Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
LSox5 regulates RhoB expression in the neural tube and promotes generation of the neural crest

Members of the Sox family of transcription factors are involved in a number of crucial developmental processes, including sex determination, neurogenesis and skeletal development. LSox5 is a member of the group D Sox factors that, in conjunction with Sox6 and Sox9, promotes chondrogenesis by activating the expression of cartilage-specific extracellular matrix molecules. We have cloned the chicken homologue of LSox5 and found that it is initially expressed in the premigratory and migratory neural crest after Slug and FoxD3. Subsequently, the expression of LSox5 is maintained in cephalic crest derivatives, and it appears to be required for the development of the glial lineage, the Schwann cells and satellite glia in cranial ganglia. Misexpression of LSox5 in the cephalic neural tube activated RhoB expression throughout the dorsoventral axis. Furthermore, the prolonged forced expression of LSox5 enlarged the dorsal territory in which the neural crest is generated, extended the `temporal window' of neural crest segregation, and led to an overproduction of neural crest cells in cephalic regions. In addition to HNK-1, the additional neural crest cells expressed putative upstream markers (Slug, FoxD3) indicating that a regulatory feedback mechanism may operate during neural crest generation. Thus, our data show that in addition to the SoxE genes (Sox9 and Sox10) a SoxD gene (Sox5) also participates in neural crest development and that a cooperative interaction may operate during neural crest generation, as seen during the formation of cartilage.
Gadd45 modulation of intrinsic and extrinsic stress responses in myeloid cells

Gadd45 proteins modulate signaling in response to physiological and environmental stressors. Expression of gadd45 genes is rapidly induced by different stressors, including differentiation‐inducing cytokines and genotoxic stress. Induction of gadd45 genes at the onset of myeloid differentiation suggested that Gadd45 protein(s) play a role in hematopoiesis, yet no apparent abnormalities were observed in either the bone marrow (BM) or peripheral blood compartments of mice deficient for either gadd45a or gadd45b. However, under conditions of hematological stress, including acute stimulation with cytokines, myelo‐ablation and inflammation, both gadd45a‐deficient and gadd45b‐deficient mice exhibited deficiencies. This is discussed within the context of what is known about Gadd45 proteins in stress signaling, hematopoietic development and the innate immune response. Furthermore, myeloid enriched BM cells from gadd45a and gadd45b deficient mice were observed to be more sensitive to ultraviolet radiation (UVC), VP‐16 and daunorubicin (DNR) induced apoptosis compared to wild‐type (WT) cells, displaying defective G2/M arrest following exposure to UVC and VP‐16, but not to DNR. Novel mechanisms that mediate the pro‐survival functions of Gadd45 in hematopoietic cells following UV irradiation were demonstrated, involving activation of the Gadd45a‐p38‐NF‐κB survival pathway and Gadd45b mediated inhibition of the stress response MKK4‐JNK apoptotic pathway. The ramifications regarding the pathogenesis of different leukemias and the response of normal and malignant hematopoietic cells to chemo‐ and radiation‐therapy, as well as other challenges to the hematopoietic compartment, are discussed. J. Cell. Physiol. 218: 26–31, 2009. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Exopolysaccharide Biosynthesis in Rhizobium leguminosarum: From Genes to Functions

© 2012 Ivashina and Ksenzenko, licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Exopolysaccharide Biosynthesis in Rhizobium leguminosarum: From Genes to Functions
Optimization of a Fuzzy Logic Controller for Handover-Based Load Balancing

In Self-Organizing Networks (SON), load balancing has been recognized as an effective means to increase network performance. In cellular networks, cell load balancing can be achieved by tuning handover parameters, for which a Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC) usually provides good performance and usability. Operator experience can be used to define the behavior of the FLCs. However, such a knowledge is not always available and hence optimization techniques must be applied in the controller design. In this work, a fuzzy $Q$-Learning algorithm is proposed to find the optimal set of fuzzy rules in an FLC for traffic balancing in GSM-EDGE Radio Access Network (GERAN). Load balancing is performed by modifying handover margins. Simulation results show that the optimized FLC provides a significant reduction in call blocking.
Psychological Variables for Identifying Susceptibility to Mental Disorders in Medical Students at the University of Barcelona

Abstract: Introduction: This study analyses some psychological variables related to susceptibility to mental disorders in medical students. Methods: A sample of 209 first- and second-year medical students was evaluated using the State and Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), and three questionnaires: Sensitivity to Punishment and Sensitivity to Reward Questionnaire (SPSRQ), General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28) and UNCAHS scale of STRAIN. Results: Thirty percent of the students suffered from emotional distress as measured by de GHQ-28, and showed significantly higher scores on trait anxiety, sensitivity to punishment and reward scales, and had higher levels of strain both in the academic environment and their personal life. Women scored significantly higher than men on trait anxiety and sensitivity to reward. Logistical regression found that trait anxiety and strain in non-academic life were the best predictors of the development of a mental disorder. Conclusions:The study confirms the usefulness of the STAI for detecting psychological distress and the validity of the SPSRQ for identifying subjects likely to present emotional distress when facing high environmental demands. Subjects most likely to present with mental illness are those who evaluate their personal (non-academic) lives as more stressful.
Work values and beliefs in Britain

