signals were amplified (0.1 Hz to 7.8 kHz, 200× gain) and multiplexed by a custom application specific integrated circuit, digitized and then packaged for transmission. The neural data (24 Mbps) were transmitted by a wireless data link carried on a frequency-shift-key-modulated signal at 3.2 and 3.8 GHz to a receiver 1 m away by design as a point-to-point communication link for human clinical use. The system was powered by an embedded medical grade rechargeable Li-ion battery for 7 h continuous operation between recharge via an inductive transcutaneous wireless power link at 2 MHz. Main results. Device verification and early validation were performed in both swine and non-human primate freely-moving animal models and showed that the wireless implant was electrically stable, effective in capturing and delivering broadband neural data, and safe for over one year of testing. In addition, we have used the multichannel data from these mobile animal models to demonstrate the ability to decode neural population dynamics associated with motor activity. Significance. We have developed an implanted wireless broadband neural recording device evaluated in non-human primate and swine. The use of this new implantable neural interface technology can provide insight into how to advance human neuroprostheses beyond the present early clinical trials. Further, such tools enable mobile patient use, have the potential for wider diagnosis of neurological conditions and will advance brain research.
A Novel Variation-Aware Interconnection Parasitic Extraction Method for 40nm Technology

In this paper, a novel technique is presented to perform variation-aware interconnection parasitic parameters extraction on 40nm process technology. Several kinds of test structure are designed for these extractions. Based on layouts of parasitic metal capacitors, 3D simulations are performed and typical Interconnection Technology Format (ITF) profile is extracted. Full mapping tests are made on these structures and distribution of measurements are analyzed. With the statistical data and process information attached, the statistical parameters are extracted using Principal Component Analysis Method. Finally, according to comparison of statistical data between simulations and measurements, the variation-aware ITF is proved accurate and necessary for the nano-scale IC process technology.
Evaluation of the learning effectiveness of game-based and hands-on gear train laboratories

Recently, academic institutions have started to explore the potential of commercially available multiplayer computer game engines for the development of virtual environments for instructional purposes. This trend is motivated by the fact that many students are highly accustomed to and knowledgeable about playing electronic and computer games. Computer games share a number of potential characteristics with effective instructional tools and therefore have a great potential for positively affecting learning. Achieving a sense of immersion by the students and interactive collaboration among them are two of the main goals being pursued in exploring new types of educational laboratories as alternatives or complements to traditional hands-on experiments. A scripted scenario for a game-based gear train laboratory exercise was implemented in `ME 358 Mechanisms and Machine Dynamics', a junior-level course for mechanical engineering majors at Stevens Institute of Technology (SIT). This paper discusses the learning assessment conducted in that implementation. The results are presented for two assessment studies comparing versions of game-based gear train experiments to workbook-based gear train experiments with a `hands-on' laboratory experience. The results suggest that the students learned the concepts addressed by the laboratory content better in the game-based condition and that they had a realistic understanding and appreciation of the practical advantages of game-based gear train experiments over more traditional learning experiences. In addition, a questionnaire was administered to the students and then analyzed in order to obtain further insights into the students' opinions about and attitudes toward the game-based laboratory approach.
Mass Spectrometric Approaches Using Electrospray Ionization Charge States and Hydrogen-Deuterium Exchange for Determining Protein Structures and Their Conformational Changes*

Electrospray ionization (ESI) mass spectrometry (MS) is a powerful analytical tool for elucidating structural details of proteins in solution especially when coupled with amide hydrogen/deuterium (H/D) exchange analysis. ESI charge-state distributions and the envelopes of charges they form from proteins can provide an abundance of information on solution conformations that is not readily available through other biophysical techniques such as near ultraviolet circular dichroism (CD) and tryptophan fluorescence. The most compelling reason for the use of ESI-MS over nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) for measuring H/D after exchange is that larger proteins and lesser amounts of samples can be studied. In addition, MS can provide structural details on transient or folding intermediates that may not be accessible by CD, fluorescence, and NMR because these techniques measure the average properties of large populations of proteins in solution. Correlations between measured H/D and calculated parameters that are often available from crystallographic data can be used to extend the range of structural details obtained on proteins. Molecular dynamics and energy minimization by simulation techniques such as assisted model building with energy refinement (AMBER) force field can be very useful in providing structural models of proteins that rationalize the experimental H/D exchange results. Charge-state envelopes and H/D exchange information from ESI-MS data used complementarily with NMR and CD data provides the most powerful approach available to understanding the structures and dynamics of proteins in solution.
LAST OBSERVATION ANALYSIS IN ANOVA AND ANCOVA

