Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Y Chromosome Lineages in Men of West African Descent

The early African experience in the Americas is marked by the transatlantic slave trade from ∼1619 to 1850 and the rise of the plantation system. The origins of enslaved Africans were largely dependent on European preferences as well as the availability of potential laborers within Africa. Rice production was a key industry of many colonial South Carolina low country plantations. Accordingly, rice plantations owners within South Carolina often requested enslaved Africans from the so-called “Grain Coast” of western Africa (Senegal to Sierra Leone). Studies on the African origins of the enslaved within other regions of the Americas have been limited. To address the issue of origins of people of African descent within the Americas and understand more about the genetic heterogeneity present within Africa and the African Diaspora, we typed Y chromosome specific markers in 1,319 men consisting of 508 west and central Africans (from 12 populations), 188 Caribbeans (from 2 islands), 532 African Americans (AAs from Washington, DC and Columbia, SC), and 91 European Americans. Principal component and admixture analyses provide support for significant Grain Coast ancestry among African American men in South Carolina. AA men from DC and the Caribbean showed a closer affinity to populations from the Bight of Biafra. Furthermore, 30–40% of the paternal lineages in African descent populations in the Americas are of European ancestry. Diverse west African ancestries and sex-biased gene flow from EAs has contributed greatly to the genetic heterogeneity of African populations throughout the Americas and has significant implications for gene mapping efforts in these populations.
ADVERSE CONSEQUENCES OF ERYTHROCYTE EXPOSURE TO MENADIONE: INVOLVEMENT OF REACTIVE OXYGEN SPECIES GENERATION IN PLASMA

Previous studies demonstrated that menadione, a representative quinone compound, reacts nonenzymatically with thiols in plasma, resulting in the generation of reactive oxygen species and potentiation of menadione-induced platelet damage. Because of the reported association of menadione with hemolytic anemia in vivo, investigations were undertaken to identify the free radicals generated from the interaction of menadione with plasma, and to assess the potential role of plasma-generated free-radical species in menadione-dependent erythrocyte toxicity. In rat plasma, menadione increased the rate of oxygen consumption and both luminol- and lucigenin-amplified chemiluminescence in a concentration-dependent manner. Superoxide dismutase (SOD) inhibited lucigenin-amplified chemiluminescence, suggesting formation of superoxide anion. Menadione also induced significant increases in chemiluminescence when erythrocytes were suspended in plasma, but not when cells were suspended in buffer. Consistent with these findings, menadionedependent hemolysis of erythrocytes occurred only when the cells were suspended in plasma. Various free-radical inhibitors were tested for their ability to inhibit menadioneinduced hemolysis. Catalase and mannitol each produced significant inhibition, including an additive effect when both compounds were present, while SOD had no marked effect. In addition, pretreatment with 3-amino-1,2,4-triazole, an intracellular catalase inhibitor, potentiated menadione-induced cytotoxicity in the presence of plasma. These results suggest that both hydrogen peroxide and hydroxyl radicals are involved in menadionemediated plasma erythrocyte cytotoxicity; however, superoxide anion does not appear to play a direct role.
Deceleration by Dynamical Friction in a Gaseous Medium

The drag force experienced by a gravitational body moving in a straight-line trajectory through a homogeneous isothermal gaseous medium of given sound speed is investigated numerically. For perturbers with constant velocity, linear theory describes successfully the temporal evolution and magnitude of the force. The result obtained recently by E. Ostriker—that for Mach numbers ℳ = 1-2 the force is stronger in a gaseous medium than in a collisionless medium, as described by the standard Chandrasekhar formula—is confirmed. The corresponding minimum impact radius rmin for a body described with a Plummer model with core radius Rsoft is rmin/Rsoft ≈ 2.25. When ℳ < 1, the drag force is strongly suppressed, which is consistent with Ostriker's results but in disagreement with the Chandrasekhar formula. However, when the perturber is decelerated by its own wake to ℳ < 1, the effective drag force remains initially somewhat larger than the value in the case of constant velocity because it takes some time to get rid of the wake that was generated during its supersonic history.
The end of subsistence farming: Growth dynamics and investments in human and environmental capital in rural Ethiopia