The aim of this study was to investigate demographic and belief-system determinants of, and the relationship between, various standardized self-report measures concerned with work values and general social attitudes. Over two hundred and fifty adults completed five questionnaires concerned with general, as well as specifically work-related, beliefs. The correlational analysis showed that the Protestant Work Ethic was strongly positively related with Conservative beliefs but negatively related to the Leisure ethic and Marxist-related beliefs. Of the demographic variables examined education and vote most strongly differentiated the subjects' work beliefs and values in predictable directions. Thirdly a canonical correlational analysis revealed two variates which indicated that age and education were most closely linked to the dependent belief variables. These results are discussed in terms of the aetiology and relationship between general social and specifically work-related beliefs.
Effect of TACI Signaling on Humoral Immunity and Autoimmune Diseases

Transmembrane activator and calcium-modulating cyclophilin ligand interactor (TACI) is one of the receptors of B cell activating factor of the tumor necrosis factor family (BAFF) and a proliferation-inducing ligand (APRIL). TACI is a regulator in the immune responses. TACI inhibits B cell expansion and promotes the differentiation and survival of plasma cells. The mechanisms underlying these effects probably involve changed expressions of some crucial molecules, such as B lymphocyte induced maturation protein-1 (Blimp-1) and inducible T-cell costimulator ligand (ICOSL) in B cells and/or plasma cells. However, abnormal TACI signaling may relate to autoimmune disorders. Common variable immune deficiency (CVID) patients with heterozygous mutations in TACI alleles increase susceptibility to autoimmune diseases. Taci −/− mice and BAFF transgenic mice both develop signs of human SLE. These findings that indicate inappropriate levels of TACI signaling may disrupt immune system balance, thereby promoting the development of autoimmune diseases. In this review, we summarize the basic characteristics of the TACI ligands BAFF and APRIL, and detail the research findings on the role of TACI in humoral immunity. We also discuss the possible mechanisms underlying the susceptibility of CVID patients with TACI mutations to autoimmune diseases and the role of TACI in the pathogenesis of SLE.
The Evaluation of Educational Journals Through the Study of Citations

There has been considerable study of journals in psychology, both through the collection of ratings of excellence by journal readers (Koulack & Keselman, 1975, Mace & Warner, 1973) and through the study of journal citations (Buss & McDermott, 1976; Porter, 1976; Rushton & Roediger, 1978; White & White, 1977). There has been less study of educational journals, one of the most recent efforts being that of Luce and Johnson (1978) who collected ratings of psychological and educational journals from 682 members of the American Educational Research Association. The method of rating journals through the collection of readers' opinions has been criticized on several grounds (Boor, 1973; Buss & McDermott, 1976; Gynther, 1973; Hohn and Fine, 1973; Levin & Kratochwill, 1976), a principal objection being that reader preferences may be unrelated to more objective indicators of journal impact. Therefore, in order to provide additional, nonpreference data on the nature of educational journals, a comparative study of journal citations was made of the American Educational Research Journal (AERJ), the Review ofEducational Research (RER), and the Educational Researcher (ER). To our knowledge, a citation analysis of educational journals has been performed only twice previously, first to study the publication patterns of Canadian faculties of education (Arlin, 1978), and second in the study of a single journal, Adult Education (Boshier & Pickard, 1979). The present citation study was designed to discover (a) the nature of the citation pattern of the three journals (AERJ, RER, ER); that is, which is most cited, what is the average number of citations per article, etc., (b) the sources that most cited the literature appearing in these three journals; this gives an indication of the interjournal communication network within the educational literature, and (c) the citation characteristics of the most cited articles in each of these journals.
Teacher Quality in Michigan

Most of the low-performing schools and students are in urban districts where poverty is high, where large proportions of students have limited English proficiency, and where students perform poorly on achievement tests. Moreover, urban districts face numerous challenges, including attracting teachers to their schools and optimizing their hiring, transfer, and retention policies so that they bring the best available teachers to the classroom setting. What’s now needed is an understanding of how schools differ on the qualifications of their teachers and the mechanisms driving these differences. In this article, the authors use the Detroit metropolitan region as a case study in order to (a) determine whether there is teacher sorting across schools and districts, and (2) identify which schools and districts have the least qualified teachers.
Instrumentality theories: Current uses in psychology.

Abstract : A number of psychologists in a variety of areas have proposed that behavior can be predicted from knowledge of the probability of the behavior leading to various outcomes and the evaluation of these outcomes. Theories based on this idea are reviewed in the areas of verbal conditioning, attitudes, and industrial psychology. Criticisms and improvements of the theories are discussed. (Author)
The effect of education on old age health and cognitive abilities - does the instrument matter?

This paper estimates the causal effects of education on old age health and cognition in eight European countries using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. The empirical strategy is based on an instrumental variables approach which uses two different instruments: the time and geographical variation in compulsory schooling laws and birth order information, namely whether the respondent was the first born. The results using compulsory schooling as instrument show a positive effect of education on men’s old age memory and health but not that of women. In addition, the affected population shows a higher occupational level suggesting an effect on health via employment. When I use birth order as instrument, I find positive and significant results also for females. I show that such results might be explained by the fact that the two instruments affect different populations with different labor force attachment in the case of women. In particular, the changes in compulsory schooling laws affected only women at the lower end of the education distribution who show a very low labor force attachment.
Measurements of Seismometer Orientation at USArray Transportable Array and Backbone Stations

Modern broadband seismometers generally have well-known and stable instrument parameters. Typically, the manufacturer's specifications indicate that the gain of each component of a three-component seismometer is known to within 1% and that the orthogonality of the components is true to within a fraction of a degree. Such precision makes possible many types of quantitative seismological analyses that were difficult with earlier instruments. In particular, different components of earlier three-component seismometers did not necessarily have the same response functions ( e.g. , free period of the seismometer), making any analysis based on the rotation of ground motion into the transverse and longitudinal directions difficult. Such technical problems have now largely been overcome in the most common broadband instrumentation, and it is routine to perform rotational transformations of the horizontal components of motion in modern seismological analyses, such as earthquake source investigations, S and SKS splitting studies, receiver-function determinations, and body- and surface-wave-polarization studies. An essential station variable for the rotational transformation of horizontal components of motion is the geographical orientation of the original components in the horizontal plane. Horizontal seismometers are typically installed with output sensitivity aligned to the north-south and east-west directions, and the standard names of seismometer channels ( e.g. , BHN, BHE) reflect this convention. Nontraditional orientations are common for borehole and ocean-bottom seismometers, for which it is cumbersome or impossible to install the seismometer with a specified orientation, and the orientation is instead determined after deployment. In general, instruments with nontraditional orientations have channel names that reflect this ( e.g. , BH1, BH2). Regardless of how the seismometer is oriented at installation, the azimuths of sensitivity of the horizontal components are subsequently distributed as auxiliary data. In the SEED convention, as well as in other data distribution formats, the precision of this parameter is given to at least 0.1°. Despite …
The Geminivirus Nuclear Shuttle Protein NSP Inhibits the Activity of AtNSI, a Vascular-Expressed Arabidopsis Acetyltransferase Regulated with the Sink-to-Source Transition1

DNA viruses can suppress or enhance the activity of cellular acetyltransferases to regulate virus gene expression and to affect cell cycle progression in support of virus replication. A role for protein acetylation in regulating the nuclear export of the bipartite geminivirus (Begomovirus) DNA genome was recently suggested by the findings that the viral movement protein NSP, a nuclear shuttle protein, interacts with the Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) nuclear acetyltransferase AtNSI (nuclear shuttle protein interactor), and that this interaction and NSI expression are necessary for cabbage leaf curl virus infection and pathogenicity. To further investigate the consequences of NSI-NSP interactions, and the potential role of NSI in Arabidopsis growth and development, we used a reverse yeast two-hybrid selection and deletion analysis to identify NSI mutants that failed to interact with NSP, and promoter fusions to a uidA reporter gene to analyze the pattern of NSI expression during plant development. We found that NSI self assembles into highly active enzyme complexes and that high concentrations of NSP, in the absence of viral DNA, can inhibit NSI activity in vitro. Based on our detailed analysis of three NSI missense mutants, we identified an 88-amino acid putative domain, which spans NSI residues 107 to 194, as being required for both NSI oligomerization and its interaction with NSP. Finally, we found that NSI is predominantly transcribed in vascular cells, and that its expression is developmentally regulated in a manner that resembles the sink-to-source transition. Our data indicate that NSP can inhibit NSI activity by interfering with its assembly into highly active complexes, and suggest a mechanism by which NSP can both recruit NSI to regulate nuclear export of the viral genome and down-regulate NSI activity on cellular targets, perhaps to affect cellular differentiation and favor virus replication.
Effect of bacterial pneumonia on lung simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) replication in alcohol consuming SIV-infected rhesus macaques.

BACKGROUND Opportunistic infections in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected persons have been shown to increase the rate of HIV replication. In populations where prophylaxis against Pneumocystis pneumonia is utilized, bacterial pneumonia is now the leading cause of lower respiratory tract infection in HIV+ patients. Our prior studies have shown that chronic alcohol consumption in demarcated simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV)-infected rhesus macaques increases plasma viral load set point and accelerates progression to end-stage acquired immune deficiency syndrome. While chronic alcohol abuse is well known to increase the incidence and severity of bacterial pneumonia, the impact of alcohol consumption on local and systemic SIV/HIV burden during lung infection is unknown. Therefore, we utilized the macaque SIV infection model to examine the effect of chronic ethanol (EtOH) feeding on SIV burden during the course of pulmonary infection with Streptococcus pneumoniae, the most commonly identified etiology of bacterial pneumonia in HIV+ and HIV- persons in developed countries. METHODS Alcohol was administered starting 3 months before SIVmac251 inoculation to the end of the study via an indwelling intragastric catheter to achieve a plasma alcohol concentration of 50 to 60 mM. Control animals received isocaloric sucrose. Four months after SIV infection, the right lung was inoculated with 2 × 10(6) CFU S. pneumoniae. RESULTS Leukocyte recruitment into the lung, pulmonary bacterial clearance, and clinical course were similar between EtOH and control groups. While plasma SIV viral load was similar between groups postpneumonia, chronic EtOH-fed macaques showed a prolonged increase in SIV RNA in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid. Alveolar macrophages isolated from EtOH-fed macaques 1 day post-pneumonia showed greater nuclear factor kappa beta (NF-κB) activation. CONCLUSIONS This study indicates that chronic EtOH feeding results in enhanced local, but not systemic, SIV replication following pneumococcal pneumonia. Increased NF-κB activity in the setting of chronic EtOH ingestion may play a mechanistic role in this observation.
A study of the outbreak of Chikungunya fever.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Chikungunya fever occurred in an epidemic form in the state of Maharashtra after a gap of about 32 years. Many cases with symptoms which were suggestive of Chikungunya fever were reported from the village Kasegaon, Dist Sangli, Maharashtra, India. Hence, this study was done to assess the magnitude of the outbreak and to identify the possible socio-environmental factors which are responsible for Chikungunya fever. MATERIAL AND METHODS This cross sectional study was carried out at Kasegaon by a team from the Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences, Karad, Maharashtra, in collaboration with the Primary Health Centre, Kasegaon, Distt. Sangli. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION The Chikungunya prevalence was 9.6%. There were 154 clinically suspected Chikungunya fever cases. Of these, 54.5% were males and 45.5% were females. About 72.7% of the cases were in the age range of 11-50 years, which is the active age group. The main symptoms were an acute onset of fever with joint pain (100%). Multiple joints were involved in (89.6%) cases. The mean duration of the fever was 3 days (range 1-10 days). About 40.3% people preferred to consult a government health facility. In the affected area, 83.1% people were aware of Chikungunya fever. Only few (1.1%) knew the vectors which were responsible for the Chikungunya transmission. Among the people in the affected area, 33.1% had knowledge on insecticide spraying, 23.2% had knowledge on the use of mosquito nets and repellents, 12.5% had knowledge on source reduction and 0.8% had knowledge on larvicides.
Neuropsychological function and dysfunction in schizophrenia and psychotic affective disorders.

BACKGROUND Mounting evidence suggests that compromised neurocognitive function is a central feature of schizophrenia. There are, however, schizophrenia patients with a normal neuropsychological (NP) performance, but estimates of the proportion of NP normal patients vary considerably between studies. Neurocognitive dysfunction is also a characteristic of other psychotic disorders, yet there are inconsistencies in the literature regarding the similarity to impairments in schizophrenia. NP normality in psychotic affective disorders has not been systematically studied. METHODS Data came from the Suffolk County Mental Health Project, an epidemiological study of first-admission patients with psychotic disorders. Respondents with a diagnosis of schizophrenia (N = 94) or schizoaffective disorder (N = 15), bipolar disorder (N = 78), and major depressive disorder (N = 48) were administered a battery of NP tests assessing 8 cognitive domains 2 years after index admission. Patients' performance profile was compared, and their NP status was classified based on 3 previously published criteria that vary in their stringency. RESULTS The 4 diagnostic groups had comparable NP performance profile patterns. All groups demonstrated impairments in memory, executive functions, and attention and processing speed. However, schizophrenia patients were more impaired than the other groups on all cognitive domains. Results were not attenuated when IQ was controlled. Prevalence of NP normality ranged between 16% and 45% in schizophrenia, 20% and 33% in schizoaffective disorder, 42% and 64% in bipolar disorder, and 42% and 77% in depression, depending on the criterion employed. CONCLUSIONS Evidence suggests that differences in NP performance between schizophrenia and psychotic affective disorders are largely quantitative. NP impairment is also common in psychotic affective disorders. A significant minority of schizophrenia patients are NP normal.