Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cardiovascular effects of the methanol and dichloromethanol extracts from Mentha suaveolens Ehrh.

Methanol and dichloromethanol extracts of the leaves and stems of Mentha suaveolens Ehrh. have been tested for their effects on resting arterial blood pressure, heart rate and noradrenaline induced hypertension. Both extracts administered by i.v. bolus to urethane anaesthetized normotensive rats reduced the mean arterial blood pressure and heart rate, while only the dichloromethanol extract prevented the noradrenaline induced hypertension. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Effect of Obesity on Length of Labor in Nulliparous Women

Abstract We compared the duration of labor among nulliparous women with varying body mass index (BMI). Laboring nulliparous women at >37 weeks were included. First visit BMI was used to categorize weight as normal (≤24), overweight (25 to 29.9), or obese (≥30 kg/m2). Chi-square, one-way analysis of variance, and Bonferroni multiple comparisons tests were used. During 15 months, 375 women met the inclusion criteria, and 38% were obese. Duration of first stage of labor was significantly longer for obese versus normal-weight women (26.76 ± 0.77 versus 23.87 ± 0.66 hours; p = 0.024) but not between normal versus overweight women (p = 1.00) or overweight versus obese women (p = 0.114). The cesarean delivery rate was significantly different in the three groups (p = 0.0001), highest among obese (47%) and lowest in normal-weight women (24%). When adjusted for age, hypertension, and induction, the likelihood of completing stage I was significantly less among obese nulliparous than those with BMI < 24 kg/m2 (hazard ratio 0.73, 95% confidence intervals 0.54, 0.99). Compared with those with BMI < 24, the duration of stage I is significantly longer among obese women, even when adjusted for maternal age, induction, and hypertension.
Cognitive development in pre-adolescent language impaired children.

This study investigates conceptual development in seven pre-adolescent language impaired children with normal range performance IQ. Across a variety of Piagetian tasks these children performed less well than would be expected for their mental age. This was particularly true for tasks demanding anticipatory imagery. These findings suggest that language impairment may be accompanied by pervasive cognitive deficits—including difficulties with non-linguistic symbolic representation.
United States multicenter study of arsenic trioxide in relapsed acute promyelocytic leukemia.

PURPOSE To determine the safety and efficacy of arsenic trioxide (ATO) in patients with relapsed acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL). PATIENTS AND METHODS Forty patients experiencing first (n = 21) or > or = second (n = 19) relapse were treated with daily infusions of ATO to a maximum of 60 doses or until all leukemic cells in bone marrow were eliminated. Patients who achieved a complete remission (CR) were offered one consolidation course of ATO that began 3 to 4 weeks later. Patients who remained in CR were eligible to receive further cycles of ATO therapy on a maintenance study. RESULTS Thirty-four patients (85%) achieved a CR. Thirty-one patients (91%) with CRs had posttreatment cytogenetic tests negative for t(15;17). Eighty-six percent of the patients who were assessable by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction converted from positive to negative for the promyelocytic leukemia/retinoic acid receptor-alpha transcript by the completion of their consolidation therapy. Thirty-two patients received consolidation therapy, and 18 received additional ATO as maintenance. Eleven patients underwent allogeneic (n = 8) or autologous (n = 3) transplant after ATO treatment. The 18-month overall and relapse-free survival (RFS) estimates were 66% and 56%, respectively. Twenty patients (50%) had leukocytosis (> 10,000 WBC/microL) during induction therapy. Ten patients developed signs or symptoms suggestive of the APL syndrome and were effectively treated with dexamethasone. Electrocardiographic QT prolongation was common (63%). One patient had an absolute QT interval of > 500 msec and had an asymptomatic 7-beat run of torsades de pointe. Two patients died during induction, neither from drug-related causes. CONCLUSION This study establishes ATO as a highly effective therapy for patients with relapsed APL.
Gleevec inhibits β-amyloid production but not Notch cleavage

