Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The role of TGF-&bgr; in the pathophysiology of peritoneal endometriosis

BACKGROUND Endometriosis is estimated to affect 6-10% of women of reproductive age and it is associated with chronic pelvic pain, dysmenorrhoea and subfertility. It is currently managed surgically or medically but symptoms recur in up to 75% of cases and available medical treatments have undesirable side effects. Endometriosis is defined as the presence of endometrial tissue outside the uterus with lesions typically found on the peritoneum. The aetiology of endometriosis is uncertain but there is increasing evidence that transforming growth factor (TGF)-β plays a major role. OBJECTIVE AND RATIONALE A descriptive review was undertaken of the published literature on the expression pattern of TGF-β ligands and signalling molecules in women with and without endometriosis, and on the potential roles of TGF-β signalling in the development and progression of peritoneal endometriosis. The current understanding of the TGF-β signalling pathway is summarized. SEARCH METHODS We searched the Pubmed database using the terms 'transforming growth factor beta' and 'endometriosis' for studies published between 1995 and 2016. The initial search identified 99 studies and these were used as the basic material for this review. We also extended our remit for important older publications. In addition, we searched the reference lists of studies used in this review for additional studies we judged as relevant. Studies which were included in the review focused on peritoneal endometriosis only as increasing evidence suggests that ovarian and deep endometriosis may have a differing pathophysiology. Thus, a final 95 studies were included in the review. OUTCOMES TGF-β1 is reported to be increased in the peritoneal fluid, serum, ectopic endometrium and peritoneum of women with endometriosis compared to women without endometriosis, and TGF-β1-null mice have reduced endometriosis lesion growth when compared to their wild-type controls. Studies in mice and women have indicated that increasing levels of TGF-β ligands are associated with decreased immune cell activity within the peritoneum, together with an increase in ectopic endometrial cell survival, attachment, invasion and proliferation, during endometriosis lesion development. TGF-β1 has been associated with changes in ectopic endometrial and peritoneal cell metabolism and the initiation of neoangiogenesis, further fuelling endometriosis lesion development. WIDER IMPLICATIONS Together these studies suggest that TGF-β1 plays a major role in the development of peritoneal endometriosis lesions and that targeting this pathway may be of therapeutic potential.
A numerical model on PVB laminated windshield subjected to headform low-speed impact

Polyvinyl butyral (PVB) laminated windshield is one of the most important components in automotive to protect vulnerable road users. First, a windshield finite element (FE) model is set up using a piece of interlayer (PVB) sandwiched by two glass layers. Four parameters which have an critical impact on the simulation results, i.e. glass Young's modulus, glass plastic failure strain, PVB stress-strain curve and boundary condition, are suggested to measure the influence on the windshield model. Each windshield model is impacted by a standard headform impactor at the speed of 8m/s based on the LS-DYNA platform and the results are compared with the dynamic experiments of PVB laminated windshield under headform impact to find the most accurate FE model. Furthermore, the most accurate FE windshield model is compacted by the standard headform impactor on various impact velocities (6.6m/s-11.2m/s), angles (60°–90°) compared with the parametric dynamic experiments of PVB laminated windshield to verify the windshield finite element model. This paper provides a useful finite element model of windshield for further systematically numerical studies based on the finite element method to explore the ability of the energy absorption and safety design of PVB laminated windshield.
Chronic Binge Alcohol-Induced Dysregulation of Mitochondrial-Related Genes in Skeletal Muscle of Simian Immunodeficiency Virus-Infected Rhesus Macaques at End-Stage Disease

Aims Alcohol use disorders are more prevalent in HIV patients than the general population. Both chronic alcohol consumption and HIV infection have been linked to mitochondrial dysregulation; and this is considered an important mechanism in the pathogenesis of muscle myopathy. This study investigated if chronic binge alcohol (CBA) administration impairs the expression of genes involved in mitochondrial homeostasis in SIV-infected macaques. Methods Male rhesus macaques were administered daily CBA (to achieve peak blood alcohol concentrations of 50-60 mM within 2 h after start of infusion) or sucrose (SUC) intragastrically 3 months prior to intravenous SIVmac251 inoculation and continued until macaques met criteria for end-stage disease. Skeletal muscle (SKM) samples were obtained at necropsy. Muscle samples were obtained from a cohort of healthy uninfected macaque controls and used for comparison of analyzed variables. Total RNA was extracted and gene expression was analyzed by quantitative polymerase chain reaction. Results The relative expression of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator-1 beta (PGC-1β) was significantly decreased in the SKM of CBA/simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) macaques compared to uninfected controls (P < 0.05). SIV infection resulted in a significant upregulation (P < 0.05) of mitophagy-related gene expression, which was prevented by CBA. CBA suppressed expression of anti-apoptotic genes and increased expression of pro-apoptotic genes (P < 0.05). Conclusions These findings suggest that SIV infection disrupts mitochondrial homeostasis and when combined with CBA, results in differential expression of genes involved in apoptotic signaling. We speculate that impaired mitochondrial homeostasis may contribute to the underlying pathophysiology of alcoholic and HIV/AIDS associated myopathy. Short summary This study investigated if CBA administration dysregulates gene expression associated with mitochondrial homeostasis in the SKM of SIV-infected macaques. The results suggest that SIV infection disrupts mitochondrial homeostasis and when combined with CBA, results in differential expression of genes involved in apoptotic signaling.
Overexpression of a Common Wheat Gene TaSnRK2.8 Enhances Tolerance to Drought, Salt and Low Temperature in Arabidopsis

