Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Preliminary Study of the Activation of Endogenous Pancreatic Exocrine Enzymes during Automated Porcine Islet Isolation 1

The activation of endogenous pancreatic enzymes during automated pancreas digestion may be detrimental to islet isolation. In this report we assessed the activation of trypsin, chymotrypsin, elastase, carboxypeptidases A and B, phospholipase A2, and lipase using a porcine model. Four islet isolations were examined. Duplicate aliquots were taken from the automated circuit at 5-min time intervals up to the completion of pancreas digestion (approx 60 min). One aliquot was activated in vitro with exogenous trypsin in order to convert the enzymes into their active non-“proform,” with the exception of trypsinogen, which was activated with exogenous enterokinase. This was done to assess the percentage activation of each individual enzyme (total potentially activatable enzyme release). The extent of activation between isolations was extremely variable. During the closed (recirculating) circuit phase of pancreas digestion there were both gradual and rapid increases in the levels of enzymes released. Peak activity of enzyme activation varied from 13 to 30 min; similarly, total potentially activatable peaks occurred between 13 and 38 min. Lipase and carboxypeptidase B showed greater than 70% activation, chymotrypsin, carboxypeptidase A, and phospholipase A2 between 50% and 70% activation, and trypsin and elastase less than 20%. There were up to 30-fold differences between the four islet preparations. In summary, it is unlikely that poor islet yields are soley explained by variations between collagenases; the variable activation of endogenous pancreatic exocrine enzymes is also likely to be influential to porcine islet yields.
In the Eye of the Beholder: On Using Photography in Research on Sustainability

This study of perspectives and opinions on a Swedish nuclear power plant and an old building in a Swedish city center employed an ethnographic approach. Such methods are found to be applicable to research situations when it is of crucial importance to establish trustworthy relationships with the informants. The use of ethnographic research methods, especially photography, enabled the researchers in the project to collect a wide range of narratives about different matters regarding the role of the sites and buildings in the past, future prospects of the power plant and the old building and their location. By employing qualitative methods, the project aimed at gaining insight into the meaning-building processes of the actors involved and how they made sense of a place that was turned into a locality of energy production and city planning. This paper elaborates on photography as part of an ethnographic approach and the authors argue that photography helps the researchers to extract the seen and unseen as well as values connected to sustainability in the daily life of local actors.
The European Registry on Obstetric Antiphospholipid Syndrome (EUROAPS): A preliminary first year report

Background: Obstetric morbidity (OM) is a common feature of antiphospholipid syndrome (OAPS). Women having OAPS-only and women with OM related to antiphospholipid antibodies (aPL) but not fulfilling APS classification criteria (OMAPS), may show similar patterns. Aim: The aim of this research was to collect records of OAPS and OMAPS cases in order to have valuable information about their clinical features, laboratory, treatment, pregnancy outcomes and long-term follow-up. Methods: EUROAPS/EUROMAPS is a registry in the frame of the European Forum on Antiphospholipid Antibody projects. Its own website has been available since June 2010: www.euroaps. org. Results: This registry comprises 211 women including 304 pre-enrolment pregnancies, and 226 prospective cases, 194 of OAPS and 32 of OMAPS. OM was more frequent in OAPS than in OMAPS, independent of treatment. In the prospective cohort, standard aPL data was available in 202 cases and treatment data in all 226 cases. Good fetal outcomes were obtained when low dose aspirin plus low molecular weight heparin were administered. Prevalence of thrombotic events and/or cases evolving into full-blown systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) was low. Conclusions: OAPS could be a different form of APS. OMAPS/OMAPS fetal outcomes were better when treated. The prevalence of thrombosis and progression to SLE were lower than in ‘classical’ APS.
Culture in Bonobos? Between‐Species and Within‐Species Variation in Behavior1

