Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Piwil2 Suppresses P53 by Inducing Phosphorylation of Signal Transducer and Activator of Transcription 3 in Tumor Cells

Piwi proteins have been implicated in germ cell proliferation, differentiation, germline stem cell maintenance and transposon control in germline from Drosophila to mammals. The Piwi-like2 (piwil2) gene is mainly expressed in testis or embryonic cells among normal tissues but widely expressed in tumors. However, it remains to be fully determined through which mechanism piwil2 is involved in tumorigenesis. Here we report that Human piwil2, or Hili represses the tumor suppressor P53 in human cancer cells. Immunoprecipitation analysis shows that Piwil2 can directly associate with Signal Transducer and Activator of Transcription 3 (STAT3) protein via its PAZ domain and form a Piwil2/STAT3/c-Src triple protein-protein complex. Furthermore, STAT3 is phosphorylated by c-Src and translocated to nucleus, then binds to P53 promoter and represses its transcription. The present study demonstrated that Piwil2 plays a role in anti-apoptosis in tumor cells possessing P53 as a positive regulator of STAT3 signaling pathway, providing novel sights into roles of Piwil2 in tumorigenesis.
Author ' s personal copy Predicting secondary school teachers ’ acceptance and use of a digital learning environment : A cross-sectional study

In this study, secondary school teachers’ acceptance of a digital learning environment (DLE) was investigated. Questionnaires were taken on three times (T1/T2/T3) during the same school year, with the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) as theoretical framework. Next to questionnaires, user-logs were collected during the entire school year. A total of 72 teachers completed a questionnaire on at least one occasion: 64 teachers responded at T1, 41 at T2, and 55 at T3. We first investigated which factors influence teachers’ acceptance of a DLE. The main predictors of DLE acceptance were performance expectancy and social influence by superiors to use the DLE. Effort expectancy and facilitating conditions were of minor importance. We then investigated how well the amount of final observed use could be predicted, and found that at T1 about one third, at T2 about one fourth and at T3 about half of the variance in observed use was predicted by attitude, behavioral intention and self-reported frequency of use. Our study showed that to maximize use of a DLE, its usefulness should be demonstrated, while school boards or principals should strongly encourage teachers to (start to) use the DLE. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Glycolipid Antigen Drives Rapid Expansion and Sustained Cytokine Production by NK T Cells 1

NKT cells are enigmatic lymphocytes that respond to glycolipid Ags presented by CD1d. Although they are key immunoregulatory cells, with a critical role in immunity to cancer, infection, and autoimmune diseases, little is known about how they respond to antigenic challenge. Current theories suggest that NKT cells die within hours of stimulation, implying that their direct impact on the immune system derives from the initial cytokine burst released before their death. Here we show that NKT cell disappearance results from TCR down-regulation rather than apoptosis, and that they expand to many times their normal number in peripheral tissues within 2–3 days of stimulation, before contracting to normal numbers over subsequent days. This expansion is associated with ongoing cytokine production, biased toward a Th1 (IFN-γ+ IL-4−) phenotype, in contrast to their initial Th0 (IFN-γ+IL-4+) phenotype. This study provides critical new insight into how NKT cells can have such a major impact on immune responses, lasting many days beyond the initial stimulation of these cells.
Changes in South Korean urbanicity and suicide rates, 1992 to 2012

Objectives Studies have highlighted the association between the degree of urbanicity and spatial disparities in suicide, but few have evaluated its changes across time. We explored the geospatial trends of suicide in South Korea from 1992 to 2012, and their relationship to the nation's evolving urbanicity. Setting South Korea. Primary outcome measures Age-sex-specific suicide rate. Results Suicide rates increased in all regions of South Korea during the study period. Controlling the effects of age and sex, there was an overall inverse relationship between the degree of urbanicity and regional suicide rates. These associations were, however, attenuated across the periods, as there were smaller increases in suicide rates in mid-sized urban regions as compared to larger cities and to rural areas. Increases over time in the suicide rates among youth and working-age adults were greater in large urban centres and in rural regions. For elders, the increase was far greater in rural regions. Conclusions The association of urbanicity and the geospatial pattern of suicide in South Korea was a dynamic process and varied by age groups across the course of two decades. Internal migration and related social processes most likely contributed to these changes.
Sessile serrated adenomas: prevalence of dysplasia and carcinoma in 2139 patients

