Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Genetic Structure of a Spodoptera frugiperda Nucleopolyhedrovirus Population: High Prevalence of Deletion Genotypes

ABSTRACT A Nicaraguan field isolate (SfNIC) of Spodoptera frugiperda nucleopolyhedrovirus was purified by plaque assay on Sf9 cells. Nine distinct genotypes, A to I, were identified by their restriction endonuclease profiles. Variant SfNIC-B was selected as the standard because its restriction profile corresponded to that of the wild-type isolate. Physical maps were generated for each of the variants. The differences between variants and the SfNIC-B standard were confined to the region between map units 9 and 32.5. This region included PstI-G, PstI-F, PstI-L, PstI-K and EcoRI-L fragments. Eight genotypes presented a deletion in their genome compared with SfNIC-B. Occlusion body-derived virions of SfNIC-C, -D and -G accounted for 41% of plaque-purified clones. These variants were not infectious per os but retained infectivity by injection into S. frugiperda larvae. Median 50% lethal concentration values for the other cloned genotypes were significantly higher than that of the wild type. The variants also differed in their speed of kill. Noninfectious variants SfNIC-C and -D lacked the pif and pif-2 genes. Infectivity was restored to these variants by plasmid rescue with a plasmid comprising both pif and pif-2. Transcription of an SfNIC-G gene was detected by reverse transcription-PCR in insects, but no fatal disease developed. Transcription was not detected in SfNIC-C or -D-inoculated larvae. We conclude that the SfNIC population presents high levels of genetic diversity, localized to a 17-kb region containing pif and pif-2, and that interactions among complete and deleted genotypic variants will likely influence the capacity of this virus to control insect pests.
Natriuretic Peptides and Diadenosine Polyphosphates Modulate pH Regulation of Rat Mesangial Cells

Modulation of cell proliferation has often been thought to be connected to changes in the activity of pH-regulatory transporters and consequently intracellular pH (pH<sub>i</sub>). The influence of natriuretic peptides, diadenosine polyphosphates, adenosine and ATP as well as platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) on pH<sub>i</sub> regulation of cultured rat mesangial cells was examined with the pH-sensitive dye 2′,7′-bis(2-carboxyethyl)-5(6)-carboxyfluorescein. The inhibitors of Na<sup>+</sup>/H<sup>+</sup> exchange, amiloride and HOE694, blocked pH<sub>i</sub> recovery completely in the absence of and by approximately 50% in the presence of HCO<sub>3</sub><sup>–</sup>/CO<sub>2</sub>. Natriuretic peptides (ANP, BNP, CNP, urodilatin) completely inhibited pH<sub>i</sub> recovery in the absence of and by approximately 40% in the presence of HCO<sub>3</sub><sup>–</sup>/CO<sub>2</sub>. These effects were abolished by the cGMP-dependent protein kinase inhibitor KT5823. Diadenosine polyphosphates (Ap3A-Ap6A), ATP and adenosine also inhibited pH<sub>i</sub> recovery completely in the absence of and partially (30–40%) in the presence of HCO<sub>3</sub><sup>–</sup>/ CO<sub>2</sub>. The effect of adenosine was abolished in the presence of the cAMP-dependent protein kinase inhibitor KT5720, and that of Ap5A by the protein kinase C inhibitor calphostin C. PDGF activated acid extrusion in these cells by approximately 40%. From the four cloned isoforms of the Na<sup>+</sup>/H<sup>+</sup> exchanger in the rat, only transcripts of NHE-1 were found in these mesangial cell cultures using RT-PCR analysis. These data suggest that in these rat mesangial cells the Na<sup>+</sup>/H<sup>+</sup> exchanger, specifically the NHE-1 isoform, accounts for around 50% of pH<sub>i</sub> recovery from an acid load under physiological conditions, and that Na<sup>+</sup>/H<sup>+</sup> exchange stimulated by acidification can be inhibited by activation of PKG, PKA, and PKC and stimulated by PDGF after acute exposition to these agonists.
Morphology of Canine Cumulus–Oocyte Complexes in Pre‐pubertal Bitches