In settings characterized by weak human capital and agricultural land degradation, investments in human capital formation and land conservation can be key candidates for triggering sustained economic growth. In this study, based on insights from growth literature and models of economic transformation, we develop a framework to examine the dynamic interactions between income, human and natural capital in rural Ethiopia. In addition, the trade-offs and complementarities of economic and environmental policies in terms of their impact on growth, investments in human capital formation and land conservation are assessed. The study underscores the centrality of interconnectedness and reciprocal influences between growth and investments in human and natural capital in understanding the long-run implications of policy reforms. Development interventions that are crucial for achieving broad-based and sustainable improvements in household income, human and natural capital are identified, which have wider implications for settings sharing similar socioeconomic characteristics.
Antiviral Treatment of HCV-Infected Patients with B-Cell Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma: ANRS HC-13 Lympho-C Study

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is associated with lymphoproliferative disorders and B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphomas (B-NHLs). Evaluation of the efficacy and safety profiles of different antiviral therapies in HCV patients with B-NHL is warranted. Methods: First, we evaluated the sustained virologic response (SVR) and safety of Peg-interferon-alpha (Peg-IFN) + ribavirin +/- first protease inhibitors (PI1s) therapy in 61 HCV patients with B-NHL enrolled in a nationwide observational survey compared with 94 matched HCV-infected controls without B-NHL. In a second series, interferon-free regimens using a newly optimal combination therapy with direct-acting antiviral drugs (DAAs) were evaluated in 10 patients with HCV and B-NHL. Results: The main lymphoma type was diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (38%) followed by marginal zone lymphoma (31%). In the multivariate analysis, patients with B-NHL treated by Peg-IFN-based therapy exhibited a greater SVR rate compared with controls, 50.8% vs 30.8%, respectively, p<0.01, odds ratio (OR) = 11.2 [2.3, 52.8]. B-NHL response was better (p = 0.02) in patients with SVR (69%) than in patients without SVR (31%). Premature discontinuation of Peg-IFN-based therapy was significantly more frequent in the B-NHL group (19.6%) compared with the control group (6.3%), p<0.02. Overall, survival was significantly enhanced in the controls than in the B-NHL group (hazard ratio = 34.4 [3.9, 304.2], p< 0.01). Using DAAs, SVR was achieved in 9/10 patients (90%). DAAs were both well tolerated and markedly efficient. Conclusions: The virologic response of HCV-associated B-NHL is high. Our study provides a comprehensive evaluation of different strategies for the antiviral treatment of B-NHL associated with HCV infection.
Esophageal Development and Epithelial Homeostasis Normal Esophageal Morphogenesis and Endodermal Differentiation

The esophagus is a relatively simple organ that evolved to transport food and liquids through the thoracic cavity. It is the only part of the gastrointestinal tract that lacks any metabolic, digestive, or absorptive function. The mucosa of the adult esophagus is covered by a multilayered squamous epithelium with a remarkable similarity to the epithelium of the skin despite the fact that these tissues originate from two different germ layers. Here we review the developmental pathways involved in the establishment of the esophagus and the way these pathways regulate gut-airway separation. We summarize current knowledge of the mechanisms that maintain homeostasis in esophageal epithelial renewal in the adult and the molecular mechanism of the development of Barrett's metaplasia, the precursor lesion to esophageal adenocarcinoma. Finally, we examine the ongoing debate on the hierarchy of esophageal epithelial precursor cells and on the presence or absence of a specific esophageal stem cell population. Together the recent insights into esophageal development and homeostasis suggest that the pathways that establish the esophagus during development also play a role in the maintenance of the adult epithelium. We are beginning to understand how reflux of gastric content and the resulting chronic inflammation can transform the squamous esophageal epithelium to columnar intestinal type metaplasia in Barrett's esophagus. THE WORD ESOPHAGUS IS DERIVED from the Greek words ␱␫␴ε␫␯ (oisein, to carry) and ␸␣␥ε␫␯ (phagein, to eat). This description fits well with the functional role of the esophagus that mainly serves to " carry food " into the stomach. From the pharyn-goesophageal junction, the esophagus passes through the me-diastinum and diaphragm and connects to the cardia of the stomach at the gastroesophageal junction or Z-line. The pharyngoesophageal and gastroesophageal junctions anatomically overlap with the upper and lower esophageal sphincters. Both sphincters are closed except during swallowing to assure a unidirectional flow of esophageal content toward the stomach and to prevent reflux of gastric content into the esophagus. The relatively simple histology of the esophageal epithelium corresponds with the fact that the esophagus has no role other than to pass food through the thorax to the stomach. It does not play a known digestive, endocrine, or metabolic role and the epi-thelium consists of a simple stratified squamous epithelium, which provides a good protective layer against the unmodified food stream on its way to the stomach. Despite the perhaps somewhat prosaic functional role of the esophagus compared with other organs in …
Promoting health or promoting pleasure? A contingency approach to the effect of informational and emotional appeals on food liking and consumption

Here, we suggest that the relative effectiveness of informational and emotional appeals in persuasive communications may depend on the dominant basis of attitude towards the focal item (affective or cognitive), and on the precise response being targeted (i.e. influencing affect-based food liking or cognitive-based consumption). Ninety-five participants (milk drinking adults) participated in an experiment in which they were presented with a persuasive communication promoting milk consumption. A mixed design combined as between-participants factors attitude bases (two: affective/cognitive) and persuasive appeals (two: informational/emotional) with, as a within-participants measure, types of effect (two: liking and consumption change intent). We also measured immediate feelings and thoughts responses to the communication. As expected, cognition-based attitudes were not sensitive to a match between persuasive appeals and types of effect. For affect-based attitudes, results confirmed the predicted superiority of a match between the affective and cognitive bases of the targeted responses and that of the persuasive appeal. Food liking was particularly sensitive to an emotional appeal while an informational appeal tended to be more influential on food consumption. The underlying mechanism of these effects and their implication for the practice of health promotion and food marketing are discussed.
Banking Group Features and Interbank Market Exposure: Evidence from the Main European Groups

Banking group affiliation could affect both the asset and liability side of the interbank exposure of a bank due to the strict relationship between all of the group's members. Considering a representative sample of all of the main European banks for 2005-2010 timeframe, we study the relationship between interbank exposure (asset side, liability side and the net exposure) with respect to bank characteristics, market dynamics and group structure characteristics. Results demonstrate that interbank exposure is not only driven by banks' and market features as confirmed by the literature, but also by group features, even if during the financial crisis something changed.
Soil fertility and fine root dynamics in response to 4 years of nutrient ( N , P , K ) fertilization in a lowland tropical moist forest

The question of how tropical trees cope with infertile soils has been challenging to address, in part, because fine root dynamics must be studied in situ. We used annual fertilization with nitrogen (N as urea, 12.5 g N m-2 year-1), phosphorus (P as superphosphate, 5 g P m-2 year-1) and potassium (K as KCl, 5 g K m-2 year-1) within 38 ha of old-growth lowland tropical moist forest in Panama and examined fine root dynamics with minirhizotron images.We expected that added P, above all, would (i) decrease fine root biomass but, (ii) have no impact on fine root turnover. Soil in the study area was moderately acidic (pH = 5.28), had moderate concentrations of exchangeable base cations (13.4 cmol kg-1), low concentrations of Bray-extractable phosphate (PO4 = 2.2 mg kg-1), and modest concentrations of KCl-extractable nitrate (NO3 = 5.0 mg kg-1) and KClextractable ammonium (NH4 = 15.5 mg kg-1). Added N increased concentrations of KCl-extractable NO3 and acidified the soil by one pH unit. Added P increased concentrations of Bray-extractable PO4 and P in the labile fraction. Concentrations of exchangeable K were elevated in K addition plots but reduced by N additions. Fine root dynamics responded to added K rather than added P. After 2 years, added K decreased fine root biomass from 330 to 275 g m-2.The turnover coefficient of fine roots <1 mm diameter ranged from 2.6 to 4.4 per year, and the largest values occurred in plots with added K. This study supported the view that biomass and dynamics of fine roots respond to soil nutrient availability in species-rich, lowland tropical moist forest. However, K rather than P elicited root responses. Fine roots smaller than 1 mm have a short lifetime (<140 days), and control of fine root production by nutrient availability in tropical forests deserves more study.
CD4 Intragenic SNPs Associate With HIV-2 Plasma Viral Load and CD4 Count in a Community-Based Study From Guinea-Bissau, West Africa

Objectives:The human genetics of HIV-2 infection and disease progression is understudied. Therefore, we studied the effect of variation in 2 genes that encode products critical to HIV pathogenesis and disease progression: CD4 and CD209. Design:This cross-sectional study consisted of 143 HIV-2, 30 HIV-1 + HIV-2 and 29 HIV-1-infected subjects and 194 uninfected controls recruited from rural Guinea-Bissau. Methods:We genotyped 14 CD4 and 4 CD209 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that were tested for association with HIV infection, HIV-2 plasma viral load (high vs. low), and CD4+ T-cell count (high vs. low). Results:The most significant association was between a CD4 haplotype rs11575097-rs10849523 and high viral load [odds ratio (OR): = 2.37, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.35 to 4.19, P = 0.001, corrected for multiple testing], suggesting increased genetic susceptibility to HIV-2 disease progression for individuals carrying the high-risk haplotype. Significant associations were also observed at a CD4 SNP (rs2255301) with HIV-2 infection (OR: = 2.36, 95% CI: 1.19 to 4.65, P = 0.01) and any HIV infection (OR: = 2.50, 95% CI: 1.34 to 4.69, P = 0.004). Conclusions:Our results support a role of CD4 polymorphisms in HIV-2 infection, in agreement with recent data showing that CD4 gene variants increase risk to HIV-1 in Kenyan female sex workers. These findings indicate at least some commonality in HIV-1 and HIV-2 susceptibility.
Plug-and-play control and optimization in microgrids

A hierarchical layering of primary, secondary, and tertiary control is the standard operation paradigm for bulk power systems. Similar hierarchical decision architectures have been proposed for microgrids. However, the control objectives in microgrids must be achieved while allowing for robust plug-and-play operation and maximal flexibility, without hierarchical decision making, time-scale separations, and central authorities. Here, we explore control and optimization strategies for the three decision layers and illuminate some possibly-unexpected connections and dependencies among them. Our analysis builds upon first-principle models and decentralized droop control. We investigate distributed architectures for secondary frequency regulation and find that averaging-based distributed controllers using communication among the generation units offer the best combination of flexibility and performance. We further leverage these results to study constrained AC economic dispatch in a tertiary control layer. We show that the minimizers of the economic dispatch problem are in one-to-one correspondence with the set of steady-states reachable by droop control. This equivalence results in simple guidelines to select the droop coefficients, which include the known criteria for load sharing.
Perspectives on recent advances in the understanding and treatment of Parkinson’s disease

There have been numerous important recent advances in our understanding of the causes of Parkinson’s disease (PD), the treatments available and how these are best applied for the long‐term management of patients. Novel genes causing familial PD have been discovered and mechanisms leading to cell dysfunction and death identified. The PD prodrome is now a subject of great interest and clinical markers are being defined that may in future, together with biochemical markers, support an early, pre‐motor diagnosis of PD. This will become important as new therapies are developed to modify disease progression. In the interim, the optimization of existing therapies remains an important priority. The value of existing and novel continuous drug delivery systems in PD is seen as providing simplified regimens, maintenance of motor control, reduction in motor complications and improved patient adherence to drug use.
Butyrate and propionate downregulate ERK phosphorylation in HT‐29 colon carcinoma cells prior to differentiation

