Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
3D Morphology, Ultrastructure and Development of Ceratomyxa puntazzi Stages: First Insights into the Mechanisms of Motility and Budding in the Myxozoa

Free, amoeboid movement of organisms within media as well as substrate-dependent cellular crawling processes of cells and organisms require an actin cytoskeleton. This system is also involved in the cytokinetic processes of all eukaryotic cells. Myxozoan parasites are known for the disease they cause in economical important fishes. Usually, their pathology is related to rapid proliferation in the host. However, the sequences of their development are still poorly understood, especially with regard to pre-sporogonic proliferation mechanisms. The present work employs light microscopy (LM), electron microscopy (SEM, TEM) and confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) in combination with specific stains (Nile Red, DAPI, Phalloidin), to study the three-dimensional morphology, motility, ultrastructure and cellular composition of Ceratomyxa puntazzi, a myxozoan inhabiting the bile of the sharpsnout seabream. Our results demonstrate the occurrence of two C. puntazzi developmental cycles in the bile, i.e. pre-sporogonic proliferation including frequent budding as well as sporogony, resulting in the formation of durable spore stages and we provide unique details on the ultrastructure and the developmental sequence of bile inhabiting myxozoans. The present study describes, for the first time, the cellular components and mechanisms involved in the motility of myxozoan proliferative stages, and reveals how the same elements are implicated in the processes of budding and cytokinesis in the Myxozoa. We demonstrate that F-actin rich cytoskeletal elements polarize at one end of the parasites and in the filopodia which are rapidly de novo created and re-absorbed, thus facilitating unidirectional parasite motility in the bile. We furthermore discover the myxozoan mechanism of budding as an active, polarization process of cytokinesis, which is independent from a contractile ring and thus differs from the mechanism, generally observed in eurkaryotic cells. We hereby demonstrate that CLSM is a powerful tool for myxozoan research with a great potential for exploitation, and we strongly recommend its future use in combination with in vivo stains.
Intratumoral delivery of adenovirus-mediated interleukin-12 gene in mice with metastatic cancer in the liver.

Clinical trials of recombinant human interleukin-12 (rhIL-12) delivered by intravenous administration have shown dose-limiting toxicities with limited tumor responses at the doses tested. We have previously reported that intratumoral injection of an adenovirus vector expressing murine interleukin-12 (Adv.RSV-mIL-12) was effective in inducing antitumor immune responses, tumor regression, and long-term survival in mice with established metastatic cancer in the liver. We now report additional studies in the same murine tumor model to assess the safety of intratumoral Adv.RSV-mIL-12 injection. At vector doses that were previously shown to be therapeutically effective, no inflammation in the liver or lungs, and no significant elevations in serum creatinine and aminotransferases were seen after vector injection. Serum elevations of IL-12 and interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) were 17- and 19-fold lower than peak levels after intravenous recombinant IL-12 at the maximal tolerated dose in clinical trials. No elevations in serum proinflammatory cytokines (interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor-alpha) were noted up to 2 weeks after vector injection. No systemic dissemination of the vector was detected on polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays at therapeutically effective vector doses. At higher supratherapeutic vector doses of Adv.RSV-mIL-12, however, inflammation in the liver and lungs with elevation in serum aminotransferases were seen, but not in controls injected with the equivalent particle number of an empty adenoviral vector. These results support the cautious testing in patients with hepatic metastases of adenovirus mediated IL-12 gene delivery by intratumoral injection.
A GRASP55-rab2 effector complex linking Golgi structure to membrane traffic

Membrane traffic between the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and Golgi apparatus and through the Golgi apparatus is a highly regulated process controlled by members of the rab GTPase family. The GTP form of rab1 regulates ER to Golgi transport by interaction with the vesicle tethering factor p115 and the cis-Golgi matrix protein GM130, also part of a complex with GRASP65 important for the organization of cis-Golgi cisternae. Here, we find that a novel coiled-coil protein golgin-45 interacts with the medial-Golgi matrix protein GRASP55 and the GTP form of rab2 but not other Golgi rab proteins. Depletion of golgin-45 disrupts the Golgi apparatus and causes a block in secretory protein transport. These results demonstrate that GRASP55 and golgin-45 form a rab2 effector complex on medial-Golgi essential for normal protein transport and Golgi structure.
Genetic programming for knowledge discovery in chest-pain diagnosis.

