Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Trefoil factor family protein 3 affects cancellous bone formation in the secondary centers of ossification of mouse tibiae

Background and Purpose: Trefoil factor family (TFF) is a small family of peptides, which comprises three peptides, TFF1, TFF2 and TFF3. The primary sites of TFF expression and synthesis are mucous epithelia, with gastrointestinal mucosa being their main localization. They have a role in mucosal restitution and strengthening of the normal mucosal barrier. Although not present in healthy articular cartilage, TFF3 is expressed in osteoarthritis and septic arthritis affected cartilage and promotes cartilage degradation in such conditions. Also, TFF3 is present in endochondral ossification during embryonic development. Since this implies a role for TFF3 in the ossification process, we evaluated the histomorphometric parameters of the trabecular bone in the epiphyses of mouse tibiae from wild type mice and TFF3 knock-out mice. Materials and Methods: Tibiae of wild-type and knock-out mice were isolated, fixed in 4% paraformaldehyde, paraffin embedded and cut into 6μm sections, which were stained using Masson’s trichrome stain. Digital photographs were taken for histomorphometry of the epiphyseal cancellous bone. Results: Trabecular bone volume density, trabecular bone surface density and trabecular number were significantly decreased in TFF3 knock-out mice, when compared to wild-type mice. Trabecular separation was significantly higher in TFF3 knock-out mice, and trabecular thickness did not differ significantly. Conclusions: In addition to its impact on the cartilage degradation, our present study shows that TFF3 might also have a role in the formation of cancellous bone and its properties.
Disentangling environmental correlates of vascular plant biodiversity in a Mediterranean hotspot

We determined the environmental correlates of vascular plant biodiversity in the Baetic-Rifan region, a plant biodiversity hotspot in the western Mediterranean. A catalog of the whole flora of Andalusia and northern Morocco, the region that includes most of the Baetic-Rifan complex, was compiled using recent comprehensive floristic catalogs. Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) of the different ecoregions of Andalusia and northern Morocco were conducted to determine their floristic affinities. Diversity patterns were studied further by focusing on regional endemic taxa. Endemic and nonendemic alpha diversities were regressed to several environmental variables. Finally, semi-partial regressions on distance matrices were conducted to extract the respective contributions of climatic, altitudinal, lithological, and geographical distance matrices to beta diversity in endemic and nonendemic taxa. We found that West Rifan plant assemblages had more similarities with Andalusian ecoregions than with other nearby northern Morocco ecoregions. The endemic alpha diversity was explained relatively well by the environmental variables related to summer drought and extreme temperature values. Of all the variables, geographical distance contributed by far the most to spatial turnover in species diversity in the Baetic-Rifan hotspot. In the Baetic range, elevation was the most significant driver of nonendemic species beta diversity, while lithology and elevation were the main drivers of endemic beta diversity. Despite the fact that Andalusia and northern Morocco are presently separated by the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, the Baetic and Rifan mountain ranges have many floristic similarities – especially in their western ranges – due to past migration of species across the Strait of Gibraltar. Climatic variables could be shaping the spatial distribution of endemic species richness throughout the Baetic-Rifan hotspot. Determinants of spatial turnover in biodiversity in the Baetic-Rifan hotspot vary in importance between endemic and nonendemic species.
HBx Inhibits CYP2E1 Gene Expression via Downregulating HNF4α in Human Hepatoma Cells

