bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Periodontitis causes abnormalities in the liver of rats
Authors: Vasconcelos Any Carolina Cardoso Guimarães , Vasconcelos Daniel Fernando Pereira , Pereira da Silva Felipe Rodolfo , de Carvalho França Luiz Felipe , Alves Even Herlany Pereira , Lenardo David Di , dos Santos Pessoa Larissa , Novaes Pedro Duarte , Luiz dos Reis Barbosa André , Mani Arya , Mariano Flávia Sammartino , Medeiros Jand‐Venes Rolim , de Oliveira Aldeídia Pereira 
Published: September 2018

AbstractBackgroundPeriodontitis not only causes injury to the periodontium, but also damages other tissues such as: articulate, renal, cardiac, and hepatic. The objective of this study was to investigate periodontitis induced alterations in liver function and structure using an experimental model.MethodsTwenty female rats (Rattus norvegicus) were allocated into two groups: control and periodontitis. Gingival bleeding index and oxidative stress parameters and specific circulating biomarkers were measured. Immunohistochemistry was carried out using alkaline phosphatase (AlkP) staining of the liver. Hepatic tissues, cytokines, and lipid contents were measured. Histopathologic evaluation of the liver was carried out using light and electron microscopy.ResultsLiver histopathologic and immunohistochemistry assessment showed increase in steatosis score, and presence of binucleate hepatocytes and positive cells for AlkP in periodontitis versus control group. Ultrastructural evaluation showed significant increase in size and number of lipid droplets (LD), distance between the cisterns of rough endoplasmic reticulum (RER), mitochondria size, foamy cytoplasm, and glycogen accumulation in the liver of the periodontitis group compared with the control group. In addition, plasma levels of AlkP, high‐density lipoprotein (HDL), triglycerides, and total cholesterol were also changed.ConclusionExperimental periodontitis caused immunohistochemistry, histopathologic, ultrastructural, oxidative, and biochemical changes in the liver of rats.
Marine geomorphological record of Ice Sheet development in East Greenland since the Last Glacial Maximum
Authors: Arndt Jan Erik 
Published: September 2018

ABSTRACTReconstructions of ice sheet development in East Greenland, since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), are poorly constrained. This study compiles swath bathymetric data from five expeditions, to investigate the geomorphology of three glacier outlet systems (Kejser Franz Joseph Fjord, Kong Oscar Fjord, and Scoresby Sund) and reconstruct the post‐LGM ice dynamics and extent. The landforms suggest that ice streams probably reached the shelf edge, via cross‐shelf troughs, in all three systems at the LGM. Off Scoresby Sund, it remains unresolved as to whether a mid‐shelf grounding zone wedge marks a recessional stage or the LGM extent. In the Allerød–Bølling interstadial, ice retreated to the fjord entrances at Kejser Franz Joseph Fjord and Kong Oscar Fjord, as documented by partly overridden terminal moraines, and most probably into the fjord at Scoresby Sund. Subsequent overriding occurred by ice readvance, probably in the Younger Dryas. Large ice‐marginal deposition features, formed on the mid‐shelf and at the entrance of Scoresby Sund, probably mark the maximum ice‐sheet extent after the readvance. Holocene retreat was rapid, except for two phases of stabilization at the entrance of Kong Oscar Fjord. Landslide debris indicates that at least one tsunami affected Scoresby Sund at some time in the Holocene.
Effect of Sodium Halide on Micellar and Surface Properties of Cationic Silicone Surfactants
Authors: Tan Jinglin , Shao Jufang , Tian Cuiping , Liao Zhiman , Yan Ping 
Published: September 2018

AbstractThe effect of sodium halide on aggregation behavior of four cationic silicone surfactants, Si3mamCl, Si4mamCl, Si4PyCl, and Si4minCl, in solution was investigated using surface tension and conductivity measurements. The ability of sodium halide (NaCl, NaBr, and NaI) to reduce critical micelle concentration (CMC) values was in the order NaI > NaBr > NaCl. However, the
γCMC values of the cationic silicone surfactants, Si4mamCl, Si4PyCl and Si4minCl, in sodium halide solution are almost the same as those of the salt‐free system. The values of and are negative, indicating that the micellization process and adsorption of the four cationic silicone surfactants at the air‐solution interface are spontaneous.
An environmentally friendly method for the enantioseparation and determination of benalaxyl in tobacco and soil by ultra‐performance convergence chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry
Authors: Yang Fei , Tang Gangling , Li Zhonghao , Fan Ziyan , Wang Ying , Liu Shanshan , Bian Zhaoyang , Deng Huimin 
Published: September 2018

