Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Oncogenic K-ras stimulates Wnt signaling in colon cancer through inhibition of GSK-3beta.

BACKGROUND & AIMS Two key genetic events underlying the development of colon cancer are activation of the K-ras and Wnt signaling pathways. We have previously shown that these 2 pathways can cooperate to regulate vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) gene expression. The goal of this study was to define the molecular basis for this interaction. METHODS The effects of K-ras(Val12) on VEGF and T-cell factor 4 (TCF-4) promoter activity, nuclear levels of beta-catenin and beta-catenin/TCF-4 complexes, glycogen synthase kinase 3beta (GSK-3beta) phosphorylation, and GSK-3beta kinase activity were measured. LY294002 and PD98059 were used to define the role of specific ras effector pathways. RESULTS Oncogenic K-ras up-regulated the activity of the VEGF promoter, and selective mutagenesis of TCF-4 binding sites significantly blocked this induction. K-ras(Val12) also induced the activity of a heterologous TCF-4 reporter construct in Caco-2 and HeLa cells. LY294002 and dominant negative phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase nearly completely blocked this induction. K-ras(Val12) increased the stability of beta-catenin, the levels of nuclear beta-catenin, and the formation of nuclear beta-catenin/TCF-4 complexes, and these effects were also blocked by LY294002. Finally, K-ras(Val12) inhibited the kinase activity of total cellular GSK-3beta and GSK-3beta complexed with Axin. This effect was not mediated through phosphorylation at serine 9 but did depend on phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase. CONCLUSIONS Our results suggest a unique cooperative interaction between 2 critical oncogenic pathways in colorectal tumorigenesis and highlight the pivotal role of GSK-3beta.
A novel method to study contact inhibition of locomotion using micropatterned substrates

Summary The concept of contact inhibition of locomotion (CIL) describes the ability of a cell to change the direction of its movement after contact with another cell. It has been shown to be responsible for physiological and developmental processes such as wound healing, macrophage dispersion and neural crest cell migration; whereas its loss facilitates cancer cell invasion and metastatic dissemination. Different assays have been developed to analyze CIL in tissue culture models. However, these methods have several caveats. Collisions happen at low frequency between freely migrating cells and the orientation of the cells at the time of contact is not predictable. Moreover, the computational analysis required by these assays is often complicated and it retains a certain degree of discretion. Here, we show that confinement of neural crest cell migration on a single dimension by using a micropatterned substrate allows standardized and predictable cell–cell collision. CIL can thus easily be quantified by direct measurement of simple cellular parameters such as the distance between nuclei after collision. We tested some of the signaling pathways previously identified as involved in CIL, such as small GTPases and non-canonical Wnt signaling, using this new method for CIL analysis. The restricted directionality of migration of cells in lines is a powerful strategy to obtain higher predictability and higher efficiency of the CIL response upon cell–cell collisions.
STUDY ON NECK SHAFT ANGLE AND FEMORAL LENGTH OF SOUTH INDIAN FEMURS

Address for Correspondence: Shaik Hussain Saheb, Assistant Professor, Department of Anatomy, JJM Medical College, Davangere, Karnataka 577004, India. E-Mail: anatomyshs@gmail.com Access this Article online Quick Response code Web site: 1Assistant Professor, Department of Orthopedics, JJM Medical College, Davangere, Karnataka, India *2 Assistant Professor, Department of Anatomy, JJM Medical College, Davangere, Karnataka, India. Background: Femoral nek anteversion describes the angle subtended by the femoral neck with reference to the transcondylar plane of the distal end of the femur and is usually 15° to 45°. This along with the neck shaft angle, hip axis length, femoral neck width influence the risk of femoral neck fracture. Femoral neck anteversion angle has to be taken into consideration when reduction and fixation is selected as a method of treatment. Objectives: The objectives of present study to find out the measurements of Neck shaft angle, Femoral Length and Neck Length of femur. Materials and Methods: In present study have used 250 femurs from different colleges in south India. The following measurements were conducted Neck shaft angle, Femoral Length and Neck Length of femur. Results: The results of present study are the length of femur was 446.2+26.39mm, right femur was 446.6+26.66mm and left femur was 445.8+26.12mm, the Neck Length femur was 36.3+4.2mm, right femur was 36.1+4.1mm and left femur was 36.4+4.3m. the neck shaft angle of femur was 137.10 , right femur was 137.30 and left femur was 136.90. Conclusion: There is no significance difference between right and left femur measurements. Orthopaedists and Radiologists use the normal range and means of the neck shaft angle in the diagnosis and treatment of the disease of the hip. The angle is increased in congenital subluxation and dislocation of the hip, poliomyelitis, cerebral palsy and idiopathic scoliosis and decreased in the congenital coxavara , post traumatic coxa vara due to malunited femoral neck and inter trochanteric fractures.
Palmitoylation of the SNAP25 Protein Family