CYP2E1, one of the cytochrome P450 mixed-function oxidases located predominantly in liver, plays a key role in metabolism of xenobiotics including ethanol and procarcinogens. Recently, down-expression of CYP2E1 was found in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) with the majority to be chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) carriers. In this study, we tested a hypothesis that HBx may inhibit CYP2E1 gene expression via hepatocyte nuclear factor 4α (HNF4α). By enforced HBx gene expression in cultured HepG2 cells, we determined the effect of HBx on CYP2E1 mRNA and protein expression. With a bioinformatics analysis, we found a consensus HNF-4α binding sequence located on −318 to −294 bp upstream of human CYP2E1 promoter. Using reporter gene assay and site-directed mutagenesis, we have shown that mutation of this site dramatically decreased CYP2E1 promoter activity. By silencing endogenous HNF-4α, we have further validated knockdown of HNF-4α significantly decreased CYP2E1expression. Ectopic overexpression of HBx in HepG2 cells inhibits HNF-4α expression, and HNF-4α levels were inversely correlated with viral proteins both in HBV-infected HepG2215 cells and as well as HBV positive HCC liver tissues. Moreover, the HBx-induced CYP2E1 reduction could be rescued by ectopic supplement of HNF4α protein expression. Furthermore, human hepatoma cells C34, which do not express CYP2E1, shows enhanced cell growth rate compared to E47, which constitutively expresses CYP2E1. In addition, the significantly altered liver proteins in CYP2E1 knockout mice were detected with proteomics analysis. Together, HBx inhibits human CYP2E1 gene expression via downregulating HNF4α which contributes to promotion of human hepatoma cell growth. The elucidation of a HBx-HNF4α-CYP2E1 pathway provides novel insight into the molecular mechanism underlining chronic HBV infection associated hepatocarcinogenesis.
‘What is up with my sisters? Where are you?’ The origins and consequences of lesbian-friendly place reputations for LBQ migrants

Drawing on a comparative ethnography of four small US cities with growing lesbian populations, this article explicates the gap between lesbian, bisexual, and queer female (LBQ) individuals’ expectations (before moving) and experiences (after relocation). The article asks how prospective LBQ migrants encounter knowledge of lesbian-friendly reputations, and, once encountered, why they are so powerful. Four mechanisms communicate lesbian-friendly reputations and make them particularly dominant, with different mechanisms doing this work to different degrees in different cases. First, some of the sites are situated in regions that possess lesbian-friendly reputations; prospective migrants attend to regional reputation, missing the heterogeneity of places within a region. Second, facts and figures mislead; while LBQ migrants conduct background research before relocating, their attention to facts and figures related to lesbian-friendliness, such as the proportion of lesbian couples, out politicians, and marriage votes, distracts from knowledge of on the ground LBQ ties and identities. Third, much initial contact with place is with heterosexuals. Many such actors – realtors, business owners, institutional ambassadors – go out of their way to present a place as lesbian-friendly to prospective migrants. Yet, such individuals are often unaware of or otherwise fail to communicate the particularities of LBQ culture in their city. A final force is the belief that a certain set of cities belong in a “lesbian-friendly” category with corresponding expectations of cultural homogeneity. Cumulatively, the article highlights the (sometimes obscuring) power of place reputation, underlines gaps between place reputation and identities on the ground, and advances knowledge of the heterogeneity and place-specificity of contemporary LBQ identities and communities.
Translanguaging in Chinese foreign language classrooms: students and teachers’ attitudes and practices

ABSTRACT This article deals with the reality and complexity of emergent translanguaging in foreign language classrooms. The influx of international learners of Chinese has resulted in linguistically diverse classrooms, posing huge challenges to the monolingual teaching approach that prevails in most Chinese language classrooms. This paper explores what students and teachers think and do about translanguaging practices in beginners’ classes in China’s universities. A questionnaire survey of 201 students showed that over half of the sample population was inclined to a multilingual form of instruction, where they could draw on their linguistic resources for meaning negotiation. Results from semi-structured interviews with teachers revealed ambivalent attitudes towards classroom language choice. While some teachers found it difficult to accommodate multilingualism, others embraced this idea and have developed a translanguaging pedagogy. Lastly, classroom observation demonstrated translanguaging as a co-constructed dialogic approach, initiated by both teachers and students to keep the class communicative within the Confucius learning culture. This paper ends by offering suggestions for foreign language teachers to renew their knowledge on language learning as well as develop transformative student–teacher relationships in order to facilitate more creative pedagogy in foreign language education.
Pragmatic strategies to solve and preempt understanding problems in Chinese professionals’ emails when using English as lingua franca communication