AbstractFor the purpose of chiral separation and determination of benalaxyl enantiomers in tobacco and soil, we developed a rapid, green, and sensitive method using ultra‐performance convergence chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry. The samples were extracted and purified by the quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe method before injection. The baseline separation was obtained on a chiral column in 5 min with carbon dioxide and ethanol as mobile phase. Separation parameters were optimized for the best separation efficiency. Under optimal conditions, the recoveries of both enantiomers were 77.1–98.4% with relative standard deviations <5.0% at spiked level of 0.1, 2.0, and 5.0 mg/kg in two matrices. Good coefficients of determination were achieved over the concentration range of 10–250 ng/mL. The limit of detection and the limit of quantification for all enantiomers ranged from 0.43 to 0.72 μg/kg and from 1.25 to 2.15 μg/kg, respectively. The results show that ultra‐performance convergence chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry provides a reliable, green, and rapid method for the separation and determination of benalaxyl enantiomers in tobacco and soil. This method has important theoretical significance for studying the enantioselectivity and bioactivity of benalaxyl in the environment and in organisms.
Measuring Intraventricular Pressure Using Ultrasound Elastography
Authors: Vejdani‐Jahromi Maryam , Freedman Jenna , Trahey Gregg E. , Wolf Patrick D. 
Published: September 2018

ObjectivesIntraventricular pressure (IVP) is one of the most important measurements for evaluating cardiac function, but this measurement is not currently easily assessable in the clinic. The primary reason for this is the absence of a noninvasive technique for measuring IVP. In this study, we investigate the relationship between IVP and dynamic myocardial stiffness measured by shear wave elasticity imaging (SWEI) and assess the feasibility of measuring IVP using SWEI.MethodsIn 8 isolated working rabbit hearts, IVP was recorded in the left ventricle using a pressure catheter. Simultaneously, myocardial stiffness was recorded by SWEI. Using the peak values for IVP and SWEI measured stiffness, SWEI measurements were calibrated and converted to IVP.ResultsA linear relationship with zero intercept was observed between IVP and SWEI, with the average slope of 0.318 kPa/mm Hg, R2 = 0.89. Using one point on the IVP/SWEI curve, SWEI measurements were converted to IVP. Estimated pressure using SWEI and IVP were linearly correlated with the slope of 0.95, R2 = 0.88 (mean end diastolic pressure by pressure catheter = 12.716 mm Hg and by SWEI=14.726 mm Hg), indicating the near equivalence of the 2 measurements.ConclusionWe have shown that SWEI measurements are linearly related to IVP; therefore, pressure‐based indices could potentially be derived from SWEI ultrasound elastography. The feasibility of using SWEI to estimate IVP with a single point calibration was also shown in this study.
Natural regeneration on land degraded by coal mining in a tropical climate: Lessons for ecological restoration from Indonesia
Authors: Novianti Vivi , Marrs Rob H. , Choesin Devi N. , Iskandar Djoko T. , Suprayogo Didik 
Published: September 2018

AbstractThere are few examples of primary succession from tropical conditions, especially on land degraded by human activity, for example, mine wastes. Such studies would assist in informing ecological restoration of these degraded sites. Here, a chronosequence approach was used to investigate early‐stage primary succession on overburden spoil wastes derived from coal mining in a tropical climate over a 64‐month period. Plant species composition and several microclimatic and spoil physicochemical and microbial properties were measured, and responses analysed using regression and multivariate (nonmetric multidimensional scaling) analyses. A clear primary successional process was described showing that vegetation cover and species richness generally increased through time with a successional pathway from graminoids and herbs as the early dominants, shrubs in midsuccession, and trees in the later‐successional stages. Two important differences were noted between our results and primary successions elsewhere; a lower abundance of nitrogen‐fixing species and the colonization by some late‐successional shrubs and trees at the start. During the succession, aggregate stability and organic matter (total C) increased—whereas electrical conductivity and some potentially toxic elements (Al, B) decreased. The constant high spoil moisture content appears to be an important determinant of vegetation development during primary succession and may be a factor in the rapid pace of succession detected here. The lessons for ecological restoration for coal overburden spoil under tropical conditions are that succession can proceed relatively rapidly.
Lack of consensus about indigenous soil knowledge among wet rice farmers in a Thai‐Lao village in Northeast Thailand
Authors: Yodda Sujitra , Rambo A. Terry 
Published: September 2018