Amyloid-β (Aβ) peptides, consisting mainly of 40 and 42 aa (Aβ40 and Aβ42, respectively), are metabolites of the amyloid precursor protein and are believed to be major pathological determinants of Alzheimer's disease. The proteolytic cleavages that form the Aβ N and C termini are catalyzed by β-secretase and γ-secretase, respectively. Here we demonstrate that γ-secretase generation of Aβ in an N2a cell-free system is ATP dependent. In addition, the Abl kinase inhibitor imatinib mesylate (Gleevec, or STI571), which targets the ATP-binding site of Abl and several other tyrosine kinases, potently reduces Aβ production in the N2a cell-free system and in intact N2a cells. Both STI571 and a related compound, inhibitor 2, also reduce Aβ production in rat primary neuronal cultures and in vivo in guinea pig brain. STI571 does not inhibit the γ-secretase-catalyzed S3 cleavage of Notch-1. Furthermore, production of Aβ and its inhibition by STI571 were demonstrated to occur to similar extents in both Abl-/- and WT mouse fibroblasts, indicating that the effect of STI571 on Aβ production does not involve Abl kinase. The efficacy of STI571 in reducing Aβ without affecting Notch-1 cleavage may prove useful as a basis for developing novel therapies for Alzheimer's disease.
Variations in bacterial community structure during a dinoflagellate bloom analyzed by DGGE and 16S rDNA sequencing

The relationship between bacterial 16S rRNA gene composition and carbon metabolism was analyzed during an intense dinoflagellate bloom off the Southern California coast during the spring of 1997. Bacterial numbers and rate processes, chlorophyll a, and the dissolved and particulate organic matter pools were measured during the bloom to provide a framework within which to assess bacterial community composition. Free bacteria were numerically dominant, generally comprising >90% of the total, and were responsible for >70% of bacterial production. Attached bacteria had higher cell-specific growth rates than free bacteria (range = 0.5 to 15.1 and 0.7 to 2.5 d -1 , respectively) and had hydrolytic ectoenzyme activities at times more than an order of magnitude higher on a per cell basis. Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis analysis of bacterial community composition indi- cated that: (1) the free and attached communities were distinct, and (2) marked shifts in bacterial community structure occurred concomitant with the peaks in attached enzyme activities, specific growth rates and DOC concentration. Of the 24 16S rDNA clones analyzed, 7 were related to the Cytophaga-like bacteria (CLB), 6 to the α-subclass and 5 to the γ-subclass of the Proteobacteria; 3 were related to oxygenic phototrophs, 2 were heteroduplexes and 1 was a possible chimera. While the α- and γ-Proteobacteria predominated in the <1.0 µm fraction, CLB were identified in both the free and attached fractions as well as among bacteria cultured from the same water, without overlap among these groups. The observation that distinct Cytophaga group sequences were present in the free versus attached fractions is counter to the current understanding that these organisms occupy a principally 'particle-specialist' niche. Our results suggest that some CLB are also important in the decomposition of polymeric organic matter in the dissolved phase with implications for the accumu- lation of dissolved organic matter and pathways of carbon flow during phytoplankton blooms.
Ergonomics and Comfort in Protective and Sport Clothing: A Brief Review

Industrial and sport protective clothing (PC) is governed by protection requirements and sport clothing is generally selected on the basis of performance and comfort. The impact of PC on performance is determined by the nature of the work or sport, the metabolic rate required, the ambient environment, and the characteristics of the PC. The chief ergonomics challenge of PC is when moderate to high work rates must be performed in moderate to hot ambient environments. Comfort is typically subjectively measured and impacts performance. Comfort is multifactorial and dynamic rather than static. Sport clothing design is chiefly concerned with maximizing heat and moisture loss and comfort; however, attempts to use synthetic fabrics to increase comfort and heat dissipation have generally not been successful. Future innovations may include protective and sport clothing that responds to the environment, and that features integrated cooling systems with greater cooling capacity and practicality for mobile workers and sportsmen. A brief review of key challenges in the ergonomics of PC and sport clothing is presented along with potential directions for advancing ergonomics and comfort.
Differentially expressed late constituents of the epidermal cornified envelope

Barrier activity of skin and internal barrier-forming epithelial linings are conferred by a lipid-corneocyte structure (stratum corneum in skin). The integrity of the corneocytes depends on the outer cornified envelope and is essential for maintenance of barrier function. During epidermal development and differentiation, proteins are sequentially incorporated into the envelope via action of epidermal transglutaminases in a well documented process. However, recent knockouts of major cornified envelope constituents have failed to disrupt barrier function significantly, suggesting that additional unidentified components are involved. We report a new gene cluster in the epidermal differentiation complex at human 1q21 encoding a family of 18 proteins that are substrates for epidermal transglutaminases. These proteins incorporate into the cornified envelope late in development and late in the process of envelope maturation during epidermal differentiation. The genes cluster within the epidermal differentiation complex according to expression pattern, i.e., epidermally expressed proteins cluster together while proteins from internal barrier-forming epithelia also cluster. We propose that these proteins modulate barrier activity over the surface of the animal, in a manner analogous to that proposed for the well characterized cornified envelope precursors, the small proline-rich proteins. To emphasize the incorporation of these proteins late in envelope assembly, we call the human proteins late envelope proteins.
How Organizational Cognitive Neuroscience Can Deepen Understanding of Managerial Decision‐Making: A Review of the Recent Literature and Future Directions

There is growing interest in exploring the potential links between human biology and management and organization studies, which is bringing greater attention to bear on the place of mental processes in explaining human behaviour and effectiveness. The authors define this new field as organizational cognitive neuroscience (OCN), which is in the exploratory phase of its emergence and diffusion. It is clear that there are methodological debates and issues associated with OCN research, and the aim of this paper is to illuminate these concerns, and provide a roadmap for rigorous and relevant future work in the area. To this end, the current reach of OCN is investigated by the systematic review methodology, revealing three clusters of activity, covering the fields of economics, marketing and organizational behaviour. Among these clusters, organizational behaviour seems to be an outlier, owing to its far greater variety of empirical work, which the authors argue is largely a result of the plurality of research methods that have taken root within this field. Nevertheless, all three clusters contribute to a greater understanding of the biological mechanisms that mediate choice and decision-making. The paper concludes that OCN research has already provided important insights regarding the boundaries surrounding human freedom to act in various domains and, in turn, self-determination to influence the workplace. However, there is much to be done, and emerging research of significant interest is highlighted.
Optimal power control for energy harvesting cognitive radio networks

Cognitive radio (CR) can be combined with energy harvesting to lift the spectrum efficiency and make use of green energy. The allocated power for the secondary user (SU) needs to have peak power constraints to restrict the interference with the primary user (PU). On the other side, the energy harvesting property of the nodes leads to the causality feature when allocating the harvested energy. In this paper, we apply our recently proposed geometric water-filling with peak power constraints (GWFPP) and recursion machinery to solve the target throughput maximization problem. The proposed algorithm is precisely defined. It provides the exact optimal solution via efficient finite computation. Optimality of the proposed algorithm is strictly proved. Numerical results are presented to illustrate steps and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, and the exact optimal solutions to the problem. Significant throughput gain can be observed over the well-known primal-dual interior point method (PD-IPM), which only guarantee to generate an ∈ solution to the problem.
Comparative genomic fingerprinting of Campylobacter: application in routine public health surveillance and epidemiological investigations

SUMMARY A subtyping methodology for Campylobacter, Comparative Genomic Fingerprinting (CGF40), has been described recently. The objective of this study was to assess the utility of CGF40 as a tool to enhance routine public health surveillance of campylobacteriosis. Isolates of Campylobacter from across the province were requested and sent for CGF40 subtyping. Epidemiological data from cases reported to public health officials in Nova Scotia, Canada, from January 2012 to March 2015 were linked with blinded CGF40 subtyping results. CGF40 was epidemiologically valid; subtyping discerned known epidemiologically related isolates and augmented case-finding. Predominant sources and locations of subtype detection from the national reference database showed some study subtypes were rare and even novel to the database, while others were more commonly identified over multiple years and with exposures locally and internationally. A case-case study design was applied to examine risk factors for the most common CGF40 subtypes detected. Differences in the epidemiology of different CGF40 subtypes were observed. Statistically significant associations were noted for specific subtypes with rural residence, local exposure, contact with a pet dog or cat, contact with chickens, and drinking unpasteurized milk. With prospective use, CGF40 could potentially identify unrecognized outbreaks and contribute to epidemiological investigations of case clusters.
Genetics and Pathogenesis of Polycystic Kidney Disease