Background and aims Sessile serrated adenomas (SSAs) are recognised as precursors to microsatellite unstable adenocarcinomas. This study attempts to estimate the progression rate of SSAs based upon the epidemiology of a large cohort as well as identify relationships to other colorectal polyps. Methods Pathological reports generated at Caris Diagnostics from 290 810 colonoscopic specimens on 179 111 patients were analysed using computerised algorithms. Results SSAs with or without dysplasia/carcinoma (SSA+/–) were identified in 2416 specimens from 2139 patients (54% women). The distribution of SSA+/– was: right-sided (81.2%); left-sided (11.2%); both right- and left-sided (3.2%); not specified (4.3%). There were 1816 (85%) patients without dysplasia (SSA–), 257 (12%) with low-grade dysplasia (SSA-LD), 45 (2%) with high-grade dysplasia (SSA-HD) and 21 (1%) with adenocarcinoma (SSA-CA). The difference in median age between almost all groups was significant (SSA–=61 years versus SSA-LD=66 years (p<0.001) vs SSA-HD=72 years (p=0.002) vs SSA-CA=76 years (p=0.07, NS)). Women comprised 53% of the SSA– group (968/1816), 57% of the SSA-LD group (147/257), 69% of the SSA-HD group (31/45) and 76% of the SSA-CA group (16/21), being more likely to have high-grade dysplasia (OR 1.94, 95% CI 1.03 to 3.67) and adenocarcinoma (OR 2.80, 95% CI 1.02 to 7.68). Conclusions 1.7% of patients with mucosal polyps had SSAs (with and without dysplasia), more commonly in women and primarily in the right colon. Dysplasia or carcinoma was identified in 15% of patients and significantly disproportionately among women. Based on significant age differences between groups, there appears to be a stepwise progression of dysplasia and carcinoma in SSAs over 10 to 15 years, a period two to three times longer than that for conventional adenomas.
Developing tomorrow's leaders today: Leadership development programs at selected North Carolina community colleges

The characteristics of a leadership development challenge for America's community colleges have been well-documented in the literature. A worldwide population aging trend, college leader retirements, and an ineffective system for new leader development have led to predictions of a shortfall in well-trained leaders at all levels of community colleges. These colleges are essential to workforce and economic development in over 1,500 communities and sound leadership of them is essential to the achievement of this mission. The purpose of this study was to add to the greater body of knowledge by describing the planning, developing, delivering, and strengthening elements of three community college-based faculty and staff leadership development programs. Additionally, the study assessed the individual and institutional outcomes of the selected campus-based programs and the relationship of structural, methodological, and topical elements to those results. An extensive review of the literature described the significance of the need to understand the development, delivery, and outcomes of grow-your-own community college leadership development programs. A concurrent mixed-methods approach incorporating interviews, documents, surveys, and program evaluations was used to gather information about the sponsoring institutions and their programs, participants, staff, and sponsors. Emerging themes and patterns of findings were used to address the following research questions within each of the study sites as well as across the three programs: 1. What programmatic elements were included in the planning, developing, delivering, and strengthening phases of each LDI program? 2. What perceived leadership development outcomes did study participants attribute to their participation in the LDI program 3. What perceived organizational outcomes did study participants attribute to the LDI program? 4. How did the LDI programmatic elements relate to perceived leadership development and organizational outcomes The research was organized to examine leadership development programs in the context of a literature-based hybrid analytical framework. The framework was developed to broaden and deepen the understanding of these programs and provide guidance for improved program planning, implementation, and evaluation. The study revealed that many of the elements outlined in the literature were incorporated in the programs examined. Unique and culturally-relevant programmatic innovations led to profound individual leadership development outcomes across each of the programs. Programs displayed institutional nuances while achieving a core group of fundamentally similar institutional outcomes. Programmatic best practices for planning, developing, delivering, and strengthening community college leadership development were also identified and described.
Retention of viral infectivity after extensive mutation of the highly conserved immunodominant domain of the feline immunodeficiency virus envelope