Explores a promising data mining approach. Despite the small number of examples available in the authors' application domain (taking into account the large number of attributes), the results of their experiments can be considered very promising. The discovered rules had good performance concerning predictive accuracy, considering both the rule set as a whole and each individual rule. Furthermore, what is more important from a data mining viewpoint, the system discovered some comprehensible rules. It is interesting to note that the system achieved very consistent results by working from "tabula rasa," without any background knowledge, and with a small number of examples. The authors emphasize that their system is still in an experiment in the research stage of development. Therefore, the results presented here should not be used alone for real-world diagnoses without consulting a physician. Future research includes a careful selection of attributes in a preprocessing step, so as to reduce the number of attributes (and the corresponding search space) given to the GP. Attribute selection is a very active research area in data mining. Given the results obtained so far, GP has been demonstrated to be a really useful data mining tool, but future work should also include the application of the GP system proposed here to other data sets, to further validate the results reported in this article.
Effect of Prior Intensive Insulin Treatment During the Diabetes Control and Complications Trial (DCCT) on Peripheral Neuropathy in Type 1 Diabetes During the Epidemiology of Diabetes Interventions and Complications (EDIC) Study

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the impact of former intensive versus conventional insulin treatment on neuropathy in Diabetes Control and Complications Trial (DCCT) intensive and conventional treatment subjects with type 1 diabetes 13–14 years after DCCT closeout, during which time the two groups had achieved similar A1C levels. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Clinical and nerve conduction studies (NCSs) performed during the DCCT were repeated during the Epidemiology of Diabetes Interventions and Complications (EDIC) study by examiners masked to treatment status on 603 former intensive and 583 former conventional treatment subjects. Clinical neuropathy was defined by symptoms, sensory signs, or reflex changes consistent with distal polyneuropathy and confirmed with NCS abnormalities involving two or more nerves among the median, peroneal, and sural nerves. RESULTS The prevalence of neuropathy increased 13–14 years after DCCT closeout from 9 to 25% in former intensive and from 17 to 35% in former conventional treatment groups, but the difference between groups remained significant (P < 0.001), and the incidence of neuropathy remained lower among former intensive (22%) than former conventional (28%) treatment subjects (P = 0.0125). Analytic models of incident neuropathy that adjusted for differences in NCS results at DCCT closeout showed no significant risk reduction associated with former intensive treatment during follow-up (odds ratio 1.17 [95% CI 0.84–1.63]). However, a significant persistent treatment group effect was observed for several NCS measures. Longitudinal analyses of overall glycemic control showed a significant association between mean A1C and measures of incident and prevalent neuropathy. CONCLUSIONS The benefits of former intensive insulin treatment persisted for 13–14 years after DCCT closeout and provide evidence of a durable effect of prior intensive treatment on neuropathy.
Anthelmintic effect of carob pods and sainfoin hay when fed to lambs after experimental trickle infections with Haemonchus contortus and Trichostrongylus colubriformis

The aim of the study was to compare the in vivo anthelmintic activity of sainfoin hay (Onobrychis viciifolia) and carob pod meal (Ceratonia siliqua) against gastrointestinal nematodes. Seven days before infection, 64 naive lambs were assigned to four different groups: Group S received sainfoin hay and group CAR was fed with carob pods. The remaining lambs received lucerne hay (Medicago sativa) and were assigned to positive (non-treated, NT) and negative (treated, T) control groups (treatment with albendazole). On day 0, lambs were artificially trickle infected for 6 weeks, with a mixture of infective larvae of Haemonchus contortus and Trichostrongylus colubriformis. Parasitological and pathophysiological parameters were measured repeatedly during the 2-month study. Compared to the NT group, decreases in egg excretion were observed in the CAR and S groups with significant differences only found for sainfoin (p < 0.05). At necropsy, group S showed decreases in the total worm numbers of both nematode species with significant differences for H. contortus. In contrast, no differences were noticed for the CAR group. Compared to the NT group, lower values for fecundity of female H. contortus were found in the S and CAR groups, however differences were non-significant. No differences in body weight gains were found between groups. Consistent results were found showing significantly higher packed cell volume (PCV) values in the T and S groups compared to NT and CAR groups. Overall, these results confirm a positive effect associated with the feeding of lambs with tanniniferous resources on host resilience (PCV values) and against gastrointestinal parasitic nematodes by affecting some biological traits of worm populations (e.g. eggs per gram of faeces and worm numbers). However, the anthelmintic effects differed between the two tannin-containing resources, which might be associated with the quantity and/or quality of secondary metabolites (condensed tannins and/or other polyphenols).
Is There any Difference in Health Related Quality of Life, Self Care and Social Function in Children with Different Disabilities Living in Turkey?

