Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Emerging Roles of the Calcineurin-Nuclear Factor of Activated T-Lymphocytes Pathway in Nervous System Functions and Diseases

The ongoing epidemics of metabolic diseases and increase in the older population have increased the incidences of neurodegenerative diseases. Evidence from murine and cell line models has implicated calcineurin-nuclear factor of activated T-lymphocytes (NFAT) signaling pathway, a Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent major proinflammatory pathway, in the pathogenesis of these diseases. Neurotoxins such as amyloid-β, tau protein, and α-synuclein trigger abnormal calcineurin/NFAT signaling activities. Additionally increased activities of endogenous regulators of calcineurin like plasma membrane Ca2+-ATPase (PMCA) and regulator of calcineurin 1 (RCAN1) also cause neuronal and glial loss and related functional alterations, in neurodegenerative diseases, psychotic disorders, epilepsy, and traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries. Treatment with calcineurin/NFAT inhibitors induces some degree of neuroprotection and decreased reactive gliosis in the central and peripheral nervous system. In this paper, we summarize and discuss the current understanding of the roles of calcineurin/NFAT signaling in physiology and pathologies of the adult and developing nervous system, with an emphasis on recent reports and cutting-edge findings. Calcineurin/NFAT signaling is known for its critical roles in the developing and adult nervous system. Its role in physiological and pathological processes is still controversial. However, available data suggest that its beneficial and detrimental effects are context-dependent. In view of recent reports calcineurin/NFAT signaling is likely to serve as a potential therapeutic target for neurodegenerative diseases and conditions. This review further highlights the need to characterize better all factors determining the outcome of calcineurin/NFAT signaling in diseases and the downstream targets mediating the beneficial and detrimental effects.
An Investigation of Imaginary Companions in an Ethnic and Grade Diverse Sample

This investigation focused on the nature of imaginary companions (ICs) in 43 ethnically diverse, young school-age children (kindergarten, first, and second grade). We tested the hypotheses that our diverse sample would be able to describe their ICs in detail that is similar to rich descriptions of ICs found in samples of preschool-age, Caucasian children. Although we did not expect grade differences, we expected gender differences and explored differences by ethnicity. We also hypothesized that children with ICs would report greater tendencies to engage in overall fantasy play and that they would rate the importance of companionship with a real friend stronger than did children without an IC. The results supported the hypotheses that children in our sample would have ICs and be able to describe them in rich detail. The analyses revealed no grade or gender differences in having a companion, but did suggest that there may be subtle differences in the ICs of different ethnic groups that require further exploration. Finally, children with an IC did appear to have a greater fantasy orientation than children without an IC which suggests that the presence of ICs are an important part of children's lives from a wide range of backgrounds.
Storing and manipulating environmental big data with JASMIN

JASMIN is a super-data-cluster designed to provide a high-performance high-volume data analysis environment for the UK environmental science community. Thus far JASMIN has been used primarily by the atmospheric science and earth observation communities, both to support their direct scientific workflow, and the curation of data products in the STFC Centre for Environmental Data Archival (CEDA). Initial JASMIN configuration and first experiences are reported here. Useful improvements in scientific workflow are presented. It is clear from the explosive growth in stored data and use that there was a pent up demand for a suitable big-data analysis environment. This demand is not yet satisfied, in part because JASMIN does not yet have enough compute, the storage is fully allocated, and not all software needs are met. Plans to address these constraints are introduced.
Patterns of Obesity and Lymph Fluid Level during the First Year of Breast Cancer Treatment: A Prospective Study