Long-term studies on wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) conducted over the past four decades have revealed extensive behavioral variation within and between local populations (McGrew 1983, Nishida et al. 1983, McGrew 1992, Boesch et al. 1994, Wrangham, de Waal, and McGrew 1994, McGrew et al. 1997, Whiten et al. 1999, McGrew et al. 2001). Because chimpanzees live in different habitats across the African continent, they have to cope with a variety of environmental conditions, and therefore the extent of behavioral variation among them is not unexpected. In response to seasonal drought, populations in West and Central Africa have developed special techniques for obtaining water (Hunt and McGrew 2002, Lanjouw 2002). Chimpanzees in dry habitats with low tree density are reported to use nests repeatedly while those living in dense forest habitats rarely use the same nest twice (Fruth and Hohmann 1996). Similarly, the frequency of combining several small trees to construct a single nest varies between populations, probably as a function of forest structure (Fruth and Hohmann 1994). Variation in the extent and quality of insectivory across populations often reflects differences in the availability of prey species (McGrew 1992). Chimpanzees at different sites use different strategies to hunt red colobus monkeys (Colobus badius), and some of this variation can be related to the behavior of the prey species, density of forest cover, and, perhaps, food competition between predator and prey (Boesch 1994, Stanford 1998).
The Ultraviolet and Optical Spectra of Luminous B‐Type Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud

We present ultraviolet spectra from the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) of 12 early B‐type stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), composed of nine supergiants and three giants. A morphological comparison with Galactic analogs is made using archival data from the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE). In general, the intensity of the P Cygni emission in the UV resonance lines is greater and is seen to later spectral types in the Galactic spectra than in their metal‐deficient SMC counterparts. We attribute these effects as most likely arising from weaker stellar winds in the SMC targets, as predicted by radiatively driven wind theory. We also include unpublished STIS observations of two late O‐type stars in the SMC. In combination with published O‐type STIS data, we now have an extensive ultraviolet spectral library of metal‐deficient stars to use in the study of unresolved starbursts and high‐redshift star‐forming galaxies. In this context, we present empirical measurements for the B‐type spectra of the new “1978 index” suggested by Rix et al. as a probe of metallicity in such systems.
Field Plated AlGaN/GaN-on-Si HEMTs for High Voltage Switching Applications

In this study, we fabricated AlGaN/GaN-on-Si high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) for high voltage switching applications where both the field plate length and the gate-to-drain distance were varied for structural optimization. A tapered gate was fabricated in conjunction with the field plate in order to eectively suppress the high electric field at the gate edge. Regardless of the gate-to-drain distance, which was varied from 7 to 20 µm, the highest breakdown voltage was obtained with a short field plate length (i.e., 2 ‐ 3 µm), and the breakdown voltage monotonically decreased with increasing field plate length. A breakdown voltage of 1200 V with an on-resistance of 3.7 m ·cm 2 was achieved using a gate-to-drain distance of 20 µm and a field plate length of 3 µm.
Some asymptotic properties of the Rees powers of a module

Let R be a commutative ring and let G be a free R-module with positive rank e. For any R-submodule E of G we may consider the image of the symmetric algebra of E by the natural map to the symmetric algebra of G, and then the graded components E_n of the image, that we call the n-th Rees powers of E. In this work we prove some asymptotic properties of the modules E_n, which extend well known similar ones for the case of ideals, among them Burch's inequality for the analytic spread.
Serum IL-17 & eotaxin levels in asthmatic patients with allergic rhinitis

Objective: To investigate the serum levels of Interleukin (IL)-17 and eotaxin levels and the relationship between serum IL-17, eotaxin and pulmonary function in asthmatic patients with allergic rhinitis. Methods: Serum IL-17 and eotaxin levels in asthmatic patients with allergic rhinitis during attacking and remission and in healthy control subjects were measured using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kits. Then we studied the correlation between the serum IL-17, eotaxin levels and pulmonary function in patients. Results: Serum IL-17 and eotaxin levels were significantly elevated in patients during asthma attack and remission compared with healthy control subjects. These levels in patients during asthma attack were much higher than those during remission. Furthermore, serum IL-17 and eotaxin levels were negatively correlated with pulmonary function in asthmatic patients with allergic rhinitis, respectively. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that IL-17 and eotaxin are important factors in asthma with allergic rhinitis, and the correlation between serum IL-17, eotaxin and lung function possibly lead to improvements in the diagnosis and treatment of asthma with allergic rhinitis and related diseases.
Analysis of seven maternal polymorphisms of genes involved in homocysteine/folate metabolism and risk of Down syndrome offspring

