Evaluation Indicators for Priorities of Standardization in Traditional Medicine: using Analytic Hierarchy Process(AHP)

The entire manuscript is available for download as a single PDF file. Higher-resolution images are unavailable. For assistance, please contact [email protected]. Fieldwork Team: Philippe Beaujard (Director of Research, French National Centre for Scientific Research). Technical Team: Dr. Vika Zafrin (Digital Scholarship Librarian, BU Libraries), Eleni Castro (OpenBU and Electronic Theses & Dissertations Librarian, BU Libraries), Dr. Fallou Ngom (Director of the African Studies Center), Dr. Peter Quella (Assistant Director, African Studies Center), Mustapha Hashim Kurfi (PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science), and Zachary Gersten (Research Assistant, African Studies Center). This collection of Malagasy Ajami materials is copied as part of the African Studies Center’s African Ajami Library. This project is partly funded by the BU African Studies Center. We thank Dr. Tim Longman, past Director of the African Studies Center, and the entire African Studies team for their support. For Inquiries: Please contact Professor Fallou Ngom ([email protected]).The material is the fourth part of the second of two texts copied and owned by Jean, a diviner-healer (called ombiasy in Malagasy). Jean belonged to the Anakara Clan and lived in a village called Vatomasina in the Antemoro region (in the valley of the Matatàña River). The original author of the material is unknown. The material was photographed between 1983 and 1990. The material was written on paper school notebooks. While the exact content of material is unknown, it is believed to contain guidance for charms, divination, and healing through prayers, geomancy, and astrology

Effect of collagen endometrial patch loaded with adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells on endometrial regeneration in rats with a thin endometrium

BackgroundThis study aimed to investigate the effects of a collagen endometrial patch (EM patch) loaded with adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells (ADSCs) on endometrial regeneration in a rat model with thin endometrium.Materials and methodsThin endometrium was induced in female rats and divided into treatment groups as outlined: control, group 1(G1), local injection of ADSCs into the uterus, group 2 (G2), an EM patch without ADSCs, group 3 (G3), and an EM patch loaded with ADSCs, group 4 (G4). The rats were euthanized at either two weeks or four weeks after modeling and treatment followed by histological and biochemical analyses to examine the regenerative effects on the injured endometrium.ResultsTransplantation of the ADSC-loaded EM patch significantly promoted endometrial proliferation and increased the luminal epithelial area. Two weeks after treatment, the mean number of von Villebrand factor (vWF)+ or cluster of differentiation (CD) 31+-stained blood vessels was significantly higher in G4 than in G1 and G2. The mRNA and protein expression levels of TGF-β and FGF2 were significantly upregulated in G4 compared to those in the control. G4 exhibited significantly increased LIF mRNA levels and immunoreactivity compared with the other groups at both two weeks and four weeks after treatment. Cell tracking after ADSCs treatment revealed the presence of a substantial number of ADSCs grafted in the uterine tissues of G4, whereas a low number of ADSCs that were focally clustered were present in G2.ConclusionTransplantation of EM patches loaded with ADSCs resulted in the histological and biochemical restoration of an injured endometrium. The strategic integration of EM patches and ADSCs holds significant promise as an innovative therapeutic approach for effectively treating impaired endometrial conditions

A comparison of food and nutrient intake between instant noodle consumers and non-instant noodle consumers in Korean adults

Instant noodles are widely consumed in Asian countries. The Korean population consumed the largest quantity of instant noodles in the world in 2008. However, few studies have investigated the relationship between instant noodles and nutritional status in Koreans. The objective of this study was to examine the association between instant noodle consumption and food and nutrient intake in Korean adults. We used dietary data of 6,440 subjects aged 20 years and older who participated in the Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey III. The average age of the instant noodle consumers (INC) was 36.2 and that of the non-instant noodle consumers (non-INC) was 44.9; men consumed more instant noodles than women (P < 0.001). With the exception of cereals and grain products, legumes, seaweeds, eggs, and milk and dairy products, INC consumed significantly fewer potatoes and starches, sugars, seeds and nuts, vegetables, mushrooms, fruits, seasonings, beverages, meats, fishes, and oils and fats compared with those in the non-INC group. The INC group showed significantly higher nutrient intake of energy, fat, sodium, thiamine, and riboflavin; however, the INC group showed a significantly lower intake of protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, potassium, vitamin A, niacin, and vitamin C compared with those in the non-INC group. This study revealed that consuming instant noodles may lead to excessive intake of energy, fats, and sodium but may also cause increased intake of thiamine and riboflavin. Therefore, nutritional education helping adults to choose a balanced meal while consuming instant noodles should be implemented. Additionally, instant noodle manufacturers should consider nutritional aspects when developing new products

Immunohistochemical localization of galectin-3 in the granulomatous lesions of paratuberculosis-infected bovine intestine