AbstractMost ethnopedological research has been based on information collected in group interviews. Resulting descriptions of indigenous soil taxonomies represent group consensus views and ignore variations among individuals. In this study, 11 Thai‐Lao farmers in a village in Northeast Thailand were individually interviewed about their knowledge of local paddy soils. They identified 14 named soils in their fields. Texture, color, softness, and taste were the main indicators employed to identify soils, with texture the most commonly used criterion. Agreement among informants about the names of the various soil types was surprisingly low, with as many as seven names applied to the same soil type. The farmers also differed in the ways they classified the different soil types into larger groups; six farmers divided them into four groups, and five farmers divided them into three groups. This lack of consensus about soil names and classification among members of the same small community may reflect the way that villagers acquire their knowledge of soils. Soil knowledge is transmitted vertically from parents to their children within families but is rarely or never shared horizontally with fellow villagers. Soil knowledge is a type of familial microculture rather than a widely shared body of knowledge within the whole community. This finding suggests that land use planners and rural development practitioners should be cautious in basing their plans for community management of soil resources on existing studies of indigenous soil knowledge without first establishing how widely shared this knowledge is among community members.
Individual‐based modeling explains the contrasted seasonality in size, growth, and reproduction of the sympatric Arctic (Thysanoessa raschii) and Nordic krill (Meganyctiphanes norvegica) in the St. Lawrence Estuary, eastern Canada
Authors: Benkort D. , Plourde S. , Winkler G. , Cabrol J. , Ollier A. , Cope L.‐E. , Maps F. 
Published: September 2018

AbstractThe Nordic krill Meganyctiphanes norvegica and Arctic krill Thysanoessa raschii both dominate the krill community within the Estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence system where they are central forage species for its pelagic ecosystem. We developed a species‐specific physiological individual based model that implements the critical physiological processes of growth, molting, and reproduction of female adults as responses to environmental forcing. Key innovations of our approach were the decoupling between the molting schedule and growth, as well as considering two distinct sources of prey (phytoplankton and mesozooplankton). Our simulation results revealed that the details of the feeding process were critical for an accurate representation of the production dynamics of adult individuals from both species. Their specific feeding preferences on phytoplankton and mesozooplankton resulted in distinct species‐specific phenological patterns that reproduced observations. The present study highlights the importance of detailed knowledge of diet and feeding behavior of krill species to improve our understanding of population responses in a rapidly changing environment.
HToPred: A Tool for Human Topoisomerase II Inhibitor Prediction
Authors: Tripathi Neha , Shaikh Naeem , Bharatam Prasad V. , Garg Prabha 
Published: September 2018

AbstractThe enzyme human topoisomerase IIα (hTopoIIα) is an important anticancer drug target. Due to the availability of multiple inhibitor‐binding sites in this enzyme, the anti‐hTopoII agents possess high chemical diversity. Chemoinformatics methods can be used to identify lead compounds from large databases for hTopoII inhibitory activity and classify them. In this work, we report the use of machine learning methods to develop classification models for the identification of possible anti‐hTopoIIα agents and to classify them as catalytic inhibitors vs. poisons. Initially, an extensive dataset of small molecules which are reported to be evaluated towards hTopoIIα inhibition was collected from ChEMBL database and literature. Using this dataset, predictive models for classifying small molecules into hTopoIIα inhibitors and non‐inhibitors were developed. Additionally, the model development was taken up for the prediction of the type of hTopoIIα inactivation. Several molecular fingerprints and physicochemical descriptors of the molecules in the dataset were calculated using the chemoinformatics tool RDKit. Various classifiers were evaluated to establish suitable protocol. Further, ensemble models were developed by bagging of homogenous classifier and selective fusion of heterogeneous classifiers. The models were thoroughly validated with 5‐fold cross validation and external validation. The best performing models were incorporated into a tool christened as Human Topoisomerase IIα Inhibitor Prediction (HToPred, http://14.139.57.41/HToPred). A molecular docking based validation for the successful application of HToPred in predicting the mode of enzyme inhibition was performed, which further established the acceptability of this tool. This tool can serve as an important platform to prescreen compounds for anti‐hTopoIIα potential.
Automatic localization of closely spaced cochlear implant electrode arrays in clinical CTs
Authors: Zhao Yiyuan , Dawant Benoit M. , Labadie Robert F. , Noble Jack H. 
Published: September 2018