Objective The aim of this study was to examine the differences in the health related quality of life and the self care and social function in daily life of children with different disabilities. Methods One hundred and two children with physical, emotional and cognitive disabilities (cerebral palsy, mental retardation, and hearing loss) and 28 children age matched as a control group were included in this study for the comparison. The Pediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory (PEDI) was used to evaluate the independence and participation of children in daily life activities. The Turkish version of the Child Health Questionnaire-Parent form (CHQ - PF50) was used to evaluate the health related quality of life. Findings All 3 groups were different from the control group in terms of self-care and the social domains according to the PEDI results (P<0.05). Children with cerebral palsy (CP) were more dependent in the areas of self-care and mobility activities (P<0.05). The main difference was found in global general health (GGH), physical functioning (PF), the emotional impact on the parent (PE) subsections of the CHQ-PF50 between the CP and the hearing loss groups; the role of the physical (RP) and emotional behavior (BE) subsections between the mental retardation (MR) and the CP groups, and the BE and mental health (MH) subsections between the MR and the hearing loss (HL) groups (P<0.05). Conclusion All the children with disabilities were different from the control group in their quality of life, self care and social function. However the status of the children with MR and HL were parallel between each other in their health related quality of life, self care and social function. On the other hand, the most affected and dependent group was children with CP. The results will provide guidelines for healthcare professionals in implementing effective rehabilitation programs, especially to those with cerebral palsy, to reduce the level of strain and increase the health related quality of life, self care and social function of children with different disabilities.
Genetic control of macrophage susceptibility to infection by Legionella pneumophila.

Legionella pneumophila readily grows in cultures of thioglycollate (TGC)-induced macrophages (MPs) from A/J mice, but not in MPs from BALB/c mice or other mouse strains. In the present study, the growth of Legionella pneumophilia in MPs from A/J and BALB/c mice, as well as hybrids of the two strains and back-crossed mice, was investigated to determine whether the permissiveness of growth of these bacteria was due to an inherited trait of the MPs. The MPs from all A/J mice supported the growth of Legionella, regardless of whether they were obtained from TGC or casein injected donors, but the cells from the mice given TGC supported growth of L. pneumophila much better than cells from mice injected with casein. Furthermore, MPs obtained from all BALB/c mice treated with either TGC or casein were nonpermissive for the growth of L. pneumophila. MPs from approximately 46% of the back-crossed ACF1 to A/J mice were permissive for L. pneumophila growth, while MPs from all ACF1 to back-crossed BALB/c mice were found to be nonpermissive. MPs from approximately 19% of ACF2 mice were permissive for L. pneumophila. Killing activities of MPs using temperature sensitive mutants of Salmonella typhimurium were variable and did not correlate with permissiveness or nonpermissiveness for growth of L. pneumophila. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Creating a Strategic IT Architecture Competency: Learning in Stages

IT architecture is often assumed to follow business strategy, to align IT with the business's strategic objectives. Increasingly, though, many business strategies depend on specific underlying IT capabilities. To develop a synergy between business strategy and IT architecture, firms must develop organizational competencies in IT architecture. My research has identified four IT architectural stages, each with its own requisite competencies. The "application silo architecture stage" consists of IT architectures of individual applications. The "standardized technology architecture stage" has an enterprise-wide IT architecture that provides efficiencies through technology standardization. The "rationalized data architecture stage" extends the enterprise-wide IT standards to data and processes. And the "modular architecture stage" builds onto enterprise-wide global standards with loosely coupled IT components to preserve the global standards while enabling local differences. Each stage demands different organizational competencies to implement the architecture and prepare the firm to move to the next stage
Single Disk Failure Recovery for X-Code-Based Parallel Storage Systems

In modern parallel storage systems (e.g., cloud storage and data centers), it is important to provide data availability guarantees against disk (or storage node) failures via redundancy coding schemes. One coding scheme is X-code, which is double-fault tolerant while achieving the optimal update complexity. When a disk/node fails, recovery must be carried out to reduce the possibility of data unavailability. We propose an X-code-based optimal recovery scheme called minimum-disk-read-recovery (MDRR), which minimizes the number of disk reads for single-disk failure recovery. We make several contributions. First, we show that MDRR provides optimal single-disk failure recovery and reduces about 25 percent of disk reads compared to the conventional recovery approach. Second, we prove that any optimal recovery scheme for X-code cannot balance disk reads among different disks within a single stripe in general cases. Third, we propose an efficient logical encoding scheme that issues balanced disk read in a group of stripes for any recovery algorithm (including the MDRR scheme). Finally, we implement our proposed recovery schemes and conduct extensive testbed experiments in a networked storage system prototype. Experiments indicate that MDRR reduces around 20 percent of recovery time of the conventional approach, showing that our theoretical findings are applicable in practice.
Subliminal Convergence of Kanji and Kana Words: Further Evidence for Functional Parcellation of the Posterior Temporal Cortex in Visual Word Perception