Obesity is one of the risk factors for developing lymphedema following breast cancer treatment. We prospectively enrolled 140 women and followed the participants for 12 months after surgery to investigate patterns of obesity and lymph fluid level in the first year of cancer treatment. Electrical bioimpedance devices were used to measure weight, BMI, and percent of body fat as well as lymph fluid level. General instructions were given to the participants on maintaining pre-surgery weight. Among the 140 participants, 136 completed the study with 2.9% attrition. More than 60% of the participants were obese (30.8%) or overweight (32.4%), while only two participants were underweight and about 35% had normal weight. This pattern of obesity and overweight was consistent at 4–8 weeks and 12 months post-surgery. At 12 months post-surgery, the majority of the women (72.1%) maintained pre-surgery weight and 15.4% had >5% weight loss; 12.5% of the women increase >5% of their weight. Significantly more patients in the obesity group had lymphedema defined by L-Dex ratio >7.1 than those in the normal/underweight and overweight group at pre-surgery and 4–8 weeks post-surgery. There was a trend of more patients in the obesity group had L-Dex ratio >7.1 at 12 months post-surgery. Obesity and overweight remain among women at the time of cancer diagnosis and the patterns of obesity and overweight continue during the first year of treatment. General instructions on having nutrition-balanced and portion-appropriate diet and physical activities daily or weekly can be effective to maintain pre-surgery weight.
Brain spectrin(240/235) and brain spectrin(240/235E): two distinct spectrin subtypes with different locations within mammalian neural cells

Adult mouse brain contains at least two distinct spectrin subtypes, both consisting of 240-kD and 235-kD subunits. Brain spectrin(240/235) is found in neuronal axons, but not dendrites, when immunohistochemistry is performed with antibody raised against brain spectrin isolated from enriched synaptic/axonal membranes. A second spectrin subtype, brain spectrin(240/235E), is exclusively recognized by red blood cell spectrin antibody. Brain spectrin(240/235E) is confined to neuronal cell bodies and dendrites, and some glial cells, but is not present in axons or presynaptic terminals.
Association of glucocorticoid receptor polymorphisms with the susceptibility to major depressive disorder and treatment responses in Korean depressive patients

Objective: Major depressive disorder (MDD) is closely related to stress reactions and serotonin probably underpins the pathophysiology of MDD. Alterations of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis at the gene level have reciprocal consequences on serotonin neurotransmission. Glucocorticoid receptor (GR) polymorphisms affect glucocorticoid sensitivity, which is associated with cortisol feedback effects. Therefore, we hypothesised that GR polymorphisms are associated with the susceptibility to MDD and predict the treatment response. Method: Ninety-six subjects with a minimum score of 17 on the 21-item Hamilton Depression Scale (HAMD) at baseline were enrolled into the present study. The genotypes of GR (N363S, ER22/23EK, Bcl1, and TthIII1 polymorphisms) were analysed. The HAMD score was again measured after 1, 2, 4 and 8 weeks of antidepressant treatment to detect whether the therapeutic effects differed with the GR genotype. Results: Our subjects carried no N363S or ER22/23EK genetic polymorphisms and three types of Bcl1 and TthIII1 genetic polymorphisms. The C/C genotype and C allele at Bcl1 polymorphism were more frequent in MDD patients than in normal controls (p < 0.01 and p = 0.01, respectively). The genotype distributions did not differ significantly between responders and non-responders. Conclusion: These results suggest that GR polymorphism cannot predict the therapeutic response after antidepressant administration. However, GR polymorphism (Bcl1) might play a role in the pathophysiology of MDD. Future studies should check this finding in larger populations with different characteristics.
Antiestrogenicity and estrogenicity in leachates from solid waste deposits