The morphology of canine cumulus–oocyte complexes (COCs) before puberty is still unknown. Therefore, the aim of our study was to elucidate the morphological characteristics of pre‐pubertal oocytes and cumulus cells by light microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. The pre‐pubertal oocyte was characterized by accumulation of lipid yolk droplets in the cytoplasm as well as high energy metabolism, low protein synthesis and high transcriptional activity of the cumulus cells. The cumulus cells, which revealed a prominent nucleus and few cytoplasm, communicated with each other by few short processes and exhibited merely a small amount of processes reaching the oocyte. Our studies imply that both the oocyte and the cumulus cells of canine COCs before puberty reveal characteristic morphological features which are correlated with changes in oocyte metabolism and cumulus cell communication.
The 3-Hydroxy-3-Methylglutaryl-CoA Reductase Inhibitor Lovastatin Reduces Severity of l-DOPA-Induced Abnormal Involuntary Movements in Experimental Parkinson's Disease

Chronic l-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (l-DOPA) treatment of Parkinson's disease (PD) often leads to debilitating involuntary movements, termed l-DOPA-induced dyskinesia (LID), about which the rodent analog, the abnormal involuntary movements (AIMs), has been associated consistently with an activation of the Ras-extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2) mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling pathway. Previous studies have shown that lovastatin, a specific inhibitor of the rate-limiting enzyme in cholesterol biosynthesis, can also inhibit Ras isoprenylation and activity and subsequently the phosphorylation of ERK1/2 (pERK1/2). We hypothesized that lovastatin treatment-commenced previous l-DOPA exposure could reduce AIM incidence and severity in the 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) rat model of PD by secondarily preventing the l-DOPA/Benserazide-induced increase in pERK1 levels. The lovastatin-l-DOPA/Benserazide-treated 6-OHDA animals displayed less severe rotational behavior as well as a dramatic reduction in AIM severity than the l-DOPA/Benserazide-treated ones. Such lower AIM severity was associated with a decrease in l-DOPA-induced increase in the following: (1) striatal pERK1 and (2) ΔFosB levels, and (3) theta/α oscillations of substantia nigra pas reticulata (SNr) neurons as well as (4) a normalization of SNr firing frequency. Those results strongly suggest that lovastatin might represent a treatment option for managing LID in PD.
Named Entity Recognition in Spanish Biomedical Literature: Short Review and Bert Model

Entity Recognition (NER) is the first step for knowledge acquisition when we deal with an unknown corpus of texts. Having received these entities, we have an opportunity to form parameters space and to solve problems of text mining as concept normalization, speech recognition, etc. The recent advances in NER are related to the technology of contextualized word embeddings, which transforms text to the form being effective for Deep Learning. In the paper, we show how NER model detects pharmacological substances, compounds, and proteins in the dataset obtained from the Spanish Clinical Case Corpus (SPACCC). To achieve this goal, we train from scratch the BERT language representation model and fine-tune it for our problem. As it is expected, this model shows better results than the NER model trained over the standard word embeddings. We further conduct an error analysis showing the origins of models’ errors and proposing strategies to further improve the model’s quality.
Effect of air-drying on demineralized and on sound coronal human dentine: a study on density and on lesion shrinkage.

Recently, several papers investigated the linear dimensional changes in dentine after air-drying. This paper pertains to weight changes, volume changes, and density changes caused by air-drying of sound and demineralized intact dentine. The densities of sound and artificially demineralized human coronal dentine were measured in the wet state and after various drying periods of up to 24 h. The volume was assessed either by means of a pyknometer (wet samples) or by means of dimension measurements. The air-drying experiments were done using a Mettler thermobalance at room temperature. The density of wet sound coronal dentine was found to be 2.24 +/- 0.12 g.cm-3; the value of wet demineralized dentine was about 1.6 g.cm-3. The data show that previously published density values of powdered sound dentine may have been influenced by powdering effects, air-drying, and air inclusion. In whole demineralized air-dried dentine, air inclusion can be very severe: up to 30% by volume. The results show furthermore that in demineralized dentine we have two drying stages: during the first one (up to about 10 min of air-drying), the lesions shrink about 23%, while a main part of the water in the lesion evaporates, and air is incorporated into the tissue; during the second stage (drying longer than 10 min), the lesions hardly shrink anymore, but water is evaporated mainly from underlying sound dentine, followed by air incorporation.
Realize very large current field emission on a traditional thermal-cathode

