Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quantitative Analysis of Pancreatic Proinsulin mRNA in Genetically Diabetic (db/db) Mice

C57BL/KsJ db/db mice develop hyperphagic obesity and nonketotic diabetes similar to non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus in humans. Initially the mice demonstrate an abundant β-cell mass and hyperinsulinemia, which is followed by apparent β-cell loss. As an index of insulin synthesis, this study assesses pancreatic proinsulin mRNA, measured by dot hybridization to cloned cDNA, during the development of diabetes in the mice. Changes in proinsulin mRNA from 5 to 13 wk of age are compared with serum insulin, pancreatic insulin content, and blood glucose. In control (+ /db) mice, total proinsulin mRNA and pancreatic insulin content increased with age. Both changes were proportional to an increase in body weight. Obesity, hyperglycemia, and hyperinsulinemia were evident in diabetic (db/db) mice at 5 wk of age. Although pancreatic insulin content was comparable to that in the + /db controls at 5 wk, a fourfold relative elevation of proinsulin mRNA was observed. Despite an increase in body weight, proinsulin mRNA concentration and total proinsulin mRNA fell to levels similar to those of the control mice at 10 and 13 wk, associated with a loss of hyperinsulinemia, a mild decrease in pancreatic insulin content, and a marked increase in fasting blood glucose. A separate group of db/db mice was pair fed with the + /db controls from 4 to 13 wk. These diet-restricted diabetic mice were heavier than control mice and gained weight with age, but they weighed less than the unrestricted mice at all ages. Compared with the unrestricted db/db mice, a more modest fasting hyperglycemia was apparent, and a persistent hyperinsulinemia was observed. This group also preserved a high proinsulin mRNA concentration and showed a less marked fall in total proinsulin mRNA. Pancreatic insulin content was lower than that of controls, but a modest increase occurred with age. A strong correlation between serum insulin and total proinsulin mRNA is apparent in this study. Hyperinsulinemia in young diabetic mice is associated with abundant proinsulin mRNA, but occurrence of hyperglycemia and reduced pancreatic insulin content suggests that the ability to augment insulin synthesis is limited and insufficient to meet metabolic needs. The deterioration of hyperinsulinemia with age, accompanying more profound fasting hyperglycemia, is associated with a reduction of insulin synthesis reflected by a decreased total proinsulin mRNA. The loss of insulin synthetic capacity in these diabetic mice can be lessened by diet restriction, suggesting that the maintenance of total proinsulin mRNA in diet-restricted db/db mice may be important in ameliorating their diabetic state.
Feasible Multilateralism and the Effects of Regionalism

Recent research has underlined the efficiency of the GATT/WTO rules from the standpoint of politically motivated governments, emphasizing that the current multilateral rules are capable of delivering a politically efficient equilibrium. Such an equilibrium is, however, economically inefficient. Global free trade, in particular, is generally unattainable even in a fully cooperative world, provided that governments have distributive motivations. In such a context, we show that regional trade agreements can help move the world towards a welfare superior equilibrium. The reason is that, as members of regional trade agreements lower trade barriers against one another, they are induced to reduce their multilateral tariff sa s well. Once we account for these endogenous changes–and only then–we find that regionalism can raise world welfare even in a fully cooperative (but political) world. We also find, however, that members are likely to gain "too much" from regional integration, thereby harming outsiders.
Explainable Artificial Intelligence for Agile Mediation Propensity Assessment

Italian Justice has recently added mechanisms to exploit mediation process. One of the most critical aspects is a reliable identification of litigations which can be successfully mediated outside court procedures. The decision is under responsibility of a judge/court who has to read hundreds of pages and several documents, to be able to take a decision on the basis of few statements. This paper describes both an artificial intelligence solution and a tool to provide a decision support system which could process documents and be capable to: (i) produce reliable suggestions, (ii) produce circumstantiated motivations, thus highlighting statements which could support identified suggestion focusing the work of any judge/court on actual statements and documents with relevant facts, and (iii) provide a web based tool producing suggestions and motivations on demand at service of the involved court and judges, compliant with privacy and security, as to data. To this end, AI and eXplainable AI technologies have been used and a solution has been obtained which meets the above-mentioned objectives and many other detailed requirements. Such a solution has been developed in the context of the research project “Giustizia Agile”, funded by the Italian National PON Governance and Institutional Capacity, and validated against real cases. The solution has exploited the Snap4City framework for data and AI/XAI management.
Attention Lights Up New Object Representations before the Old Ones Fade Away