A great deal of effort has been devoted to developing new in vitro and in vivo methods to identify and classify endocrine disrupting chemicals that have been identified in environmental samples. In this study an in vitro test based on recombinant yeast strains transfected with genes for the human estrogen receptor α was adapted to examine the presence of estrogenic and antiestrogenic substances in six Swedish landfill leachates. Antiestrogenic effects were measured as inhibition of the estradiol induced response with the human estrogen receptor α, and quantified by comparison with the corresponding inhibitory effects of a known antiestrogen, hydroxytamoxifen. The estrogenicity was within the range of that determined in domestic sewage effluents, from below the limit of detection to 29 ng estradiol units L−1. Antiestrogenicity was detected in some of the investigated landfill leachates, ranging between <38 and 3800 μg hydroxytamoxifen equivalents L−1. There was no apparent relation between the type of waste deposited on the landfills and the antiestrogenic effect. Fractionation of a landfill leachate showed that estrogenic compounds were located in two dominant fractions. Three estrogenic compounds were found that accounted for the estrogenic activity in extracts of leachates: bisphenol A, estradiol, and ethinylestradiol. The bisphenol may have been released from decomposing plastic waste and the estrogenic steroids from earlier deposits of municipal sewage sludge and pharmaceutical waste. Fractionation of leachates from three parts of a landfill showed that the antiestrogenic activity was distributed in at least four fractions and somewhat different in different flows of leachate. This indicated a heterogeneous mixture of antiestrogenic substances. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Environ Toxicol, 2011.
The impact of an elaborated assessee’s role in peer assessment

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of an elaborated assessee’s role on metacognitive awareness, performance and attitude in peer assessment. Two intact groups (a total of 82 students) were randomly assigned to a treatment condition (having back‐feedback activity) or a control condition (not having back‐feedback activity). The results indicated that, regarding metacognitive awareness, when participants played the elaborated assessee role, they tended to report higher metacognitive awareness in their learning process. Regarding performance, when participants played the elaborated assessee role, they tended to receive better scores in making a concept map. Regarding attitude, when participants played the elaborated assessee role, they reported greater motivation towards the peer assessment. The findings of this study suggest instructional implications for those who want to employ peer assessment as a learning method by showing the effectiveness of a well‐developed role design, specifically one that includes the back‐feedback activity.
Young Offenders, Tattoos and Recidivism

Among 898 young offenders held in South Australian secure care centres, 17% of males and 30% of females reported having tattoos. These were significantly higher incidences than in a local high school student sample and were higher than national general population rates. Significant correlations were found between tattooed status and responses to items relating to aggression (temper, fighting, deliberate self-injury) and substance use, though these were not strong. Neither tattooed status nor the desire (among those with tattoos) to have tattoos removed were significantly related to 6-month post-release recidivism status among either male or female young offenders. At the crude level of whether an offender has tattoos or not, tattooed status cannot be used as a predictor of recidivism risk. It is suggested that for some offenders the act of removing conspicuous tattoos can signal prosocial changes in both projected image and self-concept. Research is needed into whether particular aspects of being tattooed (e.g., size, number, design) are related to criminality and whether tattoo removal is related to reduced recidivism.
Please Scroll down for Article Journal of Cognition and Development Social Information Guides Infants' Selection of Foods

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Robust identification of a nonminimum phase system: Blind adjustment of a linear equalizer in data communications

Consider an unknown linear time-invariant system without control, driven by a white noise with known distribution. We are interested in the identification of this system, observing only the output. This problem is well known under the major assumption: the system is minimum (or maximum! ) phase, in which the very popular least squares method gives an identification of the system in an autoregressive form. However, we are Interested in the case where the system is nonminimum (nor maximum! ) phase, i.e., we want identification of both gain and phase of the system. The literature gives only a negative result: the idenfication of the phase of the system is impossible in the case of a Gaussian driving noise (hence, second-order statistics are irrelevant to our problem). For a large class of other input distributions, we present an identification procedure, and give some numerical results for a concrete case origin of our study: the blind adjustment of a transversal equalizer without any startup period prior to data transmission.
Senepol Symposium, St. Croix, USVI November 8-10, 2002 GROWTH OF SENEPOL-SIRED CALVES AT ZULIA STATE, VENEZUELA