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have excellent performance in field emission [1-3]; they can be used as field emission (FE) cold cathodes. The traditional FE cold cathode is difficult to apply to the microwave electronic devices. In this paper, we used thermal chemical vapor deposition to synthesize CNTs directly on the surface of traditional thermal-cathode by self-heated. The result proved that the field emission properties of CNT cathode prepared by new way were excellent stable.
A visually elicited escape response in the fly that does not use the giant fiber pathway

Abstract A housefly elicits an escape in response to an approaching target (Holmqvist & Srinivasan, 1991). This study tests if the giant fiber pathway, which mediates a light-off escape response in a fruitfly (Wyman et al., 1985), also mediates escape to an approaching target in a housefly. Visual stimuli simulating an approaching or receding dark disk were presented to houseflies, Musca domestica, in both behavioral and physiological experiments. Freely behaving flies escaped in response to an expanding dark disk but not to a contracting dark disk. In restrained flies, the giant fiber, here called the giant descending neuron (GDN), was recorded from intracellularly and the tergotrochanteral muscle (TTM), which provides the main thrust in an escape jump, was recorded from extracellularly. During electrical stimulation of the brain, by means of stimulating electrodes inserted into the ventral part of each compound eye, a single spike in the GDN drives the TTM. However, when the TTM responds to visual stimulation that elicits an escape response in a behaving fly, the GDN shows no activity. Similarly to the behavioral results, the TTM of restrained flies showed muscle potentials in response to an expanding dark disk, but not to a contracting disk. However, freely moving flies elicit escapes more than 100 ms on average before the first TTM spike, suggesting that this type of escape does not start with a jump powered by the TTM. In conclusion, this visually evoked escape response in the housefly is not likely to be mediated by the giant fiber pathway. The findings suggest that there exist at least two pathways mediating visually evoked escape responses in flies.
Master-Slave Configuration for Dual-Axis Solar Tracker: Design and Implementation

This paper presents the design, implementation, and analysis of Dual Axis Solar Tracker (DAST) with application of Master-Slave (MS) configuration. The implementation of the Dual Axis Tracking System (DAST) is to increase the efficiency of the PV panels. By means of this dual-axis motion of the PV panel, the panel tends to capture maximum possible solar irradiation. In this paper, the application of the Master-Slave (MS) configuration is introduced. With the application of this Master-Slave (MS) configuration the number of components required for dual-axis motion of multiple PV panels in a solar farm are reduced. This paper also summarizes the performance analysis of DAST equipped PV panel with respect to a fixed PV panel.
Beyond curriculum reform: confronting medicine's hidden curriculum

Throughout this century there have been many efforts to reform the medical curriculum. These efforts have largely been unsuccessful in producing fundamental changes in the training of medical students. The author challenges the traditional notion that changes to medical education are most appropriately made at the level of the curriculum, or the formal educational programs and instruction provided to students. Instead, he proposes that the medical school is best thought of as a “learning environment” and that reform initiatives must be undertaken with an eye to what students learn instead of what they are taught. This alternative framework distinguishes among three interrelated components of medical training: the formal curriculum, the informal curriculum, and the hidden curriculum. The author gives basic definitions of these concepts, and proposes that the hidden curriculum needs particular exploration. To uncover their institution's hidden curricula, he suggests that educators and administrators examine four areas: institutional policies, evaluation activities, resource-allocation decisions, and institutional “slang. ” He also describes how accreditation standards and processes might be reformed. He concludes with three recommendations for moving beyond curriculum reform to reconstruct the overall learning environment of medical education, including how best to move forward with the Medical School Objectives Project sponsored by the AAMC.
Artificial neural network based Duty Cycle estimation for maximum Power Point tracking in Photovoltaic systems