We have characterized the effects of different short‐chain fatty acids (SCFAs) on cell growth and differentiation as well as the phosphorylation state of ERK1 and 2 in the human colon adenocarcinoma cell line HT‐29. Of the five SCFAs tested, only butyrate and propionate impaired cellular proliferation. Moreover, butyrate and propionate specifically resulted in a decrease in ERK1 and 2 phosphorylation at 3 and 6 hours post‐treatment, suggesting a correlation between the ability of these SCFAs to inhibit cellular proliferation and decrease ERK phosphorylation. Notably, the decrease in ERK phosphorylation was observed prior to the induction of the differentiation markers alkaline phosphatase (AP) and carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) by butyrate and propionate from days 6 to 18 post‐treatment. In the case of butyrate‐ and propionate‐induced differentiation, ERK phosphorylation is a marker and may play a role in the proliferation and/or differentiation states of this cell line.
Variation in Selected Chemical Element Contents Associated with Malignant Tumors of Human Thyroid Gland

Thyroid cancer (TC) is the most common endocrine malignancy. TC incidence has 1 dramatically increased in the recent decades. During the same period no other cancer has increased as much as TC. With the worldwide increase in the incidence of TC, it has become 2–4 the fifth most common cancer in women. In some countries, the incidence of TC has 5 increased extremely fast, and it has been the most common cancer for the last years. Although the etiology of TC is unknown, several risk factors including deficiency or excess of 6–17 such micronutrient as iodine (I) have been well identified. It was also reported that incidence of TC and mortality from this disease increases progressively with advancing 18,19 age. For example, a 37-fold increase in hazard ratio from age <40 years to age >70 years was showed in the study of 3664 TC patients that received surgery and adjuvant treatment at 19 Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center from the years 1985 to 2010. Besides I involved in thyroid function, other chemical elements have also essential physiological functions such as maintenance and regulation of cell function, gene regulation, activation or inhibition of enzymatic reactions, and regulation of membrane function. Essential or toxic (mutagenic, carcinogenic) properties of chemical elements depend on tissue-specific 20 need or tolerance, respectively. Excessive accumulation or an imbalance of the chemical elements may disturb the cell functions and may result in cellular degeneration, death or 20–22 malignant transformation. In our previous study a significant positive correlation between age and some chemical 23–28 element contents in the thyroid was observed. For example, a strongly pronounced Abstract
Career Development in Language Education Programs

This study assesses the influence of a two-year language program evaluation on program directors and faculty career development. The study makes use of mixed-paradigms (positivism and qualitative interpretive), mixed-strategies (survey research and qualitative evaluation), one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and a post-hoc test of multiple comparisons (Scheffe). The findings indicate that imposed program evaluation experiences help faculty members advance their career skills in terms of course planning, classroom teaching, learning assessment, classroom research, and coping with career pressure. The findings also indicate significant improvement in program director academic and administrative career skills. Moreover, the findings do not show inter-program differences regarding the program evaluation impact on faculty and program director career skills. The study recommends program evaluation as an effective and systematic approach to program stakeholder career development.
Depicting a Life Less Ordinary: Fantasy as Evidence for Deconstruction in the Contemporary Film Biopic

This article evaluates the utilisation of fantasy in the contemporary, mainstream biopic as evidence for deconstruction from the classical generic form. By using Miss Potter (2006) as an illustrative case study, this paper interrogates the inclusion of fantasy in relation to wider trends in the biopic’s development. Drawing on James Walters’ definition of ‘interior fantasy’, I examine the representation of ‘real’ animated characters in Miss Potter that the central protagonist both talks to and interacts with. Through a combination of narrative and production analysis, I explore how and why fantasy elements are included in a film which, in all other aspects, represents a realist, albeit dramatised, depiction of the well-known British author Beatrix Potter. Central to this is a consideration of whether the use of fantasy conflicts with historical accuracy and factual account in portraying the subject’s ‘real-life’ story. It finds that the ‘interior fantasy’ as seen in Miss Potter ultimately represents an extension of the formal components typically associated with the biopic. More broadly, this article contributes to recent, revisionist critiques, by assessing the deconstructive tendencies of the modern mainstream biopic and re-considering its place within contemporary cinema.