As a second phase of a genetics improvement project looking forward to investigating the combining ability of Senepol upon both selection and breeding plans with crossbred Bos taurus dairy cows at Zulia state, Venezuela, a total of 185 Senepol-sired calves born between 2000-2001 were evaluated for preand postweaning growth as well as for estimating productivity of the dam (POD) at weaning. The mathematical model included the fixed effects of farm (FM), sire (SR), dams breed of sire (DS), cow age (CA), SR*FM interaction, calf sex (CS) and calf hair coat (CC), the results indicated large differences (P<0,05 to P<0,001) among FM, SR, SR*FM, CS and CC. DS and CA were unimportant. General means for weights and ADG adjusted at 205-d and 365-d of calf age were, 111,6 kg y 0,400 kg/d, and 211 kg and 0,621 kg/d, respectively. POD varied from 63,3 kg to 124 kg of calf for cow exposed to breeding. Research generating in Venezuela upon Senepol performance for growth will help both breeders and producers to orientate their systems to new alternatives of production for improving dual purpose cattle in tropical conditions.
Rates of expressed emotions in Pakistani relatives of patients with schizophrenia.

BACKGROUND Studies have reported substantial cross-cultural variations in rates of Expressed Emotions (EE) in relatives of patients with schizophrenia. As a first attempt from Pakistan, this study aimed to measure the components of EE among relatives of patients with schizophrenia in a different socio-cultural set-up. METHOD Thirty-two key family members were interviewed using the Camberwell Family Interview (CFI) and Five Minute Speech Sample (FMSS). RESULTS Seventy-five percent of the family members appeared to be high EE with the majority rated so on the basis of hostility alone. Moreover, symptomatic behavior of the patient contributed more to the rating of relatives hostility. Pakistani relatives showed higher levels of emotional over-involvement and hostility as compared to many other cultures. In comparison to CFI, the FMSS showed lower sensitivity for identifying high EE relatives, thus it may not be very suitable to use on its own in Pakistan for cultural reasons. LIMITATIONS Lack of follow-up data and small sample size limit the scope of the study. CONCLUSIONS Pakistani relatives appeared to be more hostile yet emotionally over-involved and warm toward their sick relatives as compared to the households reported in many previous studies. Psycho-educational programs need to be initiated for the concerned families to reduce their level of hostility. Outcome studies are also warranted in order to understand any link between high EE and relapse of schizophrenia in Pakistan.
Reanalysis of the Final Results of the European Carotid Surgery Trial

Background and Purpose— The European Carotid Surgery Trial (ECST) and North American Symptomatic Carotid Endarterectomy Trial (NASCET) have shown that endarterectomy reduces the risk of stroke in certain patients with recently symptomatic carotid stenosis. However, they differed in the degree of stenosis above which surgery was reported to be effective. This disparity has led to inconsistent clinical recommendations but may have been due to differences between the trials in the methods of measurement of carotid stenosis and definitions of outcome events. Methods— To allow direct comparison of analyses from ECST and NASCET, we remeasured the prerandomization ECST carotid angiograms and redefined the outcome events the same way as in NASCET. Results— We randomized 3018 patients and followed them up for a mean of 73 months. Surgery reduced the 5-year risk of any stroke or surgical death by 5.7% (95% CI, 0 to 11.6) in patients with 50% to 69% stenosis (n=646, P =0.05) and by 21.2% (95% CI, 12.9 to 29.4) in patients with 70% to 99% stenosis without “near occlusion” (n=429, P <0.0001). These benefits were maintained at the 10-year follow-up. However, surgery was of no benefit in patients (n=125) with near occlusion. The effect of surgery in this group was highly significantly different from that in patients with 70% to 99% stenosis without near occlusion (P =0.002). Surgery was harmful in patients with <30% stenosis (n=1321, P =0.007) and of no benefit in patients with 30% to 49% stenosis (n=478, P =0.6). Conclusions— Results of the ECST and NASCET were consistent when analyzed in the same way. In ECST, surgery was highly beneficial for 70% to 99% stenosis and moderately beneficial for 50% to 69% stenosis. However, contrary to clinical recommendations and current practice, surgery was of little benefit in patients with carotid near occlusion.
Perceptions of Overall Fairness: Are Effects on Job Performance Moderated by Leader-Member Exchange?

Using multisource data, this article examined the relationship of two types of employee perceptions of overall fairness (i.e., fairness of the organization and fairness of the department), with supervisor ratings of in-role task performance and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB). We also examined whether high-quality leader-member exchange (LMX) relationships compensate for negative effects of fairness on job performance and citizenship behaviors. Focusing on a sample of 154 health care workers, we found that only employee perceptions of overall fairness regarding the department were related to supervisory ratings of OCB and in-role task performance. Moreover, LMX moderated the relationships between fairness perceptions and (a) task performance, (b) organization-focused OCB, but not (c) individual-focused OCB. We discuss implications for research and the potential for reducing negative effects of low fairness perceptions on job performance through positive LMX.
Dialogic Design of Qualitative Data Collection for Researching the Mirage of Upward Mobility

The mirage of upward mobility is the mistaken perception of linking the fact of having a romantic relationship with people responding to a model of dominant traditional masculinity to raising their status and attractiveness, when in fact the contrary occurs, and both status and attractiveness decrease. Investigating the phenomenon of the mirage of upward mobility as a cause of gender violence poses additional difficulty to its idiosyncrasy. To analyze this phenomenon as part of a research study, specific data collection techniques were needed and designed in dialogue with researchers and adolescents. This article involved participants from the design of the data collection techniques and the pilots carried out until the development of the research project. This dialogic design process has allowed the inclusion of true stories into the analysis of the mirage of upward mobility helping researchers and participants to advance the related knowledge.
Knowledge and attitudes of future schoolteachers in the scientific‐mathematical sphere: some evidences for Italy

Analysis of the university careers of students who are training to become primary school teachers has shown that a certain number have real difficulty in passing examinations in the scientific and methodological fields. This paper uses both objective and subjective data to analyse the levels of competence in this cultural field, and the propensity towards certain disciplines. Competence in scientific subjects among these students varies considerably, but the greatest concern is a widespread negative attitude towards the quantitative sciences. To transform this approach the way in which these are taught to future teachers requires considerably improvement, by means of projects and programs which take into consideration awareness of this background, that is the attitude of “fighting shy”, from both cognitive and affective viewpoints.
Predicting Runoff and Sediment Yield from a Stiff-Stemmed Grass Hedge System for a Small Watershed

Grass hedges planted at regular intervals on the landscape offer many opportunities to reduce runoff and sediment from leaving fields. Objectives of this study were (1) to evaluate the ability of the WEPP watershed model to simulate grass hedge system effects of sediment trapping (TE), bench terracing (BT), and variable effective soil hydraulic conductivity (HC) on simulated hillslope runoff and sediment yield, and (2) to model the effects of measured effective hydraulic conductivity (Keff) values from a grass hedge management system by comparing predicted runoff and sediment yield values to those measured in a small watershed over an 11-year period. The study was conducted on a 6.6 ha watershed located in the deep loess hills region of southwestern Iowa. Narrow grass hedges of predominantly switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) were planted at 15.4 m intervals in 1991. The WEPP model simulated greater reductions in runoff (9%) and sediment yield (58%) from BT compared to TE and HC effects. Combination of all three effects gave the highest reductions in runoff (22%) and sediment yield (79%) compared to individual effects or any combination of two effects. The watershed model did not adequately simulate slope length reduction effects from the grass hedges. Runoff (r 2 = 0.78) and sediment yield (r 2 = 0.75) were comparable to observed data when measured Keff values for grass hedge, row crop, and channel areas were used as input data. Measured Keff data from grass hedge, row crop, and channel areas should be used for improved runoff and sediment yield predictions.