According to a nonlinear current-voltage characteristic of Photovoltaics (PV) we need to track maximum power output of PV generation units instantly. The aim of this paper is to introduce a non-complicated method for tracking the maximum Power Point without any previous knowledge of the physical parameters linked with a Grid-Connected photovoltaic (PV) system using artificial neural networks (ANN) modelling. The ANN is trained in various conditions of PV Output Voltage and PV Output Current to forecast the Duty Cycle of DC-DC boost converter as the MPPT device. The proposed technique is implemented in Matlab/Simulink and compared with the conventional method of incremental conductance. Simulation results show a good performance of the ANN based MPPT controller. MPPT techniques that properly detect the global MPP has been widely investigated in the literature. They include hill climbing (HC), incremental conductance (IncCond), perturb-and-observe (P&O), and fuzzy logic controller (FLC). As the best of our knowledge estimation of the duty cycle of the DC-DC boost converter by Artificial Neural Network and using it in place of the whole MPPT controller and using Voltage and current has not been done so far in the literature.
Ventajas en el comercio y socios comerciales: un indicador de ventajas comparativas sectoriales regionales

El proposito de este trabajo es presentar un indicador de ventaja comparativa que pone el enfasis en la distribucion de la ventaja comparativa del sector de un pais entre distintas regiones comerciales tomadas en consideracion. Este indicador difiere de los tradicionales centrados en senalar cuales son los sectores de ventaja comparativa en el interior de un pais. El trabajo compara el tradicional indicador de ventaja comparativa desarrollado por el Centre d'Etudes Prospectives et d'Informations Internationales, Indicador de Contribucion al Saldo, con el aqui presentado. Por ultimo, a modo de ejemplo, se aplican ambos indicadores al sector de bienes industriales intensivos en ciencia para la economia argentina comparando la informacion arrojada por ambos y la utilidad y limitaciones del aqui propuesto.
Eosinophils and atopic dermatitis

In spite of the progress regarding the description of immunological phenomena associated with atopic dermatitis (AD), the pathogenesis of this disease still remains unclear. The presence of eosinophils in the inflammatory infiltrate of AD has long been established. Eosinophil numbers as well as eosinophil granule protein levels in peripheral blood are elevated in most AD patients and appear to correlate with disease activity. Moreover, eosinophil granule proteins, which possess cytotoxic activity, are deposited in the skin lesions. These observations indicate a role of eosinophils in the pathogenesis of AD. Furthermore, AD is associated with increased production of T helper 2 cytokines including interleukin (IL)‐5, which specifically acts on eosinophils, resulting in accelerated eosinophilopoiesis, chemotaxis, cell activation, and delayed apoptosis. Therefore, IL‐5 is an interesting target for experimental therapy in this inflammatory disorder of the skin. Such studies might result in new insights into the pathogenetic role of eosinophils in AD.
Intra-Arterial Chemotherapy Is Not Superior to Intravenous Chemotherapy for Malignant Gliomas: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

The efficacy and safety of intra-arterial (IA) chemotherapy versus intravenous (IV) chemotherapy for malignant gliomas were studied. We searched eight electronic databases to identify relevant randomized controlled trials that compared IA chemotherapy with IV chemotherapy in patients with malignant gliomas. This study was conducted in compliance with the Quality of Reporting of Meta-analysis (QUORUM) guidelines. The quality of data was assessed using the Grades of Recommendation, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) approach. Four eligible randomized controlled trials including 460 patients were retrieved. Comparing IA chemotherapy and IV chemotherapy for malignant gliomas, disease control rate, efficacy rate, 1-year, 2-year, and 3-year overall survival as well as grade 3/4 leukocytopenia, thrombocytopenia, and anemia were not statistically different. In conclusion, IA chemotherapy is not superior to IV chemotherapy in terms of efficacy and overall survival as a treatment for malignant gliomas.
Factors Associated With Disability in Patients With Rheumatoid Arthritis