In clinical trials with multiple visits, dropouts often occur and the popula- tion of patients who dropped out may be dieren t from the population of patients who completed the study. To assess treatment eects over the population of all randomized patients, which is called the intention-to-treat analysis and is required by regulatory agencies, last observation analysis (LOAN) focuses on the last obser- vation of each patient prior to dropout. As a type of LOAN, the last observation carry-forward (LOCF) method treats the last observation prior to dropout as the missing observation at the end of the trial and applies standard tests designed for the case of no dropout. Regulatory agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have expressed concerns about the validity of the LOCF methods. In this paper we study the validity of LOAN and LOCF tests under an analysis of covariance model, which includes the analysis of variance model as a special case. In situations where LOAN is relevant, we provide explicit conditions under which LOCF tests are asymptotically valid and we derive asymptotically valid tests when LOCF tests are invalid.
Serum and salivary IgA antibodies against a defined epitope of the Epstein‐Barr virus nuclear antigen (EBNA) are elevated in nasopharyngeal carcinoma

The Epstein‐Barr virus nuclear antigen I (EBNA I) is the only latent EBV antigen consistently expressed in malignant tissues of the nasopharynx. A 20‐amino‐acid synthetic peptide, p107 contains a major epitope of EBNA I. We tested sera from 210 patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) and from 128 normal individuals (NHS) for IgA antibodies to p107 using an enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Whereas 191/210 (91%) of NPC patients had IgA antibodies to p107, only 17/128 (13.3%) of NHS had such antibodies and only 6/57 (10.5%) of sera from patients with malignancies other than NPC had IgA‐p107 reactivity. Thirty‐nine salivary samples from 46 NPC patients (84.8%) also contained IgA‐p107 antibodies whereas only 3/42 (7.1%) of normal saliva samples were IgA‐p107 positive. The results suggest that IgA antibodies to EBNA I may become a useful, easily measurable, marker for NPC.
Effect of Moderate Intensity of Aerobic Exercise Programme on Exercise Tolerance Capacity of Stable Angina Patients

Stable angina is defined as a short duration chest and/or arm discomfort that shows no change in the past 60 days in frequency, duration or precipitating cause. Most often pain duration is less than 10 minutes and rarely up to 15 minutes. The mild to moderate discomfort is relieved within 1 to 10 minutes by cessation of the particular precipitating activity or use of sublingual nitroglycerine (Khan, 2006). Most patients with stable angina will be at increased risk of subsequent cardiovascular events or death, the assessment of a patient‘s absolute risk of subsequent cardiovascular events or death should be based on assessment of all of his risk factors as well as modifiable risk factors include age, sex, presence of diabetes, and family history of premature coronary heart disease. Exercise training is an effective method of reducing episodes of angina in people with stable angina. Chronic low intensity aerobic exercise trains the cardiovascular system and the skeletal muscles to become more efficient which means that one can exercise at higher levels of intensity without experiencing angina. A program of aerobic exercise has many benefits in addition to reducing episodes of angina. The physiological changes both in exercising skeletal muscle and the myocardium play a role in the symptomatic improvements and increased maximal work capacities in individual with coronary artery disease after regular aerobic exercise (May and Nagle, 1984).
PDC expressing CD36, CD61 and IL-10 may contribute to propagation of immune tolerance

Human plasmacytoid dendritic cells (PDC) are blood dendritic cell antigen 2 (BDCA2) and blood dendritic cell antigen 4 (BDCA4) positive leukocytes that do not express common lineage markers. They have been described as proinflammatory innate immune cells and are the major source of αIFN in the human body. PDC-derived secretion of type I IFNs upon triggering of nucleic acid-sensing toll-like receptors (TLR) primes immune cells to rapidly respond to microbial stimuli and promotes a Th1 response. Here, we report that human PDC express CD36 and CD61 (β3 integrin), both involved in uptake of apoptotic cells and in induction of tolerance. Freshly isolated PDC and PDC within human blood leukocytes constitutively express IL-10. Thus, PDC may possess a so far neglected role in propagation of immune tolerance.
Cognitive Radio for UWB spectrum sharing and power allocation

Ultra Wide Band (UWB) and Cognitive Radio (CR) offer radically different approaches to efficiently use the seemingly scarce spectrum in wireless communications. In this paper, we study the combined cognitive multiuser spectrum sharing and power allocation problem in the context of Multiband OFDM. A proposed gradient power allocation scheme with a target based game strategy is investigated to solve the power control and spectrum allocation problems in a four user coexistence environment. The simulation results illustrate that users can efficiently approximate the predetermined target data rate by means of the proposed game approach.
MILP-Based Efficient Routing Method with Restricted Route Structure for 2-Layer Ball Grid Array Packages

In this paper, we propose a routing method for 2-layer ball grid array packages that generates a routing pattern satisfying a design rule. In our proposed method, the routing structure on each layer is restricted while keeping most of feasible patterns to efficiently obtain a feasible routing pattern. A routing pattern that satisfies the design rule is formulated as a mixed integer linear programming. In experiments with seven data, we obtain a routing pattern such that satisfies the design rule within a practical time by using a mixed integer linear programming solver.
Inactivation of the bovine‐spongiform‐encephalopathy (BSE) agent by the acid and alkaline processes used in the manufacture of bone gelatine

