Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Differential Effects of Camel Milk on Insulin Receptor Signaling – Toward Understanding the Insulin-Like Properties of Camel Milk

Previous studies on the Arabian camel (Camelus dromedarius) showed beneficial effects of its milk reported in diverse models of human diseases, including a substantial hypoglycemic activity. However, the cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in such effects remain completely unknown. In this study, we hypothesized that camel milk may act at the level of human insulin receptor (hIR) and its related intracellular signaling pathways. Therefore, we examined the effect of camel milk on the activation of hIR transiently expressed in human embryonic kidney 293 (HEK293) cells using bioluminescence resonance energy transfer (BRET) technology. BRET was used to assess, in live cells and real-time, the physical interaction between hIR and insulin receptor signaling proteins (IRS1) and the growth factor receptor-bound protein 2 (Grb2). Our data showed that camel milk did not promote any increase in the BRET signal between hIR and IRS1 or Grb2 in the absence of insulin stimulation. However, it significantly potentiated the maximal insulin-promoted BRET signal between hIR and Grb2 but not IRS1. Interestingly, camel milk appears to differentially impact the downstream signaling since it significantly activated ERK1/2 and potentiated the insulin-induced ERK1/2 but not Akt activation. These observations are to some extent consistent with the BRET data since ERK1/2 and Akt activation are known to reflect the engagement of Grb2 and IRS1 pathways, respectively. The preliminary fractionation of camel milk suggests the peptide/protein nature of the active component in camel milk. Together, our study demonstrates for the first time an allosteric effect of camel milk on insulin receptor conformation and activation with differential effects on its intracellular signaling. These findings should help to shed more light on the hypoglycemic activity of camel milk with potential therapeutic applications.
Sexual Attitudes and Motivations in Same-Sex and Mixed-Sex Relationships

This study examined individual attitudes toward having casual sex, dating, and being in a committed relationship with a bisexual partner of the other gender. A total of 373 women and 347 men completed the online study measures which included study specific items and validated questionnaires to assess attitudes toward sexuality, bisexuality, and relationships with bisexual partners. Repeated-measures ANOVAs revealed an effect of relationship type. When considering relationships with bisexual male partners, female participants expressed moderately high levels of insecurity (e.g., worry, pressure, jealousy) and these feelings tended to increase as the relationship being considered became more committed. Male participants reported low to moderate levels of insecurity (e.g., worry, pressure, jealousy) when considering relationships with bisexual female partners; insecurity tended to be lowest for casual sex. Multiple regression analyses determined numerous predictors of attitudes toward bisexual partners, most notably, tolerance of and beliefs about the stability of a bisexual sexual orientation. Comparisons were made by gender and the results of these analyses showed that female participants held more negative attitudes than male participants. Finally, while common stereotypes were not openly endorsed, the results of this study suggest that underlying misconceptions about bisexuality may be impacting individuals’ interest in having relationships with bisexual partners and may represent a challenge to intimacy and stability within the couple.
Circulating vascular endothelial growth factor and active renin concentrations and prostaglandin E2 urinary excretion in patients with adrenal tumours.

OBJECTIVES The aim of the present study was to determine vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), prostaglandin E(2) (PGE(2)) and active renin levels in patients with hormonally active adrenal tumours. DESIGN The study was comprised of 16 patients with primary aldosteronism, 13 patients with active Cushing's syndrome due to adrenal adenomas, 8 patients with adrenal carcinomas, 19 patients with phaeochromocytoma and 19 healthy volunteers. METHODS Active renin in plasma was determined by a two-site immunoradiometric assay. VEGF in sera samples and PGE(2) in 24-h urine were measured by ELISA. RESULTS VEGF was significantly elevated in all the four groups of patients as compared with the controls. VEGF levels in patients with Cushing's syndrome were higher than those in patients with primary aldosteronism. Patients with adrenal carcinomas had the highest VEGF levels and the differences reached significance as compared with patients with primary aldosteronism and phaeochromocytoma. PGE(2) levels were not significantly different among groups. Active renin was significantly the lowest in patients with primary aldosteronism and significantly the highest in patients with phaeochromocytoma compared with the controls. Active renin in patients with primary aldosteronism was significantly lower than in those with Cushing's syndrome, phaeochromocytoma and adrenal carcinoma. CONCLUSIONS Our data indicated that the mean level of VEGF in patients with all investigated adrenal tumours was significantly higher than in healthy controls. The cortisol-producing tumours appear to have increased angiogenic potential. Angiogenesis is probably associated not only with malignancy but also with functional activity of the adrenal tumors.
Quantification of symptoms of movement disorders employing motion sensors