In lentiviruses, including human immunodeficiency virus and feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV), the principal immunodominant domain (PID) of the transmembrane glycoprotein elicits a strong humoral response in infected hosts. The PID is marked by the presence of two cysteines that delimit a sequence, composed of five to seven amino acids in different lentiviruses, which is highly conserved among isolates of the same lentiviral species. While the conservation of the sequence suggests the presence of functional constraints, the conservation of the immunodominance among divergent lentiviruses raises the hypothesis of a selective advantage for the infecting virus conferred by the host humoral response against this domain. We and others have previously shown that an appropriate structure of the PID is required for the production of a functional envelope. In the present work, we analyzed virological functions and immune reactivity of the envelope after random mutagenesis of the PID of FIV. We obtained nine mutant envelopes which were correctly processed and retained fusogenic ability. Mutation of the two C-terminal residues of the PID sequence between the cysteines in a molecular clone of FIV abolished infectivity. In contrast, three molecular clones containing extensive mutations in the four N-terminal amino acids were infectious. However, the mutations affected PID reactivity with sera from infected cats. Our results suggest that functional constraints, although existent, are not sufficient to account for PID sequence conservation. Such conservation may also result from positive selection by anti-PID antibodies which enhance infection.
International Patenting and the European Patent Office: A Quantitative Assessment

The European Patent Office (EPO) provides a simplified, and less costly, means of seeking patent protection in the majority of European countries. We discuss issues in measurement of patenting raised by the European Patent, and then survey patterns in patenting behavior in Europe over the last decade. Notable developments are that: (1) European Patent publications grew by 70 percent between 1991 and 2000; (2) this growth was not at the expense of patents sought directly through national patent offices, which were small in number relative to European Patents throughout the period; (3) the number of destinations designated for protection in a typical European Patent has grown substantially, to the point where most now designate all EPO members. A simple structural model of an inventor’s patenting decision attributes 40 percent of the growth in European Patents and all of the growth in the extent of designation to the evolution of the fee structure for European Patents over the period. JEL classification: O34
Impact of oxidative stress defense on bacterial survival and morphological change in Campylobacter jejuni under aerobic conditions

Campylobacter jejuni, a microaerophilic foodborne pathogen, inescapably faces high oxygen tension during its transmission to humans. Thus, the ability of C. jejuni to survive under oxygen-rich conditions may significantly impact C. jejuni viability in food and food safety as well. In this study, we investigated the impact of oxidative stress resistance on the survival of C. jejuni under aerobic conditions by examining three mutants defective in key antioxidant genes, including ahpC, katA, and sodB. All the three mutants exhibited growth reduction under aerobic conditions compared to the wild-type (WT), and the ahpC mutant showed the most significant growth defect. The CFU reduction in the mutants was recovered to the WT level by complementation. Higher levels of reactive oxygen species were accumulated in C. jejuni under aerobic conditions than microaerobic conditions, and supplementation of culture media with an antioxidant recovered the growth of C. jejuni. The levels of lipid peroxidation and protein oxidation were significantly increased in the mutants compared to WT. Additionally, the mutants exhibited different morphological changes under aerobic conditions. The ahpC and katA mutants developed coccoid morphology by aeration, whereas the sodB mutant established elongated cellular morphology. Compared to microaerobic conditions, interestingly, aerobic culture conditions substantially induced the formation of coccoidal cells, and antioxidant treatment reduced the emergence of coccoid forms under aerobic conditions. The ATP concentrations and PMA–qPCR analysis supported that oxidative stress is a factor that induces the development of a viable-but-non-culturable state in C. jejuni. The findings in this study clearly demonstrated that oxidative stress resistance plays an important role in the survival and morphological changes of C. jejuni under aerobic conditions.
Exchange Rate Volatility