ABSTRACT Although there has been a steady rise of empirical studies investigating pragmatic strategies in oral communication using English as a lingua franca (ELF), there have been relatively few published studies about pragmatic strategies in written ELF communication. Email, despite its current popularity, has scarcely been examined in ELF communication. To extend the existing research on ELF into email discourse, this study investigates Chinese-English bilingual professionals’ real-life emails in ELF communication. Email data were collected from 15 Chinese-English bilingual professionals in Mainland China. The paper analyzes and discusses the pragmatic strategies employed by these Chinese bilingual professionals both to solve and to avoid problems of understanding when writing their emails in ELF communication. The results reveal no evidence of non-understanding and only a few misunderstandings. The Chinese bilingual professionals employed various pragmatic strategies to prevent and resolve problems of understanding in ELF communication and to facilitate understanding and ensure communicative effectiveness.
The Basis for Diminished Functional Recovery after Delayed Peripheral Nerve Repair

The postsurgical period during which neurons remain without target connections (chronic axotomy) and distal nerve stumps and target muscles are denervated (chronic denervation) deleteriously affects functional recovery. An autologous nerve graft and cross-suture paradigm in Sprague Dawley rats was used to systematically and independently control time of motoneuron axotomy, denervation of distal nerve sheaths, and muscle denervation to determine relative contributions of each factor to recovery failure. Tibial (TIB) nerve was cross-sutured to common peroneal (CP) nerve via a contralateral 15 mm nerve autograft to reinnervate the tibialis anterior (TA) muscle immediately or after prolonging TIB axotomy, CP autograft denervation, or TA muscle denervation. Numbers of motoneurons that reinnervated TA muscle declined exponentially from 99±15 to asymptotic mean (±SE) values of 35 ± 1, 41 ± 10, and 13 ± 5, respectively. Enlarged reinnervated motor units fully compensated for reduced motoneuron numbers after prolonged axotomy and autograft denervation, but the maximal threefold enlargement did not compensate for the severe loss of regenerating nerves through chronically denervated nerve stumps and for failure of reinnervated muscle fibers to recover from denervation atrophy. Muscle force, weight, and cross-sectional area declined. Our results demonstrate that chronic denervation of the distal stump plays a key role in reduced nerve regeneration, but the denervated muscle is also a contributing factor. That chronic Schwann cell denervation within the nerve autograft reduced regeneration less than after the denervation of both CP nerve stump and TA muscle, argues that chronic muscle denervation negatively impacts nerve regeneration.
Model-based definition of prerequisites in engineering course structures

This paper introduces a method for representation of topic hierarchies in engineering course structures at higher education degree programs. The problem to be solved was emerged by an increased need for consideration of detailed prerequisites when a given topic was taught. In engineering, a topic for a principle, method, process, device, equipment, or system needs multiple sources of other topics from various areas to consider. Solution is conceptualized as a course model that is configured to represent the required connections. In this paper, following a problem characterizing, the authors analyze a former proposed course model structure, consider their earlier related works and propose a new concept for course structure, its building up using practice oriented entities, and a process concept for backing up a topic by prerequisite topics.
Fools Rush in? The Institutional Context of Industry Creation

New organizations are always vulnerable to the liabilities of newness, but such pressures are especially severe when an industry is in its formative years. We focus on one set of constraints facing entrepreneurs in emerging industries-their relative lack of cognitive and sociopolitical legitimacy. We examine the strategies that founders can pursue, suggesting how their successful pursuit of legitimacy may evolve from innovative ventures to broader contexts, collectively reshaping industry and institutional environments.
MicroRNA-424 Is Down-Regulated in Hepatocellular Carcinoma and Suppresses Cell Migration and Invasion through c-Myb

