Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A close link between bacterial community composition and environmental heterogeneity in maritime Antarctic lakes.

SUMMARY Seven maritime Antarctic lakes located on Byers Peninsula (Livingston Island, South Shetland Islands) were surveyed to determine the relationship between planktonic bacterial community composition and environmental features. Specifically, the extent to which factors other than low temperature determine the composition of bacterioplankton assemblages of maritime Antarctic lakes was evaluated. Both deep and shallow lakes in the central plateau of the Peninsula, as well as a coastal lake, were studied in order to fully account for the environmental heterogeneity of the Peninsula's lakes. The results showed that shallow coastal lakes display eutrophic conditions, mainly due to the influence of marine animals, whereas plateau lakes are generally deeper and most are oligotrophic, with very limited inputs of nutrients and organic matter. Meso-eutrophic shallow lakes are also present on the Peninsula; they contain microbial mats and a higher trophic status because of the biologically mediated active nutrient release from the sediments. Diversity studies of the lakes' planktonic bacterial communities using molecular techniques showed that bacterial diversity is lower in eutrophic than in oligotrophic lakes. The former also differed in community composition with respect to dominant taxa. Multivariate statistical analyses of environmental data yielded the same clustering of lakes as obtained based on the DGGE band pattern after DNA extraction and amplification of 16S rRNA gene fragments. Thus, even in extremely cold lakes, the bacterial community composition parallels other environmental factors, such as those related to trophic status. This correspondence is not only mediated by the influence of marine fauna but also by processes including sediment and ice melting dynamics. The bacterial community can therefore be considered to be equally representative as environmental abiotic variables in demonstrating the environmental heterogeneity among maritime Antarctic lakes.
Increased MDSC Accumulation and Th2 Biased Response to Influenza A Virus Infection in the Absence of TLR7 in Mice

Toll-like receptors (TLRs) play an important role in the induction of innate and adaptive immune response against influenza A virus (IAV) infection; however, the role of Toll-like receptor 7 (TLR7) during the innate immune response to IAV infection and the cell types affected by the absence of TLR7 are not clearly understood. In this study, we show that myeloid derived suppressor cells (MDSC) accumulate in the lungs of TLR7 deficient mice more so than in wild-type C57Bl/6 mice, and display increased cytokine expression. Furthermore, there is an increase in production of Th2 cytokines by TLR7-/- compared with wildtype CD4+ T-cells in vivo, leading to a Th2 polarized humoral response. Our findings indicate that TLR7 modulates the accumulation of MDSCs during an IAV infection in mice, and that lack of TLR7 signaling leads to a Th2-biased response.
Sleep problems and self-harm in adolescence

Background Although self-harm and sleep problems are major public health problems in adolescence, detailed epidemiological assessment is essential to understand the nature of this relationship. Aims To conduct a detailed assessment of the relationship between sleep and self-harm in adolescence. Method A large population-based study in Norway surveyed 10 220 adolescents aged 16–19 years on mental health, including a comprehensive assessment of sleep and self-harm. Results Adolescents with sleep problems were significantly more likely to report self-harm than those without sleep problems. Insomnia, short sleep duration, long sleep onset latency, wake after sleep on set as well as large differences between weekdays versus weekends, yielded higher odds of self-harm consistent with a dose–response relationship. Depressive symptoms accounted for some, but not all, of this association. Conclusions The findings highlight a strong relationship between sleep problems and self-harm. Interventions to reduce adolescent self-harm ought to incorporate sleep problems as a treatment target.
The threshold for d‐collapsibility in random complexes*

In this paper we determine the threshold for d‐collapsibility in the probabilistic model Xd(n,p) of d‐dimensional simplicial complexes. A lower bound for this threshold p=ηdn was established in (Aronshtam and Linial, Random Struct. Algorithms 46 (2015) 26–35), and here we show that this is indeed the correct threshold. Namely, for every c > ηd, a complex drawn from Xd(n,cn) is asymptotically almost surely not d‐collapsible. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg. , 48, 260–269, 2016
Body Mass Index, Sex, and Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors Among Hispanic/Latino Adults: Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos

Background All major Hispanic/Latino groups in the United States have a high prevalence of obesity, which is often severe. Little is known about cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors among those at very high levels of body mass index (BMI). Methods and Results Among US Hispanic men (N=6547) and women (N=9797), we described gradients across the range of BMI and age in CVD risk factors including hypertension, serum lipids, diabetes, and C‐reactive protein. Sex differences in CVD risk factor prevalences were determined at each level of BMI, after adjustment for age and other demographic and socioeconomic variables. Among those with class II or III obesity (BMI ≥35 kg/m2, 18% women and 12% men), prevalences of hypertension, diabetes, low high‐density lipoprotein cholesterol level, and high C‐reactive protein level approached or exceeded 40% during the fourth decade of life. While women had a higher prevalence of class III obesity (BMI ≥40 kg/m2) than did men (7% and 4%, respectively), within this highest BMI category there was a >50% greater relative prevalence of diabetes, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia in men versus women, while sex differences in prevalence of these CVD risk factors were ≈20% or less at other BMI levels. Conclusions Elevated BMI is common in Hispanic/Latino adults and is associated with a considerable excess of CVD risk factors. At the highest BMI levels, CVD risk factors often emerge in the earliest decades of adulthood and they affect men more often than women.
Associations between Management Forecast Accuracy and Pricing of IPOs in Athens Stock Exchange

This study examines the earnings forecast accuracy of newly listed companies on the Athens Stock Exchange and further investigates the relationship between earnings forecast and pricing of IPOs. It uses a unique data set of 208 IPOs, which were floated during the period of January 1994 to December 2001 in the Athens Stock Exchange. The results suggest that investors are able to anticipate forecast errors at the time of listing. Pricing of IPOs indicate that firms with negative earnings forecast (pessimistic) are associated with low level of underpricing while optimistic management earning forecast can be a signal for high initial returns. Three variables - age of the IPOs, ownership by insiders and industry classification significantly contribute towards accuracy of earnings forecast.
Beneficial effects of agomelatine in experimental model of sepsis-related acute kidney injury.

BACKGROUND Sepsis-related acute kidney injury (AKI) is a serious complication of sepsis. Problems persist regarding early diagnosis and treatment of AKI. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the efficacy of agomelatine, which is primarily known for its positive effects on depressive and anxiety disorders in sepsis-related AKI. METHODS Sepsis model was created with cecal ligation puncture (CLP). Rats were separated into 4 groups of 8 each: the control group, the sham-operated group, the CLP+saline group, and the CLP+agomelatine group. Agomelatine was administered intraperitoneally in doses of 20 mg/kg. RESULTS In the agomelatine group, reductions were observed in levels of tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α), malondialdehyde (MDA), blood urea nitrogen (BUN), and creatinine, as well as in histological kidney scores, compared to the non-treated group. In addition, it was demonstrated that agomelatine treatment had positive effect on sepsis-induced morphological damage to renal and tubular tissues. CONCLUSION Agomelatine showed strong efficacy in sepsis-related AKI, demonstrated with histological and biochemical results in an experimental model. It is believed that antioxidant and pro-inflammatory effects of agomelatine are responsible for the improvement in kidneys.
Analytical Model for Computing Residence Times Near a Pumping Well

An analytical solution for calculating the residence time of fluid flowing toward a pumping well in an unconfined aquifer has been developed. The analytical solution was derived based on a radial, steady‐state, Dupuit‐Forchheimer flow model. The resulting integral expression involved computing the imaginary error function, for which a simple series expansion is proposed. The validity of the analytical expression is demonstrated by testing its results against numerical results for an example problem. The analytical solution compared favorably with the numerical approximation.
DNA Mismatch Repair-dependent Activation of c-Abl/p73α/GADD45α-mediated Apoptosis*