Polycystic kidney disease (PKD), a common genetic cause of chronic renal failure in children and adults, is characterized by the accumulation of fluid-filled cysts in the kidney and other organs. The renal cysts originate from the epithelia of the nephrons and renal collecting system and are lined by a single layer of cells that have higher rates of cellular proliferation and are less differentiated than normal tubular cells Abnormalities in gene expression, cell polarity, fluid secretion, apoptosis, and extracellular matrix been described in PKD, the mechanism of cyst formation remains the genetics and pathogenesis of PKD. Genes recessive cloned, the PKD2 gene product been identified an intracellular calcium release the PKD1 gene to regulate the cell cycle, and a neglected cellular organelle, the primary cilium, has emerged as a potential key player in polycystic disease. In review, we will discuss how the cloning of the human PKD genes and the characterization of animal models have provided new insights into the pathogenesis of PKD. It is hoped that a more thorough understanding of the genetics and pathogenesis of PKD will to improvements in diagnosis and treatment.
Effects of Mating Disruption Treatments on Navel Orangeworm (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae) Sexual Communication and Damage in Almonds and Pistachios

Abstract Two experiments in 2003 examined the effects of different ways of dispensing the principal sex pheromone component on sexual communication among and crop damage by the navel orangeworm, Amyelois transitella (Walker) (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae) in Nonpareil almonds and pistachios. A third experiment in 2004 compared the effect on navel orangeworm damage to several almond varieties using one of these dispensing systems by itself or with phosmet, phosmet alone, and an untreated control. Additional data are presented estimating release rates from timed aerosol release devices (PuffersNOW, Suterra LLC, Bend, OR) and hand-applied membrane dispensers. In 2003, puffers placed peripherally around 16-ha blocks, evenly spaced Puffers, and hand-applied dispensers reduced males captured in virgin-baited traps by ≥95% and mating in sentinel females by ≥69%, with evenly placed Puffers showing greater reduction of males captured and females mated compared with the other dispensing systems. Mating disruption with gridded Puffers or hand-applied devices in almonds resulted in an ≈37% reduction of navel orangeworm damage (not significant), whereas peripheral Puffers resulted in a 16% reduction of navel orangeworm damage to almonds. In pistachios neither peripheral nor gridded Puffers reduced navel orangeworm damage, whereas insecticide reduced damage by 56%. In 2004, Puffers alone, insecticide alone, and both in combination significantly reduced navel orangeworm damage in Nonpareil almonds. In other, later harvested varieties, the insecticide treatments reduced damage, whereas the mating disruption treatment alone did not. We discuss application of these findings to management of navel orangeworm in these two crops.
Toward Large-Population Face Identification in Unconstrained Videos

We investigate large-scale face identification in unconstrained videos with 1000 subjects. This problem is very challenging, and until now most studies have only considered the scenarios with a small number of subjects and videos captured in controlled laboratory environments. Our contributions in this paper are twofold. First, we set up a large-scale video database in an unconstrained environment, Celebrity-1000, with data collected from two popular video-sharing websites, YouTube and Youku, for face identification research. It contains 1000 celebrities from different countries, ~7000 videos, ~160 K tracking sequences, and ~2.4 M sampled frames. Second, we boost the efficiency of multitask joint sparse representation (MTJSR) algorithm for video-based face identification on Celebrity-1000. MTJSR is training free and can naturally integrate multiple frames of the same tracking sequence for collaborative inference, and thus is suitable for video-based face identification. We present a sparsity-induced scalable optimization method, which solves the large-scale MTJSR problem by sequentially solving a series of smaller-scale subproblems with theoretically guaranteed convergency. Extensive experiments show several orders-of-magnitude speedup with this new optimization method, and also demonstrate the superiorities of the accelerated MTJSR algorithm over several popular baseline algorithms.
Reconfigurable Viterbi decoder on mesh connected multiprocessor architecture