A validation study was carried out to determine the capacity of the traditional acid and alkaline processes used in the manufacture of bovine bone gelatine to remove and/or inactivate the transmissible agent that causes BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy). Using an accurately scaled down laboratory process that precisely mimicked the minimum conditions of the industrial processes, gelatine (gelatin) was manufactured from industrial starting material that had been spiked with mouse brain infected with the 301V strain of mouse‐passaged BSE agent. Clearance factors were determined by titrating the infectivity levels of the infected mouse brain tissue, the gelatine extracts, and the final sterilized gelatine solution. The infectivity level of the spiked starting material was 108.4 mouse intracerebral ID50/kg (ID50 is the dose at which half of the challenged animals were infected). Clearance factors of 102.6 and 103.7 ID50 were demonstrated for the first stages of the acid and alkaline processes respectively during which the bones are converted to crude gelatine. It was further demonstrated that the complete acid and alkaline processes both reduced infectivity to undetectable levels, giving clearance factors of 104.8 ID50 for the acid process, and 104.9 ID50 for the alkaline process.
Human papillomavirus (HPV) prevalence and types among women attending regular gynecological visit in Tehran, Iran.

BACKGROUND Persistent infection by HPV is now recognized as the main cause of cervical cancer. HPV prevalence data is not yet available in Iran. This study is organized to evaluate type-specific HPV prevalence and to compare it with Pap smear results among Iranian women attending regular gynecological visits. METHODS A total of 851 women aged 18 - 65 years, attending regular gynecological visits, were retrospectively evaluated. HPV detection and genotyping was performed by use of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) and Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (RFLP). Cytological evaluation was done by Papanicolaou method and the association between cytological results and HPV status was analyzed. RESULTS 19 different HPV types were detected in 265 of the 851 specimens (31.1%). Overall HPV infection as well as infection with High Risk (HR) HPV types was highest in women aged 18 - 25 years and decreased with age. Type-specific prevalence of HPV-16 and 18 was 7.3% and 2.8%, respectively, and a large number of women (20.2%) were infected by HR HPV types other than HPV-16 and/or HPV-18. There was also an upward trend in the prevalence of HR HPV infections as the abnormality in cytology increased. The prevalence of HPV co-infection was 29.1% of HPV positive patients and declined from LSIL (18.2%) to HSIL (3.9%). CONCLUSIONS Our study indicated that the burden of HPV infection among Iranian females was higher in comparison with previous estimates reported from Iran. Furthermore, higher prevalence of premalignant changes in Iranian women infected with HR HPV types, other than vaccine types, should be considered in immunization programs and development of population-specific HPV vaccines. This remarkable difference in prevalence of HPV types among previous studies, confirms our need to further investigations on epidemiology of HPV infection in Iran.
Antidiabetic medications in overweight/obese patients with type 2 diabetes: drawbacks of current drugs and potential advantages of incretin‐based treatment on body weight

The vast majority of patients with type 2 diabetes are overweight or obese. Lifestyle intervention to lose weight is recommended in most diabetic patients to improve glycaemic control and reduce associated risk factors for microvascular and macrovascular complications. Even modest weight loss can significantly improve glucose homeostasis and lessen cardiometabolic risk factors, although achieving this level of weight reduction remains difficult for many patients. Complicating the matter, many agents used to target hyperglycaemia are associated with weight gain, making management of overweight or obese patients with type 2 diabetes quite challenging.
internals Packet Node DefaultExample ( ) : Network isInitialized ( ) : boolean hasWorkstation ( nm : String ) : boolean consistentNetwork ( ) : Boolean requestWorkstationPrintsDocument

The notion of refactoring —transforming the sourcecode of an object-oriented program without changing its external behaviour — has been studied intensively within the last decade. This diversity has created a plethora of toy-examples, cases and code snippets, which make it hard to assess the current state-of-the-art. Moreover, due to this diversity, there is currently no accepted way of teaching good refactoring practices, despite the acknowledgment in the software engineering body of knowledge. Therefore, this paper presents a common example —the LAN simulation— which has been used by a number of European Universities for both research and teaching purposes.
Conformational studies on enkephalins using the MOLS technique

Conformational studies of two linear enkephalin molecules, Met‐enkephalin and Leu‐enkephalin, have been carried using the mutually orthogonal Latin squares (MOLS) technique with the ECEPP/3 force field. This technique was developed recently in our laboratory to perform an unbiased search of the conformational space of peptides and to locate low energy conformations. The present study identified all the folds predicted by other studies, and in addition picked up other energetically favorable structures. The results suggest that the peptide backbone exists as a mixture of folded and unfolded forms (approximately 50% each). The study also provides information on the distribution of the low energy conformations that we have classified on the basis of structural motifs, backbone hydrogen‐bonding patterns, and root mean square deviations in atomic positions. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Biopolymers, 2004