Cells with functional DNA mismatch repair (MMR) stimulate G2 cell cycle checkpoint arrest and apoptosis in response to N-methyl-N′-nitro-N-nitrosoguanidine (MNNG). MMR-deficient cells fail to detect MNNG-induced DNA damage, resulting in the survival of “mutator” cells. The retrograde (nucleus-to-cytoplasm) signaling that initiates MMR-dependent G2 arrest and cell death remains undefined. Since MMR-dependent phosphorylation and stabilization of p53 were noted, we investigated its role(s) in G2 arrest and apoptosis. Loss of p53 function by E6 expression, dominant-negative p53, or stable p53 knockdown failed to prevent MMR-dependent G2 arrest, apoptosis, or lethality. MMR-dependent c-Abl-mediated p73α and GADD45α protein up-regulation after MNNG exposure prompted us to examine c-Abl/p73α/GADD45α signaling in cell death responses. STI571 (Gleevec™, a c-Abl tyrosine kinase inhibitor) and stable c-Abl, p73α, and GADD45α knockdown prevented MMR-dependent apoptosis. Interestingly, stable p73α knockdown blocked MMR-dependent apoptosis, but not G2 arrest, thereby uncoupling G2 arrest from lethality. Thus, MMR-dependent intrinsic apoptosis is p53-independent, but stimulated by hMLH1/c-Abl/p73α/GADD45α retrograde signaling.
Meditation and emotional processing in the brain: An ERP study on the influence of long term Sudarshan Kriya yoga and meditation practice.

The present study examined differences in the event-related brain potentials (ERPs) of 24 long term Sudarshan Kriya meditators and 24 control subjects without prior experience in meditation, in their response to an emotional evocative task. The International Affective Picture System (IAPS) was used to examine emotional processing in the brain. Subjects also completed the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). In the 200-400 ms time window, group differences were found at central and parietooccipital brain regions, independent of ERP response to stimulus valence. The meditators showed higher overall ERP amplitude in these regions compared to the controls. In the 400-600 ms time window meditators showed greater ERP response to neutral pictures at prefrontal brain regions, compared to controls. A negativity bias was found in both groups and both time windows. Correlations between subjects’ PANAS scores and ERP amplitudes were found. The meditation group showed correlations at left, middle and right brain areas, while the control group showed correlations at left and middle brain areas, but not right brain areas. The present findings indicate an effect of meditation on brain responses, but not on emotional processing. MEDITATION AND EMOTIONAL PROCESSING IN THE BRAIN 2
Economic Impact of Moderate‐Vigorous Physical Activity Among Those With and Without Established Cardiovascular Disease: 2012 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey

Background Physical activity (PA) has an established favorable impact on cardiovascular disease (CVD) outcomes and quality of life. In this study, we aimed to estimate the economic effect of moderate‐vigorous PA on medical expenditures and utilization from a nationally representative cohort with and without CVD. Methods and Results The 2012 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey data were analyzed. Our study population was limited to noninstitutionalized US adults ≥18 years of age. Variables of interest included CVD (coronary artery disease, stroke, heart failure, dysrhythmias, or peripheral artery disease) and cardiovascular modifiable risk factors (CRFs; hypertension, diabetes mellitus, hypercholesterolemia, smoking, and/or obesity). Two‐part econometric models were utilized to study cost data; a generalized linear model with gamma distribution and link log was used to assess expenditures per capita. The final study sample included 26 239 surveyed individuals. Overall, 47% engaged in moderate‐vigorous PA ≥30 minutes, ≥5 days/week, translating to 111.5 million adults in the United States stratifying by CVD status; 32% reported moderate‐vigorous PA among those with CVD versus 49% without CVD. Generally, participants reporting moderate‐vigorous PA incurred significantly lower health care expenditures and resource utilization, displaying a step‐wise lower total annual health care expenditure as moving from CVD to non‐CVD (and each CRF category). Conclusions Moderate‐vigorous PA ≥30 minutes, ≥5 days/week is associated with significantly lower health care spending and resource utilization among individuals with and without established CVD.
Decreased Bax expression by mucosal T cells favours resistance to apoptosis in Crohn's disease