Recent evidence has suggested that the human occipito-temporal region comprises several subregions, each sensitive to a distinct processing level of visual words. To further explore the functional architecture of visual word recognition, we employed a subliminal priming method with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during semantic judgments of words presented in two different Japanese scripts, Kanji and Kana. Each target word was preceded by a subliminal presentation of either the same or a different word, and in the same or a different script. Behaviorally, word repetition produced significant priming regardless of whether the words were presented in the same or different script. At the neural level, this cross-script priming was associated with repetition suppression in the left inferior temporal cortex anterior and dorsal to the visual word form area hypothesized for alphabetical writing systems, suggesting that cross-script convergence occurred at a semantic level. fMRI also evidenced a shared visual occipito-temporal activation for words in the two scripts, with slightly more mesial and right-predominant activation for Kanji and with greater occipital activation for Kana. These results thus allow us to separate script-specific and script-independent regions in the posterior temporal lobe, while demonstrating that both can be activated subliminally.
Population genomics of the eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides)

Abstract Despite its economic importance as a bioenergy crop and key role in riparian ecosystems, little is known about genetic diversity and adaptation of the eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides). Here, we report the first population genomics study for this species, conducted on a sample of 425 unrelated individuals collected in 13 states of the southeastern United States. The trees were genotyped by targeted resequencing of 18,153 genes and 23,835 intergenic regions, followed by the identification of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). This natural P. deltoides population showed low levels of subpopulation differentiation (F ST = 0.022–0.106), high genetic diversity (θW = 0.00100, π = 0.00170), a large effective population size (N e ≈ 32,900), and low to moderate levels of linkage disequilibrium. Additionally, genomewide scans for selection (Tajima's D), subpopulation differentiation (XTX), and environmental association analyses with eleven climate variables carried out with two different methods (LFMM and BAYENV2) identified genes putatively involved in local adaptation. Interestingly, many of these genes were also identified as adaptation candidates in another poplar species, Populus trichocarpa, indicating possible convergent evolution. This study constitutes the first assessment of genetic diversity and local adaptation in P. deltoides throughout the southern part of its range, information we expect to be of use to guide management and breeding strategies for this species in future, especially in the face of climate change.
Improved Neural Text Attribute Transfer with Non-parallel Data

Text attribute transfer using non-parallel data requires methods that can perform disentanglement of content and linguistic attributes. In this work, we propose multiple improvements over the existing approaches that enable the encoder-decoder framework to cope with the text attribute transfer from non-parallel data. We perform experiments on the sentiment transfer task using two datasets. For both datasets, our proposed method outperforms a strong baseline in two of the three employed evaluation metrics.
Synergistic Association of PTGS2 and CYP2E1 Genetic Polymorphisms with Lung Cancer Risk in Northeastern Chinese

Background Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. The aim of this study was to investigate the association of five extensively-studied polymorphisms in PTGS2 (rs689466, rs5275, rs20417) and CYP2E1 (rs2031920, rs6413432) genes with lung cancer risk in a large northeastern Chinese population. Methodology/Principal Findings This is a hospital-based case-control study involving 684 patients with lung cancer and 604 cancer-free controls. Genotyping was performed using the PCR-LDR method. Data were analyzed using Haplo.stats and MDR programs. There were significant differences between patients and controls in allele/genotype distributions of rs5275 (P = 0.002/0.003) and rs6413432 (P = 0.037/0.044), as well as in genotype distributions of rs689466 (P = 0.02). The risk for lung cancer associated with the rs5275-C mutant allele was decreased by 60% (95% CI [confidence interval]: 0.21–0.74; P = 0.004) under the recessive model. Carriers of rs689466-G mutant allele had a 28% (95% CI: 0.57–0.92; P = 0.008) reduced risk of developing lung cancer relative to the AA genotype carriers. In haplotype analysis, haplotype G-C-C-T (in order of rs689466, rs5275, rs2031920 and rs6413432) decreased the odds of lung cancer by 28% (95% CI: 0.51–0.93; P = 0.019) after adjusting for confounding factors, whereas haplotype A-T-T-T had 1.49-fold (95% CI: 1.21–1.79; P = 0.012) increased risk for lung cancer. Using MDR method, the overall best model including rs5275, rs689466 and rs6413432 polymorphisms was identified with a maximal testing accuracy of 66.1% and a maximal cross-validation consistency of 10 out of 10 (P = 0.003). Conclusions/Significance Our findings demonstrated a potentially synergistic association of PTGS2 and CYP2E1 polymorphisms with the underlying cause of lung cancer in northeastern Chinese.