We investigated how attention shifts from one object to another by recording neuronal activity in the primary visual cortex. Monkeys performed a contour-grouping task in which they had to select a target curve and ignore a distractor curve. Some trials required a shift of attention, because the target and distractor curves were switched during the course of the trial. We monitored the dynamics of this attention shift in area V1, in which neuronal responses evoked by the target curve are stronger than those evoked by the distractor. The reallocation of attention was associated with a rapid and strong enhancement of responses to the newly attended curve, followed, after ∼60 ms, by a weaker suppression of responses to the curve from which attention was removed. We conclude that attention can be rapidly allocated to a new object before it disengages from the previously attended one.
A Systematic review and meta analysis of estrogen receptor beta as a predictive factor in breast cancer patients

It is unclear how estrogen receptor beta (ER) affects prognosis in breast cancer that is in the early stages. To determine the predictive value of ER in patients with early-stage breast cancer, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis. We looked for studies that evaluated the ER status in breast cancer patients article between 2010 and 2018 by searching Medline, Embase, and the Web of Science. 1700 participants from 18 studies total who met our inclusion and exclusion criteria were included. A Technical Expert Panel (TEP) of 3 medical specialist and expertise of disorder the abnormally cell cycle and cancer performed the review using the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews) model. The TEP planned a research on PubMed selecting “cancer” and “Breast Cancer” as MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) term adding to PubMed Search Builder the terms “Estrogen” and “Estrogen receptor”. TEP is considered for eligibility articles published within the last 13 years, including original research, in particular in vitro studies, and animal and clinical studies in English. Results: Of the 90 identified studies, TEP included 15 studies, 8 Systematical Review, and 4 clinical studies and 3 Review report. Our scoping review describes and summarizes the important develop highlyselective anti-ERβ antibodies that are applied to large well characterized human breast cancer samples to validate their diagnostic potential and to explore ERβ-selective agonists in animal models of breast cancer to validate their therapeutic potential
Review of Feline Pancreatitis Part Two: Clinical Signs, Diagnosis and Treatment

In the past decade pancreatitis has become recognised as a significant disease in the cat. Chronic, mild pancreatitis is often associated with more commonly diagnosed diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease or cholangitis/cholangiohepatitis. Furthermore, acute pancreatitis with similar complications to those seen in dogs is now diagnosed more frequently in cats. Unfortunately, the clinical signs and clinicopathological findings in cats with pancreatitis are often non-specific and vague. The lack of specific signs often results in a diagnosis being made only when the veterinary surgeon has a strong index of suspicion for pancreatitis and vigorously pursues that diagnosis. Pancreatitis is an important disease in cats, has been implicated as a potential cause of diabetes mellitus, and when present complicates the treatment of diabetes and other intra-abdominal diseases in cats.
Extinction Risks and the Conservation of Madagascar's Reptiles

Background An understanding of the conservation status of Madagascar's endemic reptile species is needed to underpin conservation planning and priority setting in this global biodiversity hotspot, and to complement existing information on the island's mammals, birds and amphibians. We report here on the first systematic assessment of the extinction risk of endemic and native non-marine Malagasy snakes, lizards, turtles and tortoises. Methodology/Principal Findings Species range maps from The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species were analysed to determine patterns in the distribution of threatened reptile species. These data, in addition to information on threats, were used to identify priority areas and actions for conservation. Thirty-nine percent of the data-sufficient Malagasy reptiles in our analyses are threatened with extinction. Areas in the north, west and south-east were identified as having more threatened species than expected and are therefore conservation priorities. Habitat degradation caused by wood harvesting and non-timber crops was the most pervasive threat. The direct removal of reptiles for international trade and human consumption threatened relatively few species, but were the primary threats for tortoises. Nine threatened reptile species are endemic to recently created protected areas. Conclusions/Significance With a few alarming exceptions, the threatened endemic reptiles of Madagascar occur within the national network of protected areas, including some taxa that are only found in new protected areas. Threats to these species, however, operate inside and outside protected area boundaries. This analysis has identified priority sites for reptile conservation and completes the conservation assessment of terrestrial vertebrates in Madagascar which will facilitate conservation planning, monitoring and wise-decision making. In sharp contrast with the amphibians, there is significant reptile diversity and regional endemism in the southern and western regions of Madagascar and this study highlights the importance of these arid regions to conserving the island's biodiversity.
Role of Capsular Colanic Acid in Adhesion of Uropathogenic Escherichia coli