PurposeCochlear implants (CIs) are neural prosthetic devices that provide a sense of sound to people who experience profound hearing loss. Recent research has indicated that there is a significant correlation between hearing outcomes and the intracochlear locations of the electrodes. We have developed an image‐guided cochlear implant programming (IGCIP) system based on this correlation to assist audiologists with programming CI devices. One crucial step in our IGCIP system is the localization of CI electrodes in postimplantation CTs. Existing methods for this step are either not fully automated or not robust. When the CI electrodes are closely spaced, it is more difficult to identify individual electrodes because there is no intensity contrast between them in a clinical CT. The goal of this work is to automatically segment the closely spaced CI electrode arrays in postimplantation clinical CTs.MethodsThe proposed method involves firstly identifying a bounding box that contains the cochlea by using a reference CT. Then, the intensity image and the vesselness response of the VOI are used to segment the regions of interest (ROIs) that may contain the electrode arrays. For each ROI, we apply a voxel thinning method to generate the medial axis line. We exhaustively search through all the possible connections of medial axis lines. For each possible connection, we define CI array centerline candidates by selecting two points on the connected medial axis lines as the array endpoints. For each CI array centerline candidate, we use a cost function to evaluate its quality, and the one with the lowest cost is selected as the array centerline. Then, we fit an a priori known geometric model of the array to the centerline to localize the individual electrodes. The method was trained on 28 clinical CTs of CI recipients implanted with three models of closely spaced CI arrays. The localization results are compared with the ground truth localization results manually generated by an expert.ResultsA validation study was conducted on 129 clinical CTs of CI recipients implanted with three models of closely spaced arrays. Ninety‐eight percent of the localization results generated by the proposed method had maximum localization errors lower than one voxel diagonal of the CTs. The mean localization error was 0.13 mm, which was close to the rater's consistency error (0.11 mm). The method also outperformed the existing automatic electrode localization methods in our validation study.ConclusionOur validation study shows that our method can localize closely spaced CI arrays with an accuracy close to what is achievable by an expert on clinical CTs. This represents a crucial step toward automating IGCIP and translating it from the laboratory to the clinical workflow.
Content‐oriented sparse representation (COSR) for CT denoising with preservation of texture and edge
Authors: Xie Huiqiao , Niu Tianye , Tang Shaojie , Yang Xiaofeng , Kadom Nadja , Tang Xiangyang 
Published: September 2018

PurposeDenoising has been a challenging research subject in medical imaging, since the suppression of noise conflicts with the preservation of texture and edges. To address this challenge, we develop a content‐oriented sparse representation (COSR) method for denoising in computed tomography (CT).MethodsAn image is segmented into a number of content areas and each of them consists of similar material. Having been ex‐painted, each content area is sparsely coded using the dictionary learnt from patches extracted from the corresponding content area. By constraining sparsity, noise is suppressed and the final image is formed by aggregating all denoised content areas. The performance of COSR method is examined with images simulated by computer and generated by multidetector row CT (MDCT), cone beam CT (CBCT), and micro‐CT, in which water phantom, anthropomorphic phantom, a human subject, and a small animal are engaged, using the figures of merit, such as standard division (SD), contrast to noise ratio (CNR), and thresholded edge keeping index (EKIth) and structural similarity index (SSIM). In addition, the optimization of performance by parameter tuning is also investigated.ResultsQuantitatively gauged by metrics of noise, EKIth and SSIM, the performance evaluation shows that the proposed COSR method is effective in denoising (>50% reduction in noise) while it outperforms the conventional sparse representation method in preservation of texture and edge by ~20% (gauged by SSIM). It has also been shown that the COSR method is tolerable to inaccuracy in content area segmentation and variation in dictionary learning. Moreover, the computational efficiency of COSR can be substantially improved using prelearnt dictionaries.ConclusionsThe COSR method would find its utility in clinical and preclinical applications, such as low‐dose CT, image segmentation, registration, and computer‐aided diagnosis. The proposal of COSR denoising is of innovation and significance in the theory and practice of denoising in medical imaging. A demonstration code package is available at https://github.com/xiehq/COSR.
Technical Note: Characterization of clinical linear accelerator triggering latency for motion management system development
Authors: Shepard Andrew J. , Matrosic Charles K. , Radtke Jeffrey L. , Jupitz Sydney A. , Culberson Wesley S. , Bednarz Bryan P. 
Published: September 2018

PurposeLatencies for motion management systems have previously been presented as guidelines for system development and implementation. These guidelines consider the overall system latency, including data acquisition, algorithm processing, and linac triggering time. However, during system development, the triggering latency of the clinical linear accelerator is often considered fixed. This paper presents a method to decouple the linac‐only triggering latency from the total system latency such that latency can be considered in terms of only the linac‐independent aspects of the system.MethodsThe linac‐only latency was investigated by considering the time at which a linac response was observed relative to the time at which a beam‐on/off triggering signal was sent to the linac. The relative time between the two signals was analyzed using a multichannel oscilloscope with input signals from a custom gating box to manually trigger the beam state as well as a diode positioned at beam isocenter to monitor the linac response. The beam‐on/off latency was measured at multiple energies (6/18 MV) and repetition rates (100–600 MU/min) to investigate beam setting dependencies.ResultsThe measured latency was observed to be dependent on the accelerator settings for repetition rate and energy, with beam‐on latencies decreasing with increasing repetition rate and decreasing energy. In contrast, the opposite trend was present for the observed beam‐off latency. At 600 MU/min, beam‐on/off latencies were observed to be 3.37/1.45 ms for a 6 MV beam and 6.02/0.73 ms for an 18 MV beam. Negative latencies were possible for beam‐off measurements due to the mechanical latency being less than the pulse separation at given repetition rates.ConclusionsThe linac latency associated with triggering the beam‐on/off was determined to have a minor contribution to the total allowable system latency; thus, the majority of the total system latency can be attributed to linac‐independent factors.