In modern wireline and wireless communication systems, Viterbi decoder is one of the most compute intensive and essential elements. Each standard requires a different configuration of Viterbi decoder. Hence there is a need to design a flexible reconfigurable Viterbi decoder to support different configurations on a single platform. In this paper we present a reconfigurable Viterbi decoder which can be reconfigured for standards such as WCDMA, CDMA2000, IEEE 802.11, DAB, DVB, and GSM. Different parameters like code rate, constraint length, polynomials and truncation length can be configured to map any of the above mentioned standards. Our design provides higher throughput and scalable power consumption in various configuration of the reconfigurable Viterbi decoder. The power and throughput can also be optimized for different standards.
The neutrophil, a professional killer of bacteria, may be controlled by T cells

Neutrophil functions, including chemotactic responses and effector functions, seem to be increased by stimulated T lymphocytes and their products. In addition, T cells may act on mononuclear phagocytes, which in turn secrete products that augment neutrophil function. These events, in concert, may enhance the ability of these professional phagocytes to kill invading bacteria
Tomography of the Alpine region from observations of seismic ambient noise

We use correlations of the ambient seismic noise to study the crust in western Europe. Cross correlation of 1 year of noise recorded at 150 three components broadband stations yields more than 3 000 Rayleigh wave group velocity measurements. These measurements are used to construct Rayleigh group velocity maps of the Alpine region and surrounding area in the 5–80 s period band. In the 5–10 s period band, the seismic noise recorded in Europe is dominated by surface waves originating from the Northern Atlantic ocean. This anisotropy of the noise and the uneven station distribution affect the azimuthal distribution of the paths where we obtain reliable group velocity measurements. As a consequence our group velocity models have better resolution in the northeast direction than in the southwest direction. Finally we invert the resulting Rayleigh wave group velocity maps to determine the Moho depth. Our results are in good agreement with the result of the numerous active experiments in the Alps and provide a continuous image of the Alpine structure.
Chipless RFID reading system independent of polarization

One of the major drawbacks of chipless ultra-wideband (UWB) radiofrequency identification (RFID) systems is the polarization dependence. Most proposed tags have to be specifically oriented with the reader. This paper proposes a bistatic reading system which can rotate both the reader's emitting and receiving polarizations, by using two dual-access dual-polarization UWB antennas. The principle consists of electrically rotating the interrogating signal in transmission, while exploiting the rotation matrix in reception. By being able to rotate both polarizations, it is shown that cross-polarization chipless tags can be read independently of their orientation.
Restimulation of resting autoreactive T cells by Schwann cells in vitro.

This study demonstrates that rat Schwann cells can reactivate resting experimental allergic neuritis generating P(2) and P(2) peptide specific CD4(+) T cell lines. T cell proliferation was significantly greater to P(2) than to P(2) peptide (SP-26) or ovalbumin (OA). Four-level analysis of variance showed that T cell proliferation with endogenous or exogenous P(2) was not significantly different for Schwann cells plus cytokine IFN-gamma (P = 0.5071) unlike P(2) peptide or OA specific T cells (P = 0.0056 and 0.0003, respectively). Untreated Schwann cells were more effective inducers than irradiated or fixed Schwann cells. As stimulated CD4(+) P(2) T cells produce IFN-gamma and TNF-alpha, this could exacerbate blood nerve barrier breakdown that has been increasingly implicated in inflammatory demyelinating neuropathies (IDNs). This would permit entry of antibodies and complement, thereby contributing to the demyelination process. Schwann cell induced reactivation of CD4(+) T cells may therefore play a role in IDNs.