BACKGROUND Activated T cells are more susceptible to apoptosis than resting T cells. As intestinal T cells normally exhibit a higher state of activation, increased apoptosis may be necessary to maintain immune homeostasis in the specialised microenvironment of the mucosa. On the other hand, in Crohn's disease (CD) mucosal T cells are resistant to apoptosis, suggesting abnormal regulation of cell death mechanisms. AIMS To investigate differences in expression of anti- and proapoptotic Bcl-2 family proteins, key regulators of apoptosis, between circulating and mucosal T cells, and possible alterations in CD. PATIENTS AND METHODS Lamina propria T cells (LPT) were isolated from 10 control, seven CD, and eight ulcerative colitis (UC) patients, and peripheral blood T cells (PBT) from healthy volunteers. Purified T cells were stained intracellularly for Bcl-2, Bcl-xL, and Bax, and mean fluorescence intensity measured by flow cytometry. RESULTS Compared with PBT, the expression level of Bcl-2 and Bax, but not Bcl-xL, was significantly greater in LPT, resulting in lower Bcl-xL/Bax ratios. In PBT, Bax expression was highly and significantly correlated with both Bcl-2 and Bcl-xL, but correlation with Bcl-2 was absent in LPT. Bax expression in CD, but not UC, LPT was significantly lower than in control LPT, resulting in a significantly higher Bcl-xL/Bax ratio. The significant correlation of Bcl-xL to Bax was preserved in CD, but not UC, LPT. CONCLUSIONS Regulation of Bcl-2 family protein expression differs between circulating and mucosal T cells, probably underlying diverse survival potentials. In CD LPT, a low Bax expression and a high Bcl-xL/Bax ratio favour resistance to apoptosis and may contribute to the chronicity of inflammation.
Modeling Dynamics of Diffusion Across Heterogeneous Social Networks: News Diffusion in Social Media

Diverse online social networks are becoming increasingly interconnected by sharing information. Accordingly, emergent macro-level phenomena have been observed, such as the synchronous spread of information across different types of social media. Attempting to analyze the emergent global behavior is impossible from the examination of a single social platform, and dynamic influences between different social networks are not negligible. Furthermore, the underlying structural property of networks is important, as it drives the diffusion process in a stochastic way. In this paper, we propose a macro-level diffusion model with a probabilistic approach by combining both the heterogeneity and structural connectivity of social networks. As real-world phenomena, we explore instances of news diffusion across different social media platforms from a dataset that contains over 386 million web documents covering a one-month period in early 2011. We find that influence between different media types is varied by the context of information. News media are the most influential in the arts and economy categories, while social networking sites (SNS) and blog media are in the politics and culture categories, respectively. Furthermore, controversial topics, such as political protests and multiculturalism failure, tend to spread concurrently across social media, while entertainment topics, such as film releases and celebrities, are more likely driven by interactions within single social platforms. We expect that the proposed model applies to a wider class of diffusion phenomena in diverse fields and that it provides a way of interpreting the dynamics of diffusion in terms of the strength and directionality of influences among populations.
Misbehaviors of Front-Line Research Personnel and the Integrity of Community-Based Research

There has been little empirical research into misconduct and misbehavior among community research workers who recruit and collect data in vulnerable and marginalized health populations and are also members of those same communities. We conducted qualitative interviews with community research workers and traditional research assistants to understand the context and consequences of misbehaviors that pose a threat to research ethics and data integrity. In our sample, more community research workers acknowledged engaging in research wrongdoing than did traditional research assistants. These behaviors were most prevalent among community research workers who were not well-integrated into the research team. We suggest best practices for investigators to promote an environment that supports research integrity in research projects that employ community research workers.
Proteomics of effector-triggered immunity (ETI) in plants