ABSTRACT Urinary tract infections are the most common urologic disease in the United States and one of the most common bacterial infections of any organ system. Biofilms persist in the urinary tract and on catheter surfaces because biofilm microorganisms are resistant to host defense mechanisms and antibiotic therapy. The first step in the establishment of biofilm infections is bacterial adhesion; preventing bacterial adhesion represents a promising method of controlling biofilms. Evidence suggests that capsular polysaccharides play a role in adhesion and pathogenicity. This study focuses on the role of physiochemical and specific binding interactions during adhesion of colanic acid exopolysaccharide mutant strains. Bacterial adhesion was evaluated for isogenic uropathogenic Escherichia coli strains that differed in colanic acid expression. The atomic force microscope (AFM) was used to directly measure the reversible physiochemical and specific binding interactions between bacterial strains and various substrates as bacteria initially approach the interface. AFM results indicate that electrostatic interactions were not solely responsible for the repulsive forces between the colanic acid mutant strains and hydrophilic substrates. Moreover, hydrophobic interactions were not found to play a significant role in adhesion of the colanic acid mutant strains. Adhesion was also evaluated by parallel-plate flow cell studies in comparison to AFM force measurements to demonstrate that prolonged incubation times alter bacterial adhesion. Results from this study demonstrate that the capsular polysaccharide colanic acid does not enhance bacterial adhesion but rather blocks the establishment of specific binding as well as time-dependent interactions between uropathogenic E. coli and inert substrates.
HIV-1 Complement-Mediated Lysis of Latently Triggers Antibody-Dependent Provirus Activation Plus CD 59 Blockage

Print ISSN: 0022-1767 Online ISSN: 1550-6606. Immunologists, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2014 by The American Association of 9650 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20814-3994. The American Association of Immunologists, Inc., is published twice each month by The Journal of Immunology at R th L lly M eical L ibary, IU Shool of M eicine on A uust 8, 2014 hp://w w w jim m unl.org/ D ow nladed from
Mobilising a disadvantaged community for a cardiovascular intervention: designing PRORIVA in Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Introduction: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a burden for developing countries, yet few CVD intervention studies have been conducted in developing countries such as Indonesia. This paper outlines the process of designing a community intervention programme to reduce CVD risk factors, and discusses experiences with regard to design issues for a small-scale intervention. Design process: The design process for the present community intervention consisted of six stages: 1 a baseline risk factor survey, 2 design of a small-scale intervention by using both baseline survey and qualitative data, 3 implementation of the small-scale intervention, 4 evaluation of the small-scale intervention and design of a broader CVD intervention in the Yogyakarta municipality, 5 implementation of the broader intervention and 6 evaluation of the broader CVD intervention. According to the baseline survey, 60% of the men were smokers, more than 30% of the population had insufficient fruit and vegetable intake and more than 30% of the population were physically inactive, this is why a small-scale population intervention approach was chosen, guided both by the findings in the quantitative and the qualitative study. Experiences: A quasi-experimental study was designed with a control group and pre- and post-testing. In the small-scale intervention, two sub-districts were selected and randomly assigned as intervention and control areas. Within them, six intervention settings (two sub-villages, two schools and two workplaces) and three control settings (a sub-village, a school and a workplace) were selected. Health promotion activities targeting the whole community were implemented in the intervention area. During the evaluation, more activities were performed in the low socioeconomic status sub-village and at the civil workplace.
Complete Classification of Complex ALCHO Ontologies Using a Hybrid Reasoning Approach

Consequence-based reasoners are typically significantly faster than tableau-based reasoners for ontology classification. However, for more expressive DL languages like ALCHO, consequence-based reasoners are not applicable, but tableau-based reasoners can sometimes require an unacceptably long time for large and complex ontologies. This paper presents a weakening and strengthening approach for classification ofALCHO ontologies, using a hybrid of consequenceand tableau-based reasoning. We approximate the original ontologyOo by a weakened versionOw and a strengthened versionOs, both are in a less expressive DLALCH and classified by a consequence-based main reasoner. The classification from Ow is sound but possibly incomplete with respect to Oo, while that from Os is complete but possibly unsound. The additional subsumptions derived from Os may be unsound so are further verified by a tableau-based assistant reasoner. A prototype classifier called WSClassifier is implemented based on this hybrid approach. The experiments results show that for classifying many large and complex ALCHO ontologies, WSClassifier’s performance is significantly faster than tableau-based reasoners.
How I treat How I treat pediatric acute myeloid leukemia

Acute myeloid leukemia is a heterogeneous disease that accounts for approximately 20% of acute leukemias in children and adolescents. Despite the lack of targeted therapy for most subtypes and a dearth of new agents, survival rates have reached approximately 60% for children treated on clinical trials in developed countries. Most of the advances have been accomplished by better risk classification, the implementation of excellent supportive care measures, adaptation of therapy on the basis of each patient’s response to therapy, and improvements in allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. However, it is unlikely that further gains can be made through these measures alone. In this regard, high-resolution, genome-wide analyses have led to greater understanding of the pathogenesis of this disease and the identification of molecular abnormalities that are potential targets of new therapies. The development of molecularly targeted agents, some of which are already in clinical trials, holds great promise for the future. (Blood. 2012;119(25):5980-5988)
Adversarial Multi-Criteria Learning for Chinese Word Segmentation