PURPOSE: We present a case-control study of seven polymorphisms of six genes involved in homocysteine/folate pathway as risk factors for Down syndrome. Gene-gene/allele-allele interactions, haplotype analysis and the association with age at conception were also evaluated.METHODS: We investigated 94 Down syndrome-mothers and 264 control-women from Campania, Italy.RESULTS: Increased risk of Down syndrome was associated with the methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) 1298C allele (OR 1.46; 95% CI 1.02–2.10), the MTHFR 1298CC genotype (OR 2.29; 95% CI 1.06–4.96), the reduced-folate-carrier1 (RFC1) 80G allele (1.48; 95% CI 1.05–2.10) and the RFC1 80 GG genotype (OR 2.05; 95% CI 1.03–4.07). Significant associations were found between maternal age at conception ≥34 years and either the MTHFR 1298C or the RFC 180G alleles. Positive interactions were found for the following genotype-pairs: MTHFR 677TT and 1298CC/CA, 1298CC/CA and RFC1 80 GG/GA, RFC1 80 GG and methylenetetrahydrofolate-dehydrogenase 1958 AA. The 677–1298 T-C haplotype at the MTHFR locus was also a risk factor for Down syndrome (P = 0.0022). The methionine-synthase-reductase A66G, the methionine-synthase A2756G and the cystathionine-beta-synthase 844ins68 polymorphisms were not associated with increased risk of Down syndrome.CONCLUSION: These results point to a role of maternal polymorphisms of homocysteine/folate pathway as risk factors for Down syndrome.
On The Meaning of Alienation

The problem of alienation is a pervasive theme in the classics of sociology, and the concept has a prominent place in contemporary work. This paper seeks to accomplish two tasks: to present an organized view of the uses that have been made of this concept; and to provide an approach that ties the historical interest in alienation to the modern empirical effort. Five alternative meanings of alienation are identified: powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness, isolation, and self-estrangement. The derivation of these meanings from traditional sociological analysis is sketched, and the necessity for making the indicated distinctions is specified. In each case, an effort is made to provide a viable research formulation of these five alternatives.
Antidepressant efficacy of two different rTMS procedures. High frequency over left versus low frequency over right prefrontal cortex compared with sham stimulation.

BACKGROUND This placebo-controlled study was designed to investigate the influence of two different stimulation procedures of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) on depressive symptoms in patients with depressive disorders. Furthermore, effects on cognitive functions and psychomotor functioning were tested. METHODS Thirty patients with depression (22 females and 8 males; mean age of 56.4 years) were included. They were treated with a stable dosage of antidepressant medication. They received either high frequency rTMS (20 Hz) over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (LDLPFC), low frequency rTMS (1 Hz) over the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (RDLPFC) or sham stimulations (10 patients in each group) as add on treatment at 10 days within 2 weeks. Depressive symptoms were registered by means of observer ratings (Hamilton Depression Rating Scale - HDRS) and self reports (Beck Depression Inventory - BDI). Psychomotor retardation was investigated by the Motor Agitation and Retardation Scale and cognitive function by d2 test. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS Differences between the rTMS procedures regarding depressive symptoms could not be found. Motor abnormalities, however, significantly improved exclusively after real stimulation procedures. Patients with less severe deficits in psychomotor speed and concentration responded more intensively than patients with severe deficits.
Het Verenigingsleven op het Hagelandse Platteland. Sociale Polarisatie en Middenveldparticipatie in de 17e En 18e Eeuw