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the leading causes of cancer-related mortality worldwide. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are important regulators of multiple cellular processes, and the aberrant miRNAs expressions have been observed in different types of cancer including HCC. Their pathysiologic role and their relevance to tumorigenesis are still largely unknown. In this study, we demonstrated the down-regulation of miR-424 in HCC cell lines and tissues by quantitative RT-PCR analyses. Overexpression of miR-424 reduced the HCC cell prolifetation, migration, and invasion. Conversely, inhibiton of miR-424 expression significantly accelerated the cell proliferation, migration, and invasion. In addition, we further identified c-Myb as a functional downstream target of miR-424 by directly targeting the 3′UTR of c-Myb. Furthermore, overexpression of c-Myb impaired miR-424-induced inhibition of proliferation and invasion in HCC cells. Our results demonstrated that miR-424 was involved in tumorigenesis of HCC at least in part by suppression of c-Myb.
A Contribution to the Empirics of Reservation Wages

This paper provides evidence on the behavior of reservation wages over the spell of unemployment using high‐frequency longitudinal data. Using data from our survey of unemployed workers in New Jersey, where workers were interviewed each week for up to 24 weeks, we find that self‐reported reservation wages decline at a modest rate over the spell of unemployment, with point estimates ranging from 0.05 to 0.14 percent per week of unemployment. The decline in reservation wages is driven primarily by older individuals and those with personal savings at the start of the survey. The longitudinal nature of the data also allows us to test the relationship between job acceptance and the reservation wage and offered wage, where the reservation wage is measured from a previous interview to avoid bias due to cognitive dissonance. Job offers are more likely to be accepted if the offered wage exceeds the reservation wage, and the reservation wage has more predictive power in this regard than the pre‐displacement wage, suggesting the reservation wage contains useful information about workers' future decisions. In addition, there is a discrete rise in job acceptance when the offered wage exceeds the reservation wage. In comparison to a calibrated job search model, the reservation wage starts out too high and declines too slowly, on average, suggesting that many workers persistently misjudge their prospects or anchor their reservation wage on their previous wage.
THE INFLUENCE OF ACCENT PATTERN TYPICALITY ON IMMEDIATE AND DELAYED NONWORD REPETITION

It is well established that the phonological system captures the quasiregularity of phoneme sequences. For example, repetition performance is better for nonwords composed of phoneme combinations that occur frequently in one's native language. Although phoneme sequences are necessarily accompanied by suprasegmental aspects (e.g., accent patterns), the influence of suprasegmental aspects has not been investigated extensively. This study examined the influence of Japanese pitch-accent pattern on nonword repetition. Exploration of nonwords provides an opportunity to investigate phonological factors largely without lexical and semantic influences. We conducted immediate and delayed nonword repetition experiments, manipulating phonotactic frequency and pitch-accent type. Two experiments revealed that nonwords presented with atypical accent patterns showed more frequent phonemic and accent pattern errors than nonwords with more typical accent patterns. The results indicate that the phonological system captures a range of sublexical phonological characteristics found in each language through linguistic experiences and is not limited to coding phonemic sequences alone. We suggest that although there is diversity in functioning of phonological systems driven by linguistic variability, such diversity stems from universal learning mechanisms in language processing systems.
Teacher use of one-to-one iPads in the classroom: Technology integration, school level support, and teacher beliefs

The purpose of the study was to investigate teacher perceptions of the implementation of one-to-one iPad use in the classroom to include technology integration, school level support, and teacher beliefs. The study explored the beliefs, attitudes and perspectives of eight elementary school teachers. Focus group interviews, single interviews, and classroom observations were utilized to gather qualitative data for this study. In the research findings, I presented participant descriptions and analyzed the data. The major findings that emerged from this study are organized according to the themes: technology integration, school level support, and teacher beliefs. Within technology integration, the categories that emerged from the data are first order barriers, time management, classroom management issues, and learning management issues. The second theme brought forth the categories principal support, professional development, and classroom management. Within the final theme, Teacher Beliefs, the categories that emerged are pedagogy, SAMR, and high stakes testing. The findings will provide teachers, principals, and school district personnel new insights into the impact of this one-to-one implementation.
The Star Formation and Extinction Coevolution of UV-Selected Galaxies over 0.05 < z < 1.2