Drought, salinity and low temperatures are major factors limiting crop productivity and quality. Sucrose non-fermenting1-related protein kinase 2 (SnRK2) plays a key role in abiotic stress signaling in plants. In this study, TaSnRK2.8, a SnRK2 member in wheat, was cloned and its functions under multi-stress conditions were characterized. Subcellular localization showed the presence of TaSnRK2.8 in the cell membrane, cytoplasm and nucleus. Expression pattern analyses in wheat revealed that TaSnRK2.8 was involved in response to PEG, NaCl and cold stresses, and possibly participates in ABA-dependent signal transduction pathways. To investigate its role under various environmental stresses, TaSnRK2.8 was transferred to Arabidopsis under control of the CaMV-35S promoter. Overexpression of TaSnRK2.8 resulted in enhanced tolerance to drought, salt and cold stresses, further confirmed by longer primary roots and various physiological characteristics, including higher relative water content, strengthened cell membrane stability, significantly lower osmotic potential, more chlorophyll content, and enhanced PSII activity. Meanwhile, TaSnRK2.8 plants had significantly lower total soluble sugar levels under normal growing conditions, suggesting that TaSnRK2.8 might be involved in carbohydrate metabolism. Moreover, the transcript levels of ABA biosynthesis (ABA1, ABA2), ABA signaling (ABI3, ABI4, ABI5), stress-responsive genes, including two ABA-dependent genes (RD20A, RD29B) and three ABA-independent genes (CBF1, CBF2, CBF3), were generally higher in TaSnRK2.8 plants than in WT/GFP controls under normal/stress conditions. Our results suggest that TaSnRK2.8 may act as a regulatory factor involved in a multiple stress response pathways.
Mechanisms of Accelerated Liver Fibrosis Progression during HIV Infection

Abstract With the introduction of antiretroviral therapy (ART), a dramatic reduction in HIV-related morbidity and mortality has been observed. However, it is now becoming increasingly clear that liver-related complications, particularly rapid fibrosis development from ART as well as from the chronic HIV infection itself, are of serious concern to HIV patients. The pathophysiology of liver fibrosis in patients with HIV is a multifactorial process whereby persistent viral replication, and bacterial translocation lead to chronic immune activation and inflammation, which ART is unable to fully suppress, promoting production of fibrinogenic mediators and fibrosis. In addition, mitochondrial toxicity, triggered by both ART and HIV, contributes to intrahepatic damage, which is even more severe in patients co-infected with viral hepatitis. In recent years, new insights into the mechanisms of accelerated fibrosis and liver disease progression in HIV has been obtained, and these are detailed and discussed in this review.
Development and assessment of fully automated and globally transitive geometric morphometric methods, with application to a biological comparative dataset with high interspecific variation

Automated geometric morphometric methods are promising tools for shape analysis in comparative biology: they improve researchers’ abilities to quantify biological variation extensively (by permitting more specimens to be analyzed) and intensively (by characterizing shapes with greater fidelity). Although use of these methods has increased, automated methods have some notable limitations: pairwise correspondences are frequently inaccurate or lack transitivity (i.e., they are not defined with reference to the full sample). In this study, we reassess the accuracy of two previously published automated methods, cPDist [1] and auto3Dgm [2], and evaluate several modifications to these methods. We show that a substantial fraction of alignments and pairwise maps between specimens of highly dissimilar geometries were inaccurate in the study of Boyer et al. [1], despite a taxonomically sensitive variance structure of continuous Procrustes distances. We also show these inaccuracies can be remedied by utilizing a globally informed methodology within a collection of shapes, instead of only comparing shapes in a pairwise manner (c.f. [2]). Unfortunately, while global information generally enhances maps between dissimilar objects, it can degrade the quality of correspondences between similar objects due to the accumulation of numerical error. We explore a number of approaches to mitigate this degradation, quantify the performance of these approaches, and compare the generated pairwise maps (as well as the shape space characterized by these maps) to a “ground truth” obtained from landmarks manually collected by geometric morphometricians. Novel methods both improve the quality of the pairwise correspondences relative to cPDist, and achieve a taxonomic distinctiveness comparable to auto3Dgm.
Evaluating the impact of accreditation on Brazilian healthcare organizations: A quantitative study

Objective The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of accreditation programs on Brazilian healthcare organizations. Design A web-based questionnaire survey was undertaken between February and May 2016. Setting Healthcare organizations from the Federal District and from 18 Brazilian states. Participants The quality managers of 141 Brazilian healthcare organizations were the main respondents of the study. Intervention The questionnaire was applied to not accredited and accredited organizations. Main Outcome Measures The main outcome measures were patient safety activities, quality management activities, planning activities-policies and strategies, patient involvement, involvement of professionals in the quality programs, monitoring of patient safety goals, organizational impact and financial impacts. Results The study identified 13 organizational impacts of accreditation. There was evidence of a significant and moderate correlation between the status of accreditation and patient safety activities, quality management activities, planning activities-policies and strategies, and involvement of professionals in the quality programs. The correlation between accreditation status and patient involvement was significant but weak, suggesting that this issue should be treated with a specific policy. The impact of accreditation on the financial results was not confirmed as relevant; however, the need for investment in the planning stage was validated. Conclusions The impact of accreditation is mainly related to internal processes, culture, training, institutional image and competitive differentiation.
Normative Data of the Story and Six-Object Memory Recall Tests in Older Spanish Adults: NEDICES Population-Based Cohort

Objective We provide normative data for the story and six-object recall tasks, stratified by age and education in a large population-based cohort of older Spanish adults. Method The sample consisted of 2,581 participants without dementia (age range: 67-98 years) from different socioeconomic areas of central Spain. Normative data are presented in percentile ranks and divided into four overlapping age tables with different midpoints. Results Spearman correlations and shared variances were calculated to evaluate the effects of sociodemographic variables on both tasks. Our findings showed that age and education influence the scores in the story and six-object recall tasks, whereas sex had null effect on story recall and an almost negligible on object recall, respectively. Conclusion The norms presented herein are important for the correct interpretation of scores in the story and six-object recall tasks when assessing older adults in Spain.
Early Adverse Events, HPA Activity and Rostral Anterior Cingulate Volume in MDD

Background Prior studies have independently reported associations between major depressive disorder (MDD), elevated cortisol concentrations, early adverse events and region-specific decreases in grey matter volume, but the relationships among these variables are unclear. In the present study, we sought to evaluate the relationships between grey matter volume, early adverse events and cortisol levels in MDD. Methods/Results Grey matter volume was compared between 19 controls and 19 individuals with MDD using voxel-based morphometry. A history of early adverse events was assessed using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire. Subjects also provided salivary cortisol samples. Depressed patients showed decreased grey matter volume in the rostral ACC as compared to controls. Rostral ACC volume was inversely correlated with both cortisol and early adverse events. Conclusions These findings suggest a key relationship between ACC morphology, a history of early adverse events and circulating cortisol in the pathophysiology of MDD.
Safety and Functionality of a Guidewire Fixator

Objective A new endovascular tool, the Liungman Guidewire Fixator, has been developed to simplify endovascular treatment in complex aortic aneurysms. The device has been extensively tested in bench models and animal trials. To verify the safety and functionality demonstrated in the porcine model, the device was tested in ten patients undergoing endovascular aortic repair (EVAR) or fenestrated endovascular aortic repair (f-EVAR) treatment for abdominal aortic aneurysm. Methods The Liungman Guidewire Fixator consists of a braided stent-like, cylindrical structure with conical ends and a central channel for a 0.035” guidewire. When in use, it is slid along the guidewire and positioned in the target artery, where the Liungman Guidewire Fixator interacts with the arterial wall by anchoring the guidewire to the wall through a radial force. The Liungman Guidewire Fixator allows for uninterrupted blood flow passed the point of fixation. In this study, the Liungman Guidewire Fixator was tested in ten patients undergoing EVAR or f-EVAR treatment for abdominal aortic aneurysm. The device was deployed and retrieved crossover into the hypogastric artery, and the occurrence of thrombotic occlusion, arterial dissection, and vascular rupture or trauma was studied using angiography, as well as device ability to withstand guidewire tension. Results There were no instances of occlusion, dissection, or vascular trauma detected using angiography. In all cases, deployment and retrieval were successful, and the devices could withstand an applied tension of 3 N. In one instance, retrieval was challenging because of significant tortuosity, which was resolved by a coaxial catheterization. Conclusions Deployment was uneventful in all ten patients. Retrieval according to the intended instruction for use was performed in nine of the patients. In one patient, a coaxial catheterization was necessary. All devices withstood a retention force of 3 N.
The Obligatory Activation of Practiced Complex Multiplication Facts and What it Tells Us About Models of Arithmetic Processing

Three experiments were conducted in which adults practiced complex multiplication problems (e.g., 4 x 17). In Experiments 1 and 2, after practice participants completed a number-matching task in which two digits (cues) were followed by a single digit (probe) and had to determine whether the probe matched either of the cues. In simple arithmetic (e.g., 4 x 3), when the probe is the product of the cues (12), participants are slower/more error prone when determining whether there is a match. Results of Experiment 1 extended this effect to complex multiplication. In Experiment 2, participants practiced problems with the larger operand first (e.g., 17 x 4) or with the smaller operand first (e.g., 4 x 17). The number-matching interference effect from Experiment 1 was replicated, and was equal across the two groups whether cues were presented in their practiced or non-practiced order. Experiment 3 was conducted to determine if two additional simple multiplication effects, consistency and relatedness, could be documented for complex multiplication. After practice, in a verification task (4 x 13 = 56? ) it was found that when presented answers shared a digit with the decade digit of the correct answer (consistency) or were a correct answer to another practiced problem (relatedness), participants rejected answers more slowly and/or less accurately. Together, findings from the three experiments support arithmetic models that posit that commuted pairs are not represented in long-term memory independently and that posit representations of two-digit multiplication answers are decomposed into decades and units during arithmetic processing.
Systematic evaluation of collateral pathways to the artery of Adamkiewicz using computed tomography

OBJECTIVES Preoperative identification of the artery of Adamkiewicz can help prevent postoperative spinal cord injury in patients undergoing thoracic and thoraco-abdominal aortic aneurysm repair. Although several studies have shown the feasibility of evaluating the artery of Adamkiewicz using multidetector row computed tomography (MDCT), no detailed investigations regarding the collateral circulation to the artery of Adamkiewicz have been performed. The purpose of this study was to investigate the collateral circulation to the artery of Adamkiewicz using MDCT in patients with thoracic and thoraco-abdominal aortic aneurysms. METHODS Our institutional review board approved this study. Sixty-four patients with descending thoracic and thoraco-abdominal aortic aneurysms associated with the occlusion of the segmental artery from which the artery of Adamkiewicz originated were scanned using 64- or 320-detector row computed tomography. Two independent observers evaluated the MDCT images based on the degree of visualization of the artery of Adamkiewicz and its collateral circulation using a 4-point scale. RESULTS The average visualization score was 2.8 ± 0.6. In 53 of the 64 (83%) patients, image quality was judged to be diagnostic. MDCT demonstrated 75 collateral pathways to the artery of Adamkiewicz in these 53 patients. Sixty-four of the 75 (85%) pathways were collaterals around the spinal column, and the remaining 11 (15%) pathways were collateral arteries in the thoracic wall. CONCLUSIONS MDCT revealed the collateral pathways to the artery of Adamkiewicz around the spinal column and in the thoracic wall in 83% of our patients with thoracic and thoraco-abdominal aortic aneurysms.
Dietary L-serine modifies free amino acid composition of maternal milk and lowers the body weight of the offspring in mice

The growth of offspring is affected not only by the protein in maternal milk but also by the free amino acids (FAAs) contained in it. L-Serine (L-Ser) is known as an important FAA for the development of the central nervous system and behavioral activity. However, it is not clear whether L-Ser is transported into the pool of FAAs contained in milk and thereby affects the growth of offspring. Using mice, the current study investigated the effects of dietary L-Ser during pregnancy and lactation on milk and plasma FAA composition, as well as on growth, behavior, and plasma FAAs of offspring. Dietary L-Ser did not significantly affect the maternal, anxiety-like, or cognitive behaviors of either the dam or the offspring. The FAA composition notably differed between plasma and milk in dams. In milk, dietary L-Ser increased free L-Ser levels, while glutamic acid, L-alanine, D-alanine and taurine levels were decreased. The body weight of the offspring was lowered by dietary L-Ser. The concentrations of plasma FAAs in 13-day-old offspring (fed only milk) were not altered, but 20-day-old offspring (fed both milk and parental diet) showed higher plasma L-Ser and D-Ser concentrations as a result of the dietary L-Ser treatment. In conclusion, the present study found that dietary L-Ser transported easily from maternal plasma to milk and that dietary L-Ser treatment could change the FAA composition of milk, but that an enhanced level of L-Ser in milk did not enhance the plasma L-Ser level in the offspring.