markdownabstract__Abstract__ This article aims at examining lay clubs and religious associations in rural seventeenth and eighteenth century Brabant, by testing some recent sociological conclusions concerning present social life. While the structures of lay clubs where more democratic, religious clubs were less open. All members of lay clubs were enabled to participate in the administration of their association. Also, frequent social interaction in such societies promoted horizontal values among their members. In religious clubs, interactions between board and members where based on hierarchal relations, and only vertical relations where stimulated. Membership of lay associations was limited in a way as well: a refined pattern of manners distinguished members of lay societies already in the fifteenth century. This social separation was consolidated in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, as poor inhabitants were excluded from the lay societies.
DTI Scalars (FA, MD, AD, RD) - How do they relate to brain structure?

o te d on 1 A p r 2 23 — T h e co p y ri g t h o d er is th e a th o / u n d er . A ll ri g ts re se rv ed . N o re u se w it h o t p er m is si o . — h tt p s: / d o . o rg / 0 1 2 0 w in n . 1 4 1 9 9 7 8 — T h is a p re p ri n t a n d h as n ot b ee n p ee r re v ie w ed . D a ta m ay b e p re li m in a ry . DTI Scalars (FA, MD, AD, RD) How do they relate to brain structure? Do Tromp Affiliation not available
Polo-like kinase 1 (Plk1) is expressed by cutaneous T-cell lymphomas (CTCLs), and its downregulation promotes cell cycle arrest and apoptosis

Polo-like kinases are serine/threonine kinases crucial for mitosis and DNA integrity. Plk1, the most well studied member of this family, is upregulated in several cancers, as well as in dividing cells with peak expression during G2/M phase. Recently, employing lesional skin from patients with cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (CTCL), we showed that Plk1 was increased mainly in advanced lesions. In this study, employing western blot and quantitative RT-PCR analyses, we demonstrated that Plk1 was overexpressed in multiple CTCL cell lines (HH, Hut78, MyLa, SeAx and SZ4). Further, a genetic knockdown (by short hairpin RNA) or enzyme activity inhibition (via a small molecule inhibitor, GW843682X) was found to result in a decrease in cell growth, viability and proliferation. Plk1 inhibition in CTCL cells also resulted in: (1) increased G2/M phase cell cycle arrest, (2) alteration in key mitotic proteins, (3) apoptosis and (4) multiple mitotic errors. Given our findings, clinical trials of Plk1 inhibitors in CTCL may be a promising area for further translational investigation. We speculate that overexpression of Plk1 may prove to be relevant to the progression and prognosis of CTCL through its direct impact on the regulation of tumor cell proliferation and indirect influence on the acquisition of somatic mutations by proliferating tumor cells.
Recognizing visual composite in real images

Automatically discovering and recognizing the main structured visual pattern of an image is a challenging problem. The most difficulties are how to find the component objects and how to recognize the interaction among these objects. The component objects of the structured visual pattern have consistent 3D spatial co-occurrence layout across images, which manifest themselves as a predictable pattern called visual composite. In this paper, we propose a visual composite recognition model to automatically discover and recognize the visual composite of an image. Our model firstly learns 3D spatial co-occurrence statistics among objects to discover the potential structured visual pattern of an image so that it captures the component objects of visual composite. Secondly, we construct a feedforward architecture using the proposed factored three-way interaction machine to recognize the visual composite, which casts the recognition problem as a structured prediction task. It predicts the visual composite by maximizing the probability of the correct structured label given the component objects and their 3D spatial context. Experiments conducted on a six-class sports dataset and a phrasal recognition dataset respectively demonstrate the encouraging performance of our model in discovery precision and recognition accuracy compared with competing approaches.
PoS-tagging the Web in Portuguese. National varieties, text typologies and spelling systems