SNAP25 plays an essential role in neuronal exocytosis pathways. SNAP25a and SNAP25b are alternatively spliced isoforms differing by only nine amino acids, three of which occur within the palmitoylated cysteine-rich domain. SNAP23 is 60% identical to SNAP25 and has a distinct cysteine-rich domain to both SNAP25a and SNAP25b. Despite the conspicuous differences within the palmitoylated domains of these secretory proteins, there is no information on their comparative interactions with palmitoyl transferases. We report that membrane association of all SNAP25/23 proteins is enhanced by Golgi-localized DHHC3, DHHC7, and DHHC17. In contrast, DHHC15 promoted a statistically significant increase in membrane association of only SNAP25b. To investigate the underlying cause of this differential specificity, we examined a SNAP23 point mutant (C79F) designed to mimic the cysteine-rich domain of SNAP25b. DHHC15 promoted a marked increase in membrane binding and palmitoylation of this SNAP23 mutant, demonstrating that the distinct cysteine-rich domains of SNAP25/23 contribute to differential interactions with DHHC15. The lack of activity of DHHC15 toward wild-type SNAP23 was not overcome by replacing its DHHC domain with that from DHHC3, suggesting that substrate specificity is not determined by the DHHC domain alone. Interestingly, DHHC2, which is closely related to DHHC15, associates with the plasma membrane in PC12 cells and can palmitoylate all SNAP25 isoforms. DHHC2 is, thus, a candidate enzyme to regulate SNAP25/23 palmitoylation dynamics at the plasma membrane. Finally, we demonstrate that overexpression of specific Golgi-localized DHHC proteins active against SNAP25/23 proteins perturbs the normal secretion of human growth hormone from PC12 cells.
Feature-Cost Sensitive Learning with Submodular Trees of Classifiers

During the past decade, machine learning algorithms have become commonplace in large-scale real-world industrial applications. In these settings, the computation time to train and test machine learning algorithms is a key consideration. At training-time the algorithms must scale to very large data set sizes.At testing-time, the cost of feature extraction can dominate the CPU runtime. Recently, a promising method was proposed to account for the feature extraction cost at testing time, called Cost-sensitive Tree of Classifiers (CSTC). Although the CSTC problem is NP-hard, the authors suggest an approximation through a mixed-norm relaxation across many classifiers. This relaxation is slow to train and requires involved optimization hyperparameter tuning. We propose a different relaxation using approximate submodularity, called Approximately Submodular Tree of Classifiers (ASTC). ASTC is much simpler to implement, yields equivalent results but requires no optimization hyperparameter tuning and is up to two orders of magnitude faster to train.
Genetic influence on immune phenotype revealed strain-specific variations in peripheral blood lineages.