Clinical evaluation plays a fundamental role in the diagnosis and evaluation of a movement disorder. This evaluation depends, at least to some extent, on a human decision process. To homogenize and improve the reliability of the evaluation rating scales have been developed through the years. In spite of the improvements, the evaluation of symptoms of movement disorders using rating scales, like every human-decision-making activity, is influenced by the expertise, experience, attention and skillfulness of the evaluator. The continuous effort to improve the scales reveals the necessity of reliable objective assessments that do not depend on the evaluator. In this thesis we employed movement sensors, sensor fusion, signal processing and machine learning to analyze characteristic symptoms of movement disorders. The goal of each chapter was to evaluate a specific method that could overcome some of the disadvantages that are present in current evaluations. In Chapter 2 we proposed a method to automatically assess tremor from accelerometry signals. In Chapters 3 and 4 we employed IMUs to study the objective assessment of bradykinesia in patients with Parkinson’s disease. Finally, in Chapters 5 and 6 we studied the automatic identification of early-onset ataxia and developmental coordination disorder in young children using inertial measurement units (IMUs), first analyzing coordination during the finger-to-nose test (Chapter 5) and then during gait (Chapter 6). The results obtained in this thesis show that the quantification of symptoms of movement disorders employing motion sensors can be used to support the diagnosis and monitoring of movement disorders.
An Informal Science Educator/Elementary School Teacher Collaboration: Changing Fifth Grade Girls’ Perceptions of Scientists and Engineers

This study examined how an informal science educator-elementary school teacher partnership based on a coordination relationship (Weiland & Akerson, 2013) operated in the development and implementation of a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Club for girls. A case study methodology was used to understand how the informal science educator-elementary school teacher partnership functioned in the context of the STEM Club. Images of scientists and engineers drawn by the girls before and after participation in the STEM Club were written artifacts used to assess the girls’ perceptions of scientists and engineers. The girls maintained the traditional images of scientists that they brought to the Club, modified, however, to include more female images after participation in STEM Club. The girls’ perceptions of engineers changed dramatically from non-existent or mechanics/ repairmen to realistic images of engineers, including female images, involved in design, laboratory investigation and testing activities. The percentage of female images drawn by the girls increased by 30% and 42% for scientist images and engineer images, respectively.
The deubiquitinase USP54 is overexpressed in colorectal cancer stem cells and promotes intestinal tumorigenesis

Ubiquitin-Specific Proteases (USPs) are deubiquitinating enzymes frequently deregulated in human malignancies. Here, we show that USP54 is overexpressed in intestinal stem cells and demonstrate that its downregulation in colorectal carcinoma cells impedes tumorigenesis. We have generated mutant mice deficient for this deubiquitinase, which are viable and fertile, and protected against chemically-induced colorectal carcinoma. Furthermore, we show that USP54 is upregulated in human colon cancer and associates with poor prognosis. In agreement with these results, Usp54 downregulation in mouse melanoma cells inhibits lung metastasis formation. Collectively, this work has uncovered the pro-tumorigenic properties of USP54, highlighting the importance of deubiquitinating enzymes as promising targets for the development of specific anti-cancer therapies.
Coarse-graining approach for dilepton production at energies available at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron

Coarse-grained output from transport calculations is used to determine thermal dilepton emission rates by applying medium-modified spectral functions from thermal quantum field theoretical models. By averaging over an ensemble of events generated with the UrQMD transport model, we extract the local thermodynamic properties at each time step of the calculation. With an equation of state the temperature $T$ and chemical potential $\mu_{\mathrm{B}}$ can be determined. The approach goes beyond simplified fireball models of the bulk-medium evolution by treating the full (3+1)-dimensional expansion of the system with realistic time and density profiles. For the calculation of thermal dilepton rates we use the in-medium spectral function of the $\rho$ meson developed by Rapp and Wambach and consider thermal QGP and multi-pion contributions as well. The approach is applied to the evaluation of dimuon production in In+In collisions at top SPS energy. Comparison to the experimental results of the NA60 experiment shows good agreement of this ansatz. We find that the experimentally observed low-mass dilepton excess in the mass region from 0.2 to 0.6 GeV can be explained by a broadening of the $\rho$ spectral function with a small mass shift. In contrast, the intermediate mass region ($M > 1.5$ GeV) is dominated by a contribution from the quark-gluon plasma. These findings agree with previous calculations with fireball parametrizations. This agreement in spite of differences in the reaction dynamics between both approaches indicates that the time-integrated dilepton spectra are not very sensitive to details of the space-time evolution of the collision.
Journal of Educational Evaluation for Health Professions Improved Quality and Quantity of Written Feedback Is Associated with a Structured Feedback Proforma

(page number not for citation purposes) 2012, National Health Personnel Licensing Examination Board of the Republic of Korea This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Facilitating the provision of detailed, deep and useful feedback is an important design feature of any educational programme. Here we evaluate feedback provided to medical students completing short transferable skills projects. Feedback quantity and depth were evaluated before and after a simple intervention to change the structure of the feedback-provision form from a blank free-text feedback form to a structured proforma that asked a pair of short questions for each of the six domains being assessed. Each pair of questions consisted of asking the marker 'what was done well? ' and 'what changes would improve the assignment? ' Changing the form was associated with a significant increase in the quantity of the feedback and in the amount and quality of feedback provided to students. We also observed that, for these double-marked projects, the marker designated as 'marker 1' consistently wrote more feedback than the marker designated 'marker 2' .
Toxicological Safety of Irradiated Foods

Generation of cancers in animals requires the mutation or deletion of oncogenes or tumor suppressor genes, resulting in a loss of heterozygosity at those allele locations. Mutation (point mutations or frame-shift mutations) and deletion of genes can be induced by exposure of cells to genotoxic chemicals or can occur naturally as part of the cellular DNA repair and replication process (Ames and Gold 1990). Many consumers are simply unaware that foods contain carcinogens, either natural or artificial, and cause cancer. A very small subset of naturally occurring carcinogens in foods include compounds such as benzene and formaldehyde (Smith and Pillai 2004; Fan and Thayer 2002). A number of studies have confirmed the mutagenicity of cooked meats and their fats, and the formation of nitrosamines as part of the meat curing and cooking process (Knekt and others 1999). Tumor promoters present in cooked meat and poultry include oxidization products of fats and oils, heme, and cholesterol (Van der Meer-van Kraaij and others 2005; Yang and others 1998; Tseng 1996). Alcohol is known to induce the formation of tumors in the gastrointestinal tract of rodents (Mufti 1998). It was recently found that high-temperature frying and baking of starch-containing foods results in the formation of acrylamide, a suspected human carcinogen (Friedman 2003). Furan, a carcinogen in animals, is formed in foods as a result of thermal processing (Perez-Locas and Yaylayan 2004). Compounds used in the pickling, salting, and smoking processes are associated with gastro-intestinal cancers in humans (Weisburger and Jones 1990). Discussions pertaining to food irradiation
ANALISIS FAKTOR-FAKTOR YANG MEMPENGARUHI MINAT PEGAWAI DALAM MELAKUKAN TINDAKAN WHISTLE-BLOWING

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menguji pengaruh faktor sikap terhadap whistle-blowing, komitmen organisasi, personal cost, dan tingkat keseriusan kecurangan terhadap minat whistle-blowing pegawai tetap di lingkungan UNISNU Jepara. Data yang digunakan dalam penelitian merupakan data primer yang dikumpulkan melalui survei kuesioner. Populasi penelitian ini adalah seluruh Pegawai tetap di lingkungan UNISNU Jepara dengan teknik pengambilan sampel simple random sampling, sehingga diperoleh sampel sebanyak 64 orang. Adapun teknik analisis yang digunakan dalam penelitian adalah dengan menggunakan analisis regresi berganda yang diolah dengan software spss. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa secara simultan sikap terhadap whistle blowing, komitmen organisasi, personal cost, tingkat keseriusan kecurangan, dan tanggung jawab personal berpengaruh terhadap minat pegawai dalam melakukan tindakan whistle-blowing. Namun secara parsial, faktor sikap terhadap whistle blowing, komitmen organisasi, tingkat keseriusan kecurangan, dan tanggung jawab personal tidak berpengaruh terhadap minat pegawai dalam melakukan tindakan whistle-blowing. Hanya faktor personal cost yang berpengaruh negatif dan signifikan terhadap minat pegawai dalam melakukan tindakan whistle-blowing. Abstract This study aims to examine the influence of attitude towards whistle-blowing, organizational commitment, personal cost, and the seriousness of fraud against the interest of whistle-blowing employee remains in the environment UNISNU Jepara. The data used in the research is the primary data collected through a questionnaire survey. The study population was the whole Employees remain in the environment UNISNU Jepara with the sampling technique is simple random sampling, in order to obtain a sample of 64 people. The analysis technique used in this research is by using multiple regression analysis were processed with SPSS software. The results of this study showed that simultaneous attitude towards whistle blowing, organizational commitment, personal cost, the level of seriousness of cheating and personal responsibility affect the interest of employees in the act of whistle-blowing. However partial, factors attitude towards whistle blowing, organizational commitment, seriousness of cheating and personal responsibility does not affect the interest of employees in the act of whistle-blowing. Only the personal factor cost is a significant negative effect on the interests of employees in the act of whistle-blowing.
PCI-24781, a Novel Hydroxamic Acid HDAC Inhibitor, Exerts Cytotoxicity and Histone Alterations via Caspase-8 and FADD in Leukemia Cells

Histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACi) have become a promising new avenue for cancer therapy, and many are currently in Phase I/II clinical trials for various tumor types. In the present study, we show that apoptosis induction and histone alterations by PCI-24781, a novel hydroxamic acid-based HDAC inhibitor, require caspase-8 and the adaptor molecule, Fas-associated death domain (FADD), in acute leukemia cells. PCI-24781 treatment also causes an increase in superoxide levels, which has been reported for other HDACi. However, an antioxidant does not reverse histone alterations caused by PCI-24781, indicating that ROS generation is likely downstream of the effects that PCI-24781 exerts on histone H3. Taken together, these results provide insight into the mechanism of apoptosis induction by PCI-24781 in leukemia by highlighting the roles of caspase-8, FADD and increased superoxide levels.
Verbs Observed: A Corpus-Driven Pedagogic Grammar.

This paper describes the outcome of a project to code the complementation patterns of all the verbs in Collins COBUILD English Dictionary (1995). COBUILD stands for 'Collins and Birmingham University International Language Database'. The coding is based on the Bank of English corpus at COBUILD and uses a simple notation based on words and word-classes rather than traditional functional categories. The result of this exercise is a list of verb patterns, with a complete list of all the verbs in a corpus of 250 million words that have each pattern. It is found that the verbs that share a pattern fall into groups based on meaning. This grammar is the first pedagogic grammar to integrate syntax and lexis using corpus data. The grammar is used to explore traditional grammatical categories such as Object, Complement, etc. These are found to be inadequate to account for the actual behaviour of verbs. Finally, the paper explores the possibility of using a pattern grammar to analyse naturally-occurring discourse
Eigen Decompositions of Covariance Matrices on a Fixed Point DSP

A number of signal processing algorithms can profitably use the eigenvalue decomposition (EVD) of a covariance matrix. Since many of these algorithms are implemented on fixed-point Digital Signal Processors, there is interest in symmetric EVD algorithms that can be implemented in fixed-point arithmetic. Modifications to Jacobi Cyclic algorithms are proposed which make them amenable to fixed-point implementation. We present the algorithms in detail and propose criteria to be used in evaluating the quality of an algorithm’s output. The fixed–point algorithm was implemented on a TMS320C6211 fixed point DSP and we present results that show that the EVDs of covariance matrices obtained are comparable to those obtained using Jacobi algorithms performed in high-precision floating point arithmetic.
Exosomes from bulk and stem cells from human prostate cancer have a differential microRNA content that contributes cooperatively over local and pre-metastatic niche

The different prostate cancer (PCa) cell populations (bulk and cancer stem cells, CSCs) release exosomes that contain miRNAs that could modify the local or premetastatic niche. The analysis of the differential expression of miRNAs in exosomes allows evaluating the differential biological effect of both populations on the niche, and the identification of potential biomarkers and therapeutic targets. Five PCa primary cell cultures were established to originate bulk and CSCs cultures. From them, exosomes were purified by precipitation for miRNAs extraction to perform a comparative profile of miRNAs by next generation sequencing in an Illumina platform. 1839 miRNAs were identified in the exosomes. Of these 990 were known miRNAs, from which only 19 were significantly differentially expressed: 6 were overexpressed in CSCs and 13 in bulk cells exosomes. miR-100-5p and miR-21-5p were the most abundant miRNAs. Bioinformatics analysis indicated that differentially expressed miRNAs are highly related with PCa carcinogenesis, fibroblast proliferation, differentiation and migration, and angiogenesis. Besides, miRNAs from bulk cells affects osteoblast differentiation. Later, their effect was evaluated in normal prostate fibroblasts (WPMY-1) where transfection with miR-100-5p, miR-21-5p and miR-139-5p increased the expression of metalloproteinases (MMPs) -2, -9 and -13 and RANKL and fibroblast migration. The higher effect was achieved with miR21 transfection. As conclusion, miRNAs have a differential pattern between PCa bulk and CSCs exosomes that act collaboratively in PCa progression and metastasis. The most abundant miRNAs in PCa exosomes are interesting potential biomarkers and therapeutic targets.
Towards real-time integration

Today, most developers work in parallel inside private workspaces to ensure stability during programming, but this provokes isolation from what co-workers are doing. Isolation may result in conflicts, which must be detected as early as possible to avoid bugs and expensive rework. Currently, frequent integration and awareness are used for early conflict detection. Frequent integration detects actual conflicts using automated builds, although only when merging checked in changes. Awareness informs about ongoing changes in private workspaces, however developers must find actual conflicts by themselves. This paper proposes the novel concept of real-time integration. This automates the detection of actual conflicts emerging during programming, involving checked in and ongoing changes, and affecting two or more developers. Cooperative resolution of conflicts is explicitly supported by sharing fine-grained changes among private workspaces. Software versions will also improve quality as integration builds are run before checking in.
A Lie group variational integrator for rigid body motion in SE(3) with applications to underwater vehicle dynamics

The topic of variational integrators for mechanical systems whose dynamics evolve on nonlinear spaces has seen strong growth recently. Within this class of variational integrators is the subclass of Lie group variational integrators that can be used for mechanical systems whose dynamics evolve on Lie groups. This class of mechanical systems includes all systems that can be modeled as rigid bodies or connections of rigid bodies. In this paper, we present a Lie group variational integrator for the full (translation and orientation) motion of a rigid body under the possible influence of nonconservative forces and torques. We use a discretization scheme for such systems which is based on the discrete Lagrange-d'Alembert principle to obtain the Lie group variational integrator. We apply the composition of the Lie group variational integrator with its adjoint and a Crouch-Grossman method to the example of a conservative underwater system. We show numerically that with respect to energy these manifold methods, as expected, behave as a symplectic integrator and a nonsymplectic integrator, respectively.