The great amount of text produced every day in the Web turned it as one of the main sources for obtaining linguistic corpora, that are further analyzed with Natural Language Processing techniques. On a global scale, languages such as Portuguese âofficial in 9 countries- appear on the Web in several varieties, with lexical, morphological and syntactic (among others) differences. Besides, a unified spelling system for Portuguese has been recently approved, and its implementation process has already started in some countries. However, it will last several years, so different varieties and spelling systems coexist. Since PoS-taggers for Portuguese are specifically built for a particular variety, this work analyzes different training corpora and lexica combinations aimed at building a model with high-precision annotation in several varieties and spelling systems of this language. Moreover, this paper presents different dictionaries of the new orthography (Spelling Agreement) as well as a new freely available testing corpus, containing different varieties and textual typologies.
The autotelic propensity of types of hackers

While much has been written in the popular press about hackers, little is understood about their underlying motivations. This paper examines the constructs of challenge and autotelic behavior and their relationship to hacking. Results suggest that hackers see the challenge in hacking as related to the perceived autotelic experience in hacking, but that only hackers who have less destructive purposes in mind are those who participate in hacking for the autotelic experience.
Ste20/GCK kinase Nak1/Orb3 polarizes the actin cytoskeleton in fission yeast during the cell cycle

Polar growth is a crucial process during cell morphogenesis. The microtubule and actin cytoskeletons, and vesicular transport are tightly regulated to direct cellular growth and to generate specific cell forms. We demonstrate here that the Ste20-related protein kinase Nak1/Orb3 is required in fission yeast to polarize the actin cytoskeleton at the tips of the cells and for cell separation, and so is involved in controlling both cell shape and late stages of cytokinesis. The localization of the Nak1/Orb3 kinase to the cell tips, a medial ring and the spindle-pole bodies changes during the cell cycle, and the accumulation of F-actin at the cell tips is dependent on Nak1/Orb3 kinase. The phosphorylation of Nak1/Orb3 is periodic during the cell cycle and could be part of a mechanism that relocalizes a constitutively active kinase from the cell tips to the middle of the cell, thereby coordinating reorganization of the actin cytoskeleton and regulation of cell separation with cell-cycle progression.
The role of transitional instability, psychological distress, and dysfunctional drinking in emerging adults’ involvement in risky sex

The consequences of risky sexual behaviors are a serious health concern. We hypothesized that the transitional instability that occurs as a part of typical developmental changes in emerging adulthood would be positively associated with sexual risk taking. A survey of emerging adults showed that the instability–sexual risk-taking association was positive and significant as predicted. Moreover, psychological distress (depression and loneliness) and dysfunctional drinking motivations (drinking to ease emotional pain or to gain peer acceptance) moderated and intensified the association between instability and sexual risk taking. Implications for future research with instability and risk-taking behaviors in emerging adulthood are discussed.
Diet and colorectal cancer

Studies of migrants to Australia indicate that the risk of colorectal cancer (CRC) can be influenced by environment during adult life. Under a gene × environment interaction model for the risk of CRC, it is postulated that a high proportion of the variation in CRC incidence among populations is attributable to differences in diet, and that the average genetic susceptibility of populations to dietary carcinogenic components is similar. The possible relevance within populations of individual susceptibility to dietary components is supported by studies showing that the risk of CRC, compared with that of the general population, is not increased in the spouses of cases. It is postulated that, conditional upon a relevant dietary exposure, the level of susceptibility to diet is a major determinant of variation in individual risk. Despite high correlations of meat and fat with CRC among populations, the results of case‐control studies have been inconsistent. Inability to stratify subjects by susceptibility may explain the lack of association of intake of fat and meat with CRC in many studies. A new generation of case‐control and cohort studies of diet and CRC may extend the limits of epidemiology. Prevention trials with β‐carotene and other compounds have not protected against colorectal neoplasia, and may have exerted adverse effects. This possibility challenges the philosophy of chemoprevention trials in favor of trials of changes in diet towards patterns that are associated with lower risk. Int. J. Cancer Suppl. 10:10–12, 1997. © 1997 Wiley‐Liss Inc.