Objective:Analyze disability determinants in a cohort of Argentine patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Material and Methods:Consecutive patients with RA, according to ACR'87 criteria, were recruited from 6 rheumatology centers. Demographic and socioeconomic data, family history, comorbid diseases, extra-articular manifestations and information about received treatments were provided. Disease activity was assessed using Disease Activity Score 28 (DAS 28) and the Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ)-A was used for the functional capacity. Hand and feet radiographs were assessed using Sharp-van der Heijde score. Results:A total of 640 patients with RA were included, of which 85.2% were females. Mean age was 53 years (interquartile range [IQR], 44–62) and mean disease duration was 8 years (IQR, 4–14). DAS 28 mean was 2.72 (IQR, 1.7–3.7) and HAQ-A mean was 0.62 (IQR, 0.13–1.25). Multiple linear regression showed that the main variables associated with disability were DAS 28, radiologic damage and age. Main predictors of functional disability in the multiple logistic regression using severe HAQ (>2) as dependent variable were DAS 28 (OR, 2; P < 0.0001); age (OR, 1; P = 0.008); and structural damage (OR, 1; P = 0.001). Conclusions:In this population, the disease activity was the variable that showed the highest impact on the physical function. Radiologic damage affected HAQ as the disease progressed.
Compliance for Low‐Back Pain Patients in the Emergency Department: A Randomized Trial

A randomized trial was used to evaluate two forms of a Health Belief Model (HBM) Intervention aimed at increasing compliance among low-back pain (LBP) patients visiting an Emergency Department (ED). Patients who received an HBM clinical intervention administered in the ED, HBM phone intervention made 1 to 2 days post-ED visit, or both interventions were much more likely than control patients to both schedule and keep a follow-up referral appointment. Both the phone and clinical interventions were designed to increase patients' perceived susceptibility to complications of the LBP, seriousness of the complications, and benefits and costs of action through a follow-up referral appointment. Other factors predicting compliance included persistence of pain symptoms, previous treatment of LBP by a health care provider, and an unmet need for child care.
The Four and a Half LIM Family Members Are Novel Interactants of the Human T-Cell Leukemia Virus Type 1 Tax Oncoprotein

ABSTRACT Human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1) is the etiologic agent of adult T-cell leukemia (ATL). The viral regulatory protein Tax1 plays a pivotal role in T-cell transformation and ATL development. Previous studies in our laboratory, using the yeast 2-hybrid approach to screen a T-cell library for Tax1-interacting partners, identified the cellular Four and a Half Lim domain protein 3 (FHL3) as a possible Tax1-interacting candidate. FHL3 is a member of the FHL family of proteins, which function as transcriptional coactivators and cytoskeleton regulators and have a role in cancer progression and development. The aim of this study was to investigate the physical and functional interaction between Tax1 and members of the FHL family of proteins. We show that Tax1 and FHL3 interact both in vitro and in vivo. Furthermore, both FHL1 and -2 also interact with Tax1. We have demonstrated that FHL3 enhances Tax1-mediated activation of the viral long terminal repeat (LTR) without affecting basal activity and that FHL1 to -3 regulate NF-κB activation by Tax1 in a cell-specific manner. In addition, we have found that the interaction between Tax1 and FHL1 to -3 affects the localization of these proteins, leading to their redistribution in cells. Tax1 also affected FHL3 cytoskeleton function by increasing FHL3-mediated cell spreading. Overall, our results suggest that the interaction between Tax1 and the FHL family alters both the transactivating activity and the subcellular localization of Tax1 and provide new insights into molecular mechanisms that underlie the oncogenic nature of this HTLV-1 protein.
Kernel Fisher discriminant analysis for bearing fault diagnosis

A kernel Fisher discriminant (KFD) method is applied to the bearing fault diagnosis (i.e. classification of multiple fault classes). This paper deals with KFD for two multi-class fault recognition examples. One example is to recognize faults on different bearing elements; another is to recognize four different severities of the ball faults. The time-domain vibration signals of normal bearings, bearings with different faults have been used for feature extraction. The features are obtained from direct processing of the signal segments using simple preprocessing. The classification results demonstrate that KFD method is effective on the examples. Furthermore, in terms of classification performance, KFD method competes with support vector machines.