Different linguistic perspectives causes many diverse segmentation criteria for Chinese word segmentation (CWS). Most existing methods focus on improve the performance for each single criterion. However, it is interesting to exploit these different criteria and mining their common underlying knowledge. In this paper, we propose adversarial multi-criteria learning for CWS by integrating shared knowledge from multiple heterogeneous segmentation criteria. Experiments on eight corpora with heterogeneous segmentation criteria show that the performance of each corpus obtains a significant improvement, compared to single-criterion learning. Source codes of this paper are available on Github.
Three-Dimensional Imaging of the Hypopharynx and Larynx by Means of Helical (Spiral) Computed Tomography

A new computed tomography (CT) technology, helical (spiral) CT, allows the entire neck to be imaged in only 30 seconds. Although multiplanar and three-dimensional (3-D) imaging could be performed with conventional CT, the volumetric acquisition provided by helical (spiral) CT allows significantly improved quality and easier reconstruction for more applications. These 3-D models show an airway appearance similar to that obtained with laryngography. Independent review of the 3-D images in 12 patients with lesions by two radiologists and one otolaryngologist was performed to assess 1) image quality, 2) ability to judge lesion extent, and 3) assistance in understanding the lesion compared to that provided by routine axial scans. Rating scores of 1 to 5 were assigned, with 5 representing the best quality or greatest value. The results showed that both groups scored image quality equally: 4.7. Lesion extent for the radiologists was 2.6, while the otolaryngologist's ranking was 3.7 (p < .01). In assisting understanding of lesions versus axial scans, radiologists ranked 3-D images 2.1, while the otolaryngologist ranked them 3.1 (p < .01). In summary, 3-D models provide a complementary imaging technique in understanding upper airway disease.
Perception of Undergraduate Medical Students in the Online OG Learning During COVID-19 Pandemic- A Cross Sectional Study at a Tertiary Care Medical College

Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic has become a great teacher, and online teaching-learning has become the need of the hour during this crisis. In order to improve online medical education and include innovative methods to increase the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains of teaching-learning, it is essential to understand students' perceptions of this online teaching method. Methodology: A cross-sectional study was conducted among medical undergraduates at a tertiary healthcare institution involving students of third, sixth, and eighth semesters. All the students who were willing to participate were included in the study. Data was collected using a predesigned, self-administered validated questionnaire consisting of socio-demographic variables, perceptions about course content, teachers and online assessments, their rating of traditional classes compared to online classes, and their experiences with online learning. Results: A total of 295 Undergraduate medical students belonging to the third, sixth, and eighth semesters of the MBBS course were included in the study. 85% of the students felt that the online OG classes during the COVID pandemic were enjoyable. A statistically significant association was found between student's course content and gender. The ease of staying at home, studying at one's own pace, and saving the transport cost were more acceptable to the students. Lack of communication between the patients and teachers and network issues were identified as problem areas. Conclusions: Hence, online teaching may replace traditional medical teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Commodity Price Shocks and Child Outcomes : The 1990 Cocoa Crisis in Cote d ’ Ivoire ∗

We look at the drastic cut of the administered cocoa producer price in 1990 Côte d’Ivoire and study to which extent cocoa producers’ children suffered from this severe aggregate shock in terms of school enrollment, labor, height stature and morbidity. Using pre-crisis (1985-88) and postcrisis (1993) data, we propose a difference-in-difference strategy to identify the causal effect of the cocoa shock on child outcomes, whereby we compare children of cocoa-producing households and children of other farmers living in the same district or the same village. This causal effect is shown to be rather strong for the four child outcomes we examine. Hence human capital investments are definitely procyclical in this context. We also argue that the difference-in-difference variations can be interpreted as private income effects, likely to derive from tight liquidity constraints.
Path-Stamps: A Proposal for Enhancing Security of Location Tracking Applications

Location tracking technologies are penetrating increasingly in industrial environments. Several challenges arise when people or mobile assets are tracked. Security is one of the main problems that location tracking poses. In this position paper we want to address the long-term authentication and accountability of location tracking history information or path. In order to accomplish this, we generalize the existent definition of location-stamp, then we formulate the new concept of path-stamp and, finally, we present a path-stamping architecture and protocol. We define a path-stamp as the evidence that, by itself or used with other information, allows a third party to prove that an entity has moved along some certain path enforcing a determined path-stamping policy. Our proposed solution is built on location-stamps, relative temporal authentication using linking schemes, and path-stamp entanglement.