Effector-triggered immunity (ETI) was originally termed gene-for-gene resistance and dates back to fundamental observations of flax resistance to rust fungi by Harold Henry Flor in the 1940s. Since then, genetic and biochemical approaches have defined our current understanding of how plant “resistance” proteins recognize microbial effectors. More recently, proteomic approaches have expanded our view of the protein landscape during ETI and contributed significant advances to our mechanistic understanding of ETI signaling. Here we provide an overview of proteomic techniques that have been used to study plant ETI including both global and targeted approaches. We discuss the challenges associated with ETI proteomics and highlight specific examples from the literature, which demonstrate how proteomics is advancing the ETI research field.
Efficacy of Hospital at Home in Patients with Heart Failure: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background Heart failure (HF) is the commonest cause of hospitalization in older adults. Compared to routine hospitalization (RH), hospital at home (HaH)—substitutive hospital-level care in the patient’s home—improves outcomes and reduces costs in patients with general medical conditions. The efficacy of HaH in HF is unknown. Methods and Results We searched MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, and CENTRAL, for publications from January 1990 to October 2014. We included prospective studies comparing substitutive models of hospitalization to RH in HF. At least 2 reviewers independently selected studies, abstracted data, and assessed quality. We meta-analyzed results from 3 RCTs (n = 203) and narratively synthesized results from 3 observational studies (n = 329). Study quality was modest. In RCTs, HaH increased time to first readmission (mean difference (MD) 14.13 days [95% CI 10.36 to 17.91]), and improved health-related quality of life (HrQOL) at both, 6 months (standardized MD (SMD) -0.31 [-0.45 to -0.18]) and 12 months (SMD -0.17 [-0.31 to -0.02]). In RCTs, HaH demonstrated a trend to decreased readmissions (risk ratio (RR) 0.68 [0.42 to 1.09]), and had no effect on all-cause mortality (RR 0.94 [0.67 to 1.32]). HaH decreased costs of index hospitalization in all RCTs. HaH reduced readmissions and emergency department visits per patient in all 3 observational studies. Conclusions In the context of a limited number of modest-quality studies, HaH appears to increase time to readmission, reduce index costs, and improve HrQOL among patients requiring hospital-level care for HF. Larger RCTs are necessary to assess the effect of HaH on readmissions, mortality, and long-term costs.
Interestingness - A Unifying Paradigm - Bipolar Function Composition

Interestingness is an important criterion by which we judge knowledge discovery. But, interestingness has escaped all attempts to capture its intuitive meaning into a concise and comprehensive form. A unifying paradigm is formulated by function composition. We claim that composition is bipolar, i.e. composition of exactly two functions, whose two semantic poles are relevance and unexpectedness. The paradigm generality is demonstrated by case studies of new interestingness functions, examples of known functions that fit the framework, and counter-examples for which the paradigm points out to the lacking pole.
Perceptual image distortion

In this paper, we present a perceptual distortion measure that predicts image integrity far better than mean-squared error. This perceptual distortion measure is based an a model of human visual processing that fits empirical measurements of the psychophysics of spatial pattern detection. The model of human visual processing proposed involves two major components: a steerable pyramid transform and contrast normalization. We also illustrate the usefulness of the model in predicting perceptual distortion in real images. <<ETX>>
Dynamic hyperlink generation for navigation in relational databases

Information processing is the key issue of the 20th Century. Databases are designed to store information and the World Wide Web has turned out to be the place for the gathering and distribution of information. While these two seem to be made for each other, there are inherent difficulties in linking them together due to quite different technologies. Nevertheless, it turned out that most real-life Web applications need an underlying database [1] to be stable, flexible and scalable. Appropriate design methodologies are hence needed to implement complex functionality. Moreover, there already exist databases which people want to connect to the Web with similar functionality as in classic implementations. Most of them rely on the proven technology of relational databases.