Inbred mouse strains are routinely used as genetically defined animal models for studying a wide assortment of biological and pathological processes, including immune system function. However, no studies have presented large-scale data on the immune cell populations among the inbred strains in physiological conditions. Here we present a systematic, quantitative analysis of peripheral blood cell phenotypes of 30 mouse strains assessed by flow cytometry. This cohort of mice represents a wide range of genetic origins and includes most of the strains used in genetic, physiological, and immunological studies. We evaluated the relative percentages of peripheral blood leukocyte subtypes (lymphocytes, granulocytes, and monocytes) and lymphocyte subpopulations (CD4+ T, CD8+ T, B220+ B, and natural killer cells) of mature (6-mo-old) mice. Our comprehensive study demonstrated: 1) marked differences in the relative proportions of blood cell populations among the strains at this age, 2) considerable variation of each immune trait with more than twofold difference between strains with the highest and the lowest trait values, and 3) haplotype analysis revealed a strong correlation between eosinophil percentage and a single region on chromosome 14 containing two candidate genes. The strain differences described here provide important information for researchers applying immunophenotyping of peripheral blood in immunological and genetic studies. The data from this study are available as part of the Mouse Phenome Database at http://www.jax. org/phenome.
Behavioral Stress Fails to Accelerate the Onset and Progression of Plaque Pathology in the Brain of a Mouse Model of Alzheimer's Disease

Conflicting findings exist regarding the link between environmental factors and development of Alzheimer's disease (AD) in a variety of transgenic mouse models of AD. In the present study, we investigated the effect of behavioral stress on the onset and progression of Aβ pathology in the brains of TgCRND8 mice, a transgenic mouse model of AD. One group of TgCRND8 mice was subjected to restraint stress starting at 1 month of age until they were 3 months old, while restraint stress in the second group started at 4 months of age until they were 6 months old. After 2 months of treatment, no differences in the soluble, formic acid extracted, or histologically detected Aβ deposition in the cortical and hippocampal levels were found between non-stressed and stressed mice. These results showed that restraint stress alone failed to aggravate amyloid pathology when initiated either before or after the age of amyloid plaque deposition in TgCRND8 mice, suggesting that if stress aggravated AD phenotype, it may not be via an amyloid-related mechanism in the TgCRND8 mice. These findings are indicative that plaque load per se may not be used as a significant criterion for evaluating the effect of stress on AD patients.
Work-related injuries in textile industry workers in Turkey.

BACKGROUND This study was conducted as a survey including work-related injuries (WRI) of workers in the textile and clothing industry admitted to the emergency department (ED). METHODS This prospective study included patients with WRI reportedly occurring in the textile and clothing industry over a two-year period. The study sample comprised only the casualties occurring at the workplace and while working de facto. RESULTS A total of 374 patients were eligible for the study. More than three-fourths of the study sample were females (76.2%, n=285). A significant proportion of the patients were between 14 and 24 years of age (44.7%, n=167). Approximately two-thirds reported that this was their first admission to a hospital related to WRI (65.8%, n=246). WRIs occurred most frequently between 07:00-09:00 (27.3%) and 23:00-01:00 (17.9%). "Carelessness" and "rushing" were the most commonly reported causes of WRIs from the patients perspective (40.6% and 21.4%, respectively). Three-fourths of the patients reported that they were using protective equipment (74.3%, n=278). With respect to injury types, laceration/puncture/ amputation/avulsion injuries accounted for 55.6% (n=208) of the sample. Trauma to the upper extremities was the main type of injury in 75.1% (n=281) of the cases. CONCLUSION Broad population-based studies are needed to define the situation as a whole in WRIs in the textile and clothing industry in the country. Strict measures should be undertaken and revised accordingly to prevent WRIs in these growing sectors.
Semi-Latent GAN: Learning to generate and modify facial images from attributes

Generating and manipulating human facial images using high-level attributal controls are important and interesting problems. The models proposed in previous work can solve one of these two problems (generation or manipulation), but not both coherently. This paper proposes a novel model that learns how to both generate and modify the facial image from high-level semantic attributes. Our key idea is to formulate a Semi-Latent Facial Attribute Space (SL-FAS) to systematically learn relationship between user-defined and latent attributes, as well as between those attributes and RGB imagery. As part of this newly formulated space, we propose a new model --- SL-GAN which is a specific form of Generative Adversarial Network. Finally, we present an iterative training algorithm for SL-GAN. The experiments on recent CelebA and CASIA-WebFace datasets validate the effectiveness of our proposed framework. We will also make data, pre-trained models and code available.
Translation symmetry detection in a fronto-parallel view

In this paper, we present a method of detecting translation symmetries from a fronto-parallel image. The proposed method automatically detects unknown multiple repetitive patterns of arbitrary shapes, which are characterized by translation symmetries on a plane. The central idea of our approach is to take advantage of the interesting properties of translation symmetries in both image space and the space of transformation group. We first detect feature points in input image as sampling points. Then for each sampling point, we search for the most probable corresponding lattice structures in the image and transform spaces using scale-space similarity maps. Finally, using a MRF formulation, we optimally partition the graph of all sampling points associated with the estimated lattices into subgraphs of sampling points and lattices belonging to the same symmetry pattern. Our method is robust because of the joint analysis in image and transform spaces, and the MRF optimization. We demonstrate the robustness and effectiveness of our method on a large variety of images.
The hospital water supply as a source of nosocomial infections: a plea for action.

BACKGROUND Microbiologically contaminated drinking water is a cause of community-acquired infection, and guidelines for prevention of such infections have been established. Microbes in hospital water can also cause nosocomial infection, yet guidelines for preventing such infections do not exist. The purpose of this review is to assess the magnitude of the problem caused by waterborne nosocomial infections and to plea for immediate action for their prevention. METHODS We conducted a MEDLINE search of the literature published between January 1, 1966, and December 31, 2001. STUDY SELECTION AND DATA EXTRACTION Investigations in which microorganisms (other than Legionella species) caused waterborne nosocomial infections and public health agency recommendations for drinking water. RESULTS Forty-three outbreaks of waterborne nosocomial infections have been reported, and an estimated 1400 deaths occur each year in the United States as a result of waterborne nosocomial pneumonias caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa alone. Despite the availability of effective control measures, no clear guidelines exist for the prevention of these infections. By contrast, guidelines for the prevention of community-acquired waterborne infections are now routinely used. Hospitals caring for patients at high risk for infection do not enforce the standards of water quality recommended by US and United Kingdom public health agencies for the patients' community counterparts. CONCLUSION Because of the seriousness of these nosocomial waterborne infections and the availability, low cost, and proven effectiveness of sterile water, we recommend that hospitalized patients at high risk for infection avoid exposure to hospital water and use sterile water instead.
Differences in use of peritoneal dialysis and survival among East Asian, Indo Asian, and white ESRD patients in Canada.

BACKGROUND Racial differences in health outcomes in general are well documented; however, few studies examined the impact of East Asian and Indo Asian race on choice of dialytic modality and survival among patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD). METHODS We compared the use of peritoneal dialysis (PD) and survival among East Asian, Indo Asian, and white patients with ESRD initiating dialysis therapy in Canada between January 1, 1990, and December 31, 2000. RESULTS Of 10,338 patients, 5.7% were East Asian, 3.2% were Indo Asian, and 91% were white. After controlling for sociodemographics and comorbidities, East Asian and Indo Asian patients were significantly more likely to initiate dialysis therapy on PD compared with white patients (odds ratio, 1.63; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.36 to 1.96; odds ratio, 1.52; 95% CI, 1.21 to 1.93, respectively), with no difference in likelihood of technique failure. East Asian and Indo Asian patients had a lower risk for death after the initiation of dialysis therapy (irrespective of modality) compared with white patients, with adjusted hazard ratios of 0.66 (95% CI, 0.58 to 0.76) for East Asian patients and 0.63 (95% CI, 0.53 to 0.75) for Indo Asian patients. The survival benefit for East Asian and Indo Asian patients was similar in the subgroup that initiated dialysis therapy with PD. CONCLUSION We found that Asian patients with ESRD were more likely to initiate dialysis therapy using PD, with improved survival after the initiation of dialysis therapy, compared with white patients. Elucidation of factors in East Asian and Indo Asian ESRD populations that result in improved outcomes may have implications for ESRD treatment for other racial groups.
Corruption and Government

In countries emerging from civil war with weak governments, bribery demands will be used opportunistically by officials operating under unclear rules that allow them to invent offences or simply to extort funds from ordinary people. Furthermore, many people may engage in illegal activities, such as smuggling or illicit trade in arms, and may need the protection of public authorities to continue to operate. Peacebuilding strategies must avoid triggering vicious spirals. An economy that is jumpstarted by giving monopoly powers to a few prominent people may produce a society that is both lacking in competition and unequal. Although it may be risky and difficult to counter corruption in post-conflict peacebuilding, if the problem is allowed to fester, it can undermine other efforts to create a stable, well-functioning state with popular legitimacy. Care must be taken in starting down the road to reform. Strong leadership from the top is needed that moves towards the goal of a more legitimate and better functioning government and sidelines those who have in the past been using the state as a tool for private gain through threats and intimidation. International assistance can, in principle, help, but it needs to be tailored to avoid exacerbating the underlying problem created by the mixture of corruption and threats of violence from those inside and outside the government.
Covers of D-Type Artin Groups

We study certain quotients of generalized Artin groups which have a natural map onto D-type Artin groups, where the generalized Artin group $A(T)$ is defined by a signed graph $T$. Then we find a certain quotient $G(T)$ according to the graph $T$, which also have a natural map onto $A(D_n)$. We prove that $G(T)$ is isomorphic to a semidirect product of a group $K^{(m,n)}$, with the Artin group $A(D_n)$, where $K^{(m,n)}$ depends only on the number $m$ of cycles and on the number $n$ of vertices of the graph $T$.
Resistance is costly: trade-offs between immunity, fecundity and survival in the pea aphid

Parasitoids are among the most important natural enemies of insects in many environments. Acyrthosiphon pisum, the pea aphid, is a common pest of the leguminous crops in temperate regions. Pea aphids are frequently attacked by a range of endoparasitic wasps, including the common aphidiine, Aphidius ervi. Immunity to parasitoid attack is thought to involve secondary symbiotic bacteria, the presence of which is associated with the death of the parasitoid egg. It has been suggested that there is a fecundity cost of resistance, as individuals carrying the secondary symbionts associated with parasitoid resistance have fewer offspring. Supporting this hypothesis, we find a positive relationship between fecundity and susceptibility to parasitoid attack. There is also a negative relationship between fecundity and off-plant survival time (which positively correlates with resistance to parasitoid attack). Taken together, these results suggest that the aphids can either invest in defence (parasitoid resistance, increased off-plant survival time) or reproduction, and speculate that this may be mediated by changes in the aphids' endosymbiont fauna. Furthermore, there is a positive relationship between aphid size and resistance, suggesting that successful resistance to parasitoid attack may involve physical, as well as physiological, defences.
Parametric Investigation of the Rotating Spoke Instability in Hall Thrusters

This work presents recent results of ongoing investigations into rotating spoke instabilities in Hall thrusters. Recent work by the authors demonstrated large amounts of electron current carried by spokes in the nearanode region in the H6 6-kW laboratory model Hall thruster, and raises the question of whether spokes may play a larger role in electron transport throughout the Hall thruster plume. Spokes have since been observed via high speed imaging in several Hall thrusters, including the H6, the NASA 173Mv1, the X2 dual nested channel Hall thruster, the Helicon Hall thruster, and the Busek BHT-600. While this work focuses on the H6 Hall thruster, visual examples of spoke presence in these other thrusters are also presented. A parameter study of the dependence of spoke amplitude and propagation velocity on magnetic field strength and discharge voltage in the H6 shows that the magnetic field strength has a strong influence on spoke properties. Spokes appear to be omnipresent in Hall thrusters, though with widely variable strength and stability, and appear even at very highly efficient operating conditions with high voltage and high magnetic field strength – the most prominent spoke mode in the H6 is observed at a 600 V, 65% total efficiency operating condition. In response to earlier studies that have observed spokes exclusively at low voltage or in inefficient operating regimes, a study of spoke behavior at a very low voltage operating condition links a transition to higher efficiency operation with the formation of stabilized spoke structures. Finally, we present visual evidence from high-speed imaging of spokes bridging the centrally mounted cathode to the discharge channel.