We use a new stacking technique to obtain mean mid-IR and far-IR to far-UV flux ratios over the rest-frame near-UV, near-IR color-magnitude diagram. We employ COMBO-17 redshifts and COMBO-17 optical, GALEX far- and near-UV, and Spitzer IRAC and MIPS mid-IR photometry. This technique permits us to probe the infrared excess (IRX), the ratio of far-IR to far-UV luminosity, and the specific star formation rate (SSFR) and their coevolution over 2 orders of magnitude of stellar mass and over redshift 0.1 < z < 1.2. We find that the SSFR and the characteristic mass (ℳ0) above which the SSFR drops increase with redshift (downsizing). At any given epoch, the IRX is an increasing function of mass up to ℳ0. Above this mass the IRX falls, suggesting gas exhaustion. In a given mass bin below ℳ0, the IRX increases with time in a fashion consistent with enrichment. We interpret these trends using a simple model with a Schmidt-Kennicutt law and extinction that tracks gas density and enrichment. We find that the average IRX and SSFR follow a galaxy age parameter ξ, which is determined mainly by the galaxy mass and time since formation. We conclude that blue-sequence galaxies have properties which show simple, systematic trends with mass and time such as the steady buildup of heavy elements in the interstellar media of evolving galaxies and the exhaustion of gas in galaxies that are evolving off the blue sequence. The IRX represents a tool for selecting galaxies at various stages of evolution.
Defining the Contribution of CNTNAP2 to Autism Susceptibility

Multiple lines of genetic evidence suggest a role for CNTNAP2 in autism. To assess its population impact we studied 2148 common single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) using transmission disequilibrium test (TDT) across the entire ~3.3 Mb CNTNAP2 locus in 186 (408 trios) multiplex and 323 simplex families with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). This analysis yielded two SNPs with nominal statistical significance (rs17170073, p = 2.0 x 10-4; rs2215798, p = 1.6 x 10-4) that did not survive multiple testing. In a combined analysis of all families, two highly correlated (r 2 = 0.99) SNPs in intron 14 showed significant association with autism (rs2710093, p = 9.0 x 10-6; rs2253031, p = 2.5 x 10-5). To validate these findings and associations at SNPs from previous autism studies (rs7794745, rs2710102 and rs17236239) we genotyped 2051 additional families (572 multiplex and 1479 simplex). None of these variants were significantly associated with ASD after corrections for multiple testing. The analysis of Mendelian errors within each family did not indicate any segregating deletions. Nevertheless, a study of CNTNAP2 gene expression in brains of autistic patients and of normal controls, demonstrated altered expression in a subset of patients (p = 1.9 x10-5). Consequently, this study suggests that although CNTNAP2 dysregulation plays a role in some cases, its population contribution to autism susceptibility is limited.
A systems approach to Parkinson ’ s disease

We describe a systems approach to Parkinson’s disease in which an integrative mathematical model of the brain energy metabolism is used as the basis for in–silico investigation of possible disease mechanisms. The mathematical model allows both the analysis of dynamical and structural implications of biological factors implicated in disease causation, and the potential role of a compromised brain energy metabolism as factor that enables pathologies associated with the disease to develop. Using a recently developed mathematical model of brain energy metabolism, we use simulations of brain energy behaviour to illustrate how a weakened energy metabolism might create a cellular environment where pathogenic mechanisms that are normally held in check by an efficient energy metabolism could potentially flourish. Simulations of the brain energy metabolism are presented which illustrate how both very long term deterioration of metabolism, and cumulative stress from energy transients, may create a predisposition to Parkinson’s disease. The focus of this study is Parkinson’s disease, but we note that our energy metabolism modelling and analysis framework may also form a basis for a systems approach to other age–related neurodegenerative conditions. ∗The Hamilton Institute National University of Ireland Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland.