Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
HIV Protease Inhibitor–Induced Cathepsin Modulation Alters Antigen Processing and Cross-Presentation

Immune recognition by T cells relies on the presentation of pathogen-derived peptides by infected cells, but the persistence of chronic infections calls for new approaches to modulate immune recognition. Ag cross-presentation, the process by which pathogen Ags are internalized, degraded, and presented by MHC class I, is crucial to prime CD8 T cell responses. The original degradation of Ags is performed by pH-dependent endolysosomal cathepsins. In this article, we show that HIV protease inhibitors (PIs) prescribed to HIV-infected persons variably modulate cathepsin activities in human APCs, dendritic cells and macrophages, and CD4 T cells, three cell subsets infected by HIV. Two HIV PIs acted in two complementary ways on cathepsin hydrolytic activities: directly on cathepsins and indirectly on their regulators by inhibiting Akt kinase activities, reducing NADPH oxidase 2 activation, and lowering phagolysosomal reactive oxygen species production and pH, which led to enhanced cathepsin activities. HIV PIs modified endolysosomal degradation and epitope production of proteins from HIV and other pathogens in a sequence-dependent manner. They altered cross-presentation of Ags by dendritic cells to epitope-specific T cells and T cell–mediated killing. HIV PI-induced modulation of Ag processing partly changed the MHC self-peptidome displayed by primary human cells. This first identification, to our knowledge, of prescription drugs modifying the regulation of cathepsin activities and the MHC-peptidome may provide an alternate therapeutic approach to modulate immune recognition in immune disease beyond HIV.
Linking Parent and Community Involvement with Student Achievement: Comparing Principal and Teacher Perceptions of Stakeholder Influence

Expanding the sources of leadership in schools has been a reform theme since the mid 1980s. Using exploratory factor analysis and regression, we examine the following questions: (1) How does leadership style affect principals’ openness to community involvement? (2) Is a principal's openness to community involvement related to student achievement? And (3) How are participatory and shared school leadership structures related to student learning? We base our analysis on a 2005–6 principal survey ( \documentclass{aastex} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{bm} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pifont} \usepackage{stmaryrd} \usepackage{textcomp} \usepackage{portland,xspace} \usepackage{amsmath,amsxtra} \usepackage[OT2,OT1]{fontenc} \newcommand\cyr{ \renewcommand\rmdefault{wncyr} \renewcommand\sfdefault{wncyss} \renewcommand\encodingdefault{OT2} \normalfont \selectfont} \DeclareTextFontCommand{\textcyr}{\cyr} \pagestyle{empty} \DeclareMathSizes{10}{9}{7}{6} \begin{document} \landscape $$N=157$$ \end{document} ) and a teacher survey ( \documentclass{aastex} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{bm} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pifont} \usepackage{stmaryrd} \usepackage{textcomp} \usepackage{portland,xspace} \usepackage{amsmath,amsxtra} \usepackage[OT2,OT1]{fontenc} \newcommand\cyr{ \renewcommand\rmdefault{wncyr} \renewcommand\sfdefault{wncyss} \renewcommand\encodingdefault{OT2} \normalfont \selectfont} \DeclareTextFontCommand{\textcyr}{\cyr} \pagestyle{empty} \DeclareMathSizes{10}{9}{7}{6} \begin{document} \landscape $$N=4,491$$ \end{document} ) from a Wallace Foundation–funded study, Learning from Leadership, augmented by available state 2005–6 math achievement data. Our results show that principals with more diverse leadership teams are more open to community involvement. Also, teachers’ perceptions of greater parent involvement are positively associated with student math achievement. The article highlights how principals and teachers can better organize their efforts to involve stakeholders for increasing student achievement.
Relationship Between Career Maturity and Self-Efficacy Among Male and Female Senior Secondary Students

This study investigated the relationship between Career Maturity and Self-Efficacy of senior secondary students and studied the comparison of boys' and girls' Career Maturity and Self-Efficacy at the senior secondary stage. The study employed a descriptive research design. The population for the study consisted of all government and private senior secondary students at Muzaffarpur in Bihar. The sample for the study comprised 792 students (370 boys and 422 girls) of standard XII which were selected using the stratified random sampling technique. The study reveals that the career maturity of senior secondary students was positively correlated with the self- efficacy of senior secondary students. A significant difference was found between the mean scores of boys and girls of senior secondary on the various dimensions of career maturity, i.e., self-appraisal, occupational information, goal selection, goal planning, and problem-solving, respectively and lastly overall career maturity. The difference between self-efficacy of boys and girls at the senior secondary level was also found to be significant. Implications for practitioners, counsellors, educators, parents and interventions for career counselling are also presented.
Observations on the prevalence of nest-building in non-breeding TO strain mice and their use of two nesting materials

The spontaneous performance of nest-building behaviour by non-breeding laboratory mice suggests that routinely providing nesting material might be a suitable environmental enrichment. If nesting material is to be provided routinely, this should have characteristics which are preferred, or at least accepted by a considerable proportion of the animal population; it should also be inexpensive. The present study therefore examined the prevalence of nest-building behaviour in 39 individually-housed, non-breeding, female mice, and their preferences for a commercial nesting product and a less expensive source of material (paper towels). Within minutes of the materials being placed in the cages, the mice began manipulating the paper towels. Thirty-six of the mice subsequently constructed nests during the first dark phase after the materials had been placed in the cage-the remaining three mice constructed nests during the following 48 h. The nests were usually constructed from a mixture of the two materials, though observations indicated the mice might have preferred characteristics of the inexpensive paper towels. There was a strong tendency to build nests in the same location used for sleeping prior to the nesting material being provided, and similarly, the mice were conservative in the site chosen to build a second nest after the first was removed. The most frequently chosen site for nest-building was under the feeder. Other studies have reported a high motivation for nest-building behaviour, widespread performance amongst many strains, and nest-building as a thermoregulatory behaviour by animals housed in standard laboratory air temperature. In conjunction with these findings, the present results suggest that routinely providing paper towels is an inexpensive and practical means of environmental enrichment for non-breeding, laboratory mice.
Stressful events and coping with infertility: factors determining pregnancy outcome among IVF couples in Jamaica

Abstract Objective: The goal of this study was to investigate infertility-coping patterns and pregnancy outcome among IVF participants who face stressful life events in addition to their infertility. Background: Many studies on stress and IVF-assisted pregnancy focus specifically on infertility-related stress without considering the role of other stressful events. Additionally, these studies seldom include the mediating influence of coping patterns. Methods: In a retrospective study, we reviewed the clinical records of 430 men and women who attended the sole fertility centre in Jamaica over a 10-year period. Using cross-sectional analyses, we examined exposure to past significant losses (death, intimate relationship, income) and current stressors (health, work, financial, personal relationships), as well as different coping patterns that emerged (problem-focused, emotion-focused, congruence between partner) with pregnancy outcome. Results: Univariate analyses and logistic regression revealed that participants exposed to multiple stressors were not at increased risk for a negative pregnancy outcome, but women who used problem-focused strategies to cope with their infertility were more likely to become pregnant than those who used emotion-focused strategies. Regardless of coping strategies, however, age was the only independent predictor of pregnancy outcome. Conclusions: Determinants of pregnancy outcome are identified, and the experience of general stress for IVF couples is discussed within the context of a developing country. Areas of future research are highlighted along with implications for psychosocial interventions.
Conservation-with-development:an application of the concept in the Usambara Mountains, Tanzania

Conservation-with-development (CWD) has been taken up by conservation bodies and development agencies as a way of maintaining biological diversity through promoting the development and involvement of local people. One of the longest running purpose-designed CWD projects is located in the east Usambara Mountains of Tanzania, which support an important and rich forest ecosystem containing numerous endemic species of flora and fauna. The area also maintains a human population which is increasingly turning to the forest for its livelihood. The cases for conservation and for development, and how far the two objectives are mutually compatible, are discussed. The East Usambaras Agricultural Development and Environmental Conservation project is involved in a diversity of activities, ranging from village industry to forest protection, and demonstrates not only the difficulty of managing such a complex project but also some of the conflicts between environmental conservation and participatory rural development. We conclude that CWD projects are complicated, lack a clearly-defined rationale and methodology and need to be made more distinct from multi-sectoral integrated rural development approaches
Lightweight generics in embedded systems through static analysis

Low-end embedded systems are still programmed in C and assembly, and adopting high-level languages such as C# should reduce the length of their development cycles. For these systems, code size is a major concern, but run-time efficiency should also be reasonable --- programmers will not migrate to C# unless the overhead compared with C is insignificant. In this paper, we propose a static approach based on whole program optimization for implementing . Net generics in such systems. Indeed, the implementation of run-time generics involves a tradeoff between size and run-time efficiency. In this proposal, generic instances are detected through a generalization of RTA to parametric polymorphism. Also, we propose an implementation scheme which employs code sharing and more effective coercions than boxing. Unlike existing implementation schemes, it is scalable in the number of generic instances without involving boxing and unboxing in a systematic way.
Hypercalcemia in Cancer Patients: Pathobiology and Management

Hypercalcemia is the most common life-threatening metabolic disorder associated with cancer, occurring in approximately 10-30% of all patients with neoplastic disease, although it occurs much less often in the pediatric setting. Hypercalcemia can emerge in hematologic malignancies, particularly multiple myeloma, as well as assorted solid tumors, primarily lung and breast cancers, and can even dominate the clinical picture in select patients. Early diagnosis and treatment with fluids and drugs that lower calcium levels in the blood can improve symptoms in a few days, ameliorate the quality of life of these patients, and avoid delays in the implementation of further anticancer treatments. Occasionally, the symptoms of hypercalcemia can appear gradually, and may be non-specific, resembling symptoms of many cancers and other comorbidities, especially in the elderly, thus resulting in an underestimated incidence of hypercalcemia in cancer patients. Of note, there is an increasing number of antineoplastic compounds that can interfere with calcium metabolism. Taking into consideration both the severity of hypercalcemia and the tumor status, health care providers should determine and apply appropriate treatment measures. We provide a comprehensive subjective synthesis of peer-reviewed evidence on the pathophysiology and treatment of hypercalcemia in cancer patients.
Intersections and Multiple ‘Candidacies’: Exploring Connections between Two Theoretical Perspectives on Domestic Abuse and Their Implications for Practicing Policy

Domestic abuse policy increasingly uses language which indicates that abuse is patterned according to structural factors. However, practicing according to these structural accounts of abuse is problematic because of the policy and organisational contexts that practitioners work within and, we argue, because the implications of the structured nature of victims’ experiences is not fully understood by all practitioners. We ask whether women's differential use and experiences of services with a remit to address abuse can be illuminated using two theoretical perspectives – ‘candidacy’ and intersectionality. We report the findings of a literature synthesis that investigates how these improve our understanding of women's help-seeking and service utilisation and of the responses that they receive. Both concepts were highly congruent with the literature and we conclude that, together, candidacy and intersectionality offer a means of enhancing knowledge of how the political becomes enacted in the personal. Embedding such knowledge within practice repertoires offers the potential to develop more nuanced structural understandings of women's experiences and constraints.
Text cohesion: An exploratory study with beginning writers

ABSTRACT Linguistic research on children's acquisition of writing concerns itself largely with the sentence as the highest unit of analysis. However, an adequate account of written language acquisition must deal with the text-productive ability, including devices for cohesion and compactness. The intersentential cohesive devices used by Dutch-speaking children aged 8–9 (N=14) and 10–11 (N=14) in narrative texts are analysed and compared in this report. The coding of the cohesive devices followed Halliday and Hasan (1976). The writing samples were also analysed for degrees of cohesiveness and compactness, using the formulae suggested by Scinto (1983). Our findings indicate a developmental trend in the construction of more cohesive and compact narrative texts.
Retrieving Vertical Air Velocity in Convective Cloud over the Tibetan Plateau from TIPEX-III Cloud Radar Doppler Spectra

In the summertime, convections occur frequently over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) because of the large dynamic and thermal effects of the landmass. Measurements of vertical air velocity in convective cloud are useful for advancing our understanding of the dynamic and microphysical mechanisms of clouds and can be used to improve the parameterization of current numerical models. This paper presents a technique for retrieving high-resolution vertical air velocity from convective cloud over the TP, by using Doppler spectra from a vertically pointing Ka-band cloud radar. The method is based on the development of a “smallparticle-traced” idea and the necessary data processing and uses three modes of radar. Spectral broadening corrections, uncertainty estimations, and result merging are used to ensure accurate results. Qualitative analysis of two typical convective cases shows that the retrievals are reliable and agree with the expectant results inferred from other radar measurements. A quantitative retrieval of vertical air motion from a ground-based optical disdrometer is used to preliminarily validate our radar-derived results. The comparison illustrates that while the data trends from the two methods of retrieval are similar, with the updrafts and downdrafts coinciding, cloud radar has a much higher resolution and can reveal the small-scale variation of vertical air motion.
Deep Near‐Infrared Imaging of a Field in the Outer Disk of M82 with the Altair Adaptive Optics System on Gemini‐North

Deep H and K′ images recorded with the Altair adaptive optics system and Near‐Infrared Imager on Gemini‐North are used to probe the red stellar content in a field with a projected distance of 1 kpc above the disk plane of the starburst galaxy M82. The data have an angular resolution of 008 FWHM, and individual asymptotic giant branch (AGB) and red giant branch (RGB) stars are resolved. The AGB extends to at least 1.7 mag in K above the RGB tip, which occurs at K = 21.7. The relative numbers of bright AGB stars and RGB stars are consistent with stellar evolution models, and one of the brightest AGB stars has an H−K color and K brightness that is consistent with it being a C star. The brightnesses of the AGB stars suggest that they formed during intermediate epochs, possibly after the last major interaction with M81. Therefore, star formation in M82 during intermediate epochs may not have been restricted to the plane of the disk.
Brain‐derived neurotrophic factor Val66Met polymorphism and early life adversity affect hippocampal volume

The interaction between adverse life events during childhood and genetic factors is associated with a higher risk to develop major depressive disorder (MDD). One of the polymorphisms found to be associated with MDD is the Val66MET polymorphism of brain‐derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). The aim of our two‐center study was to determine how the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism and childhood adversity affect the volumetric measures of the hippocampus in healthy individuals and people with MDD. In this two‐center study, 62 adult patients with MDD and 71 healthy matched controls underwent high‐resolution magnetic resonance imaging. We used manual tracing of the bilateral hippocampal structure with help of the software BRAINS2, assessed childhood adversity using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and genotyped Val66Met BDNF SNP (rs6265). MDD patients had smaller hippocampal volumes, both in the left and right hemispheres (F = 5.4, P = 0.022). We also found a significant interaction between BDNF allele and history of childhood adversity (F = 6.1, P = 0.015): Met allele carriers in our samples showed significantly smaller hippocampal volumes when they did have a history of childhood adversity, both in patients and controls. Our results highlight how relevant stress–gene interactions are for hippocampal volume reductions. Subjects exposed to early life adversity developed smaller hippocampal volumes when they carry the Met‐allele of the BDNF polymorphism. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
A novel apoptosis-like pathway, independent of mitochondria and caspases, induced by curcumin in human lymphoblastoid T (Jurkat) cells.

We have shown previously [E. Sikora, A. Bielak-Zmijewska, K. Piwocka, J. Skierski, and E. Radziszewska (1997) Biochem. Pharmacol. 54, 899-907] that curcumin prevents formation of oligonucleosomal DNA fragmentation in rat thymocytes and human leukemic T lymphocytes (Jurkat cells) induced to undergo apoptosis. In this paper we show that 50 microM curcumin by itself induces cell death in Jurkat cells, but its symptoms differ from those observed after a short ultraviolet (uv) irradiation. Ultraviolet-irradiated Jurkat cells displayed typical symptoms of apoptosis: morphological changes, internucleosomal and high-molecular-weight DNA fragmentation, formation of sub-G1 fractions in DNA content frequency histograms, and dissipation of the mitochondrial transmembrane electric potential (Delta psi). In contrast, curcumin-treated Jurkat cells exhibited DNA splitting into high-, but not low-, molecular-weight fragments. These cells retained their high mitochondrial Delta psi, and the content of Ca2+ in endoplasmic reticulum stores remained at the level typical for untreated cells. The frequency of opening of the mitochondrial permeability transition pores in curcumin-treated cells was decreased compared to the controls, whereas uv irradiation made these pores completely open. Curcumin did not produce any change in the activity of caspase-3, whereas uv irradiation considerably activated this protease. The morphology of curcumin-treated cells displayed chromatin condensation, which was insensitive to the caspase inhibitor z-VAD-fmk, but no formation of typical apoptotic bodies, as was the case after uv irradiation. In contrast to uv-irradiated cells, curcumin-treated Jurkat cells considerably increased the level of Bcl-2. It is concluded that the programmed cell death induced by curcumin in Jurkat cells differs from "classical" by the lack of mitochondrial depolarization and of the involvement of caspases.
Dynamic Targeting of the Agonist-stimulated m2 Muscarinic Acetylcholine Receptor to Caveolae in Cardiac Myocytes*

In cardiac myocytes, as well as specialized conduction and pacemaker cells, agonist binding to muscarinic acetylcholine receptors (mAchRs) results in the activation of several signal transduction cascades including the endothelial isoform of nitric-oxide synthase (eNOS) expressed in these cells. Recent evidence indicates that, as in endothelial cells, eNOS in cardiac myocytes is localized to plasmalemma caveolae, specialized lipid microdomains that contain caveolin-3, a muscle-specific isoform of the scaffolding protein caveolin. In this report, using a detergent-free method for isolation of sarcolemmal caveolae from primary cultures of adult rat ventricular myocytes, we demonstrated that the muscarinic cholinergic agonist carbachol promotes the translocation of mAchR into low density gradient fractions containing most myocyte caveolin-3 and eNOS. Following isopycnic centrifugation, the different gradient fractions were exposed to the muscarinic radioligand [3H]quinuclidinyl benzilate (QNB), and binding was determined after membrane filtration or immunoprecipitation. In a direct radioligand binding assay, we found that [3H]QNB binding can be detected in caveolin-enriched fractions only when cardiac myocytes have been previously exposed to carbachol. Furthermore, most of this [3H]QNB binding can be specifically immunoprecipitated by an antibody to the m2 mAchR, indicating that the translocation of this receptor subtype is responsible for the [3H]QNB binding detected in the low density fractions. Moreover, the [3H]QNB binding could be quantitatively immunoprecipitated from the light membrane fractions with a caveolin-3 antibody (but not a control IgG1 antibody), confirming that the m2 mAchR is targeted to caveolae after carbachol treatment. Importantly, atropine, a muscarinic cholinergic antagonist, did not induce translocation of m2 mAchR to caveolae and prevented receptor translocation in response to the agonist carbachol. Thus, dynamic targeting of sarcolemmal m2 mAchR to caveolae following agonist binding may be essential to initiate specific downstream signaling cascades in these cells.