The presence of galectin-3 was immunohistochemically quantified in bovine intestines infected with paratuberculosis (Johne's disease) to determine whether galectin-3 was involved in the formation of granulation tissue associated with the disease. Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis infection was histochemically confirmed using Ziehl-Neelsen staining and molecularly diagnosed through rpoB DNA sequencing. Galectin-3 was detected in the majority of inflammatory cells, possibly macrophages, in the granulomatous lesions within affected tissues, including the ileum. These findings suggest that galectin-3 is associated with the formation of chronic granulation tissues in bovine paratuberculosis, probably through cell adhesion and anti-apoptosis mechanisms

Plasmodesmal receptor-like kinases identified through analysis of rice cell wall extracted proteins

In plants, plasmodesmata (PD) are intercellular channels that function in both metabolite exchange and the transport of proteins and RNAs. Currently, many of the PD structural and regulatory components remain to be elucidated. Receptor-like kinases (RLKs) belonging to a notably expanded protein family in plants compared to the animal kingdom have been shown to play important roles in plant growth, development, pathogen resistance, and cell death. In this study, cell biological approaches were used to identify potential PD-associated RLK proteins among proteins contained within cell walls isolated from rice callus cultured cells. A total of 15 rice RLKs were investigated to determine their subcellular localization, using an Agrobacterium-mediated transient expression system. Of these six PD-associated RLKs were identified based on their co-localization with a viral movement protein that served as a PD marker, plasmolysis experiments, and subcellular localization at points of wall contact between spongy mesophyll cells. These findings suggest potential PD functions in apoplasmic signaling in response to environmental stimuli and developmental inputs

A multimode/multiband envelope tracking transmitter with broadband saturated amplifier

A multimode/multiband envelope tracking (ET) transmitter consisting of a hybrid switching amplifier (HSA) and a broadband saturated power amplifier (PA) is developed for operation across 1.3 to 2.7 GHz. For the various standard signals with different bandwidth (BW) and peak-to-average power ratio, the HSA efficiently provides supply signals to the PA by changing the reference value of the hysteresis comparator. The saturated amplifier employs the nonlinear output capacitor to shape the voltage waveform, resulting in the half-sinusoidal or rectangular waveform. Since the nonlinear capacitor generates large out-of-phased second harmonic component with small higher order harmonics, the voltage shaping is mainly carried out by the capacitor and slightly supported by the harmonic loading circuit. Thus, with the harmonic load higher than that of output capacitor, the saturated amplifier can operate with high efficiency. This characteristic enables the saturated PA to operate with broadband characteristic and high efficiency because the design is mainly focused on the fundamental matching problem while the harmonics can be easily kept out of a low efficiency region through the subsequent optimization of the matching circuit. The broadband saturated PA is implemented based on load/source-pull methodology. The broadband matching networks for the high efficiency are synthesized using the simplified real frequency technique. For the BW from 1.3 to 2.7 GHz (70% fractional BW), the measured output power, drain efficiency, and power-added efficiency (PAE) performances are between 39.8-42.0 dBm, 55.8-69.7%, and 51.2-65.3%, respectively. The multimode/multiband ET transmitter with the designed broadband saturated PA is demonstrated at 1.8425-GHz long-term evolution (LTE), 2.14-GHz wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA), and 2.6-GHz mobile world wide interoperability for microwave access (m-WiMAX) applications. This transmitter delivers a PAE of 32.16, 37.24, and 28.75% for LTE, WCDMA, and m-WiMAX applications.X113837sciescopu

Highly efficient saturated power amplifier

X1118sciescopu

Towards More Robust Interpretation via Local Gradient Alignment

Neural network interpretation methods, particularly feature attribution methods, are known to be fragile with respect to adversarial input perturbations. To address this, several methods for enhancing the local smoothness of the gradient while training have been proposed for attaining robust feature attributions. However, the lack of considering the normalization of the attributions, which is essential in their visualizations, has been an obstacle to understanding and improving the robustness of feature attribution methods. In this paper, we provide new insights by taking such normalization into account. First, we show that for every non-negative homogeneous neural network, a naive l2-robust criterion for gradients is not normalization invariant, which means that two functions with the same normalized gradient can have different values. Second, we formulate a normalization invariant cosine distance-based criterion and derive its upper bound, which gives insight for why simply minimizing the Hessian norm at the input, as has been done in previous work, is not sufficient for attaining robust feature attribution. Finally, we propose to combine both l2 and cosine distance-based criteria as regularization terms to leverage the advantages of both in aligning the local gradient. As a result, we experimentally show that models trained with our method produce much more robust interpretations on CIFAR-10 and ImageNet-100 without significantly hurting the accuracy, compared to the recent baselines. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to verify the robustness of interpretation on a larger-scale dataset beyond CIFAR-10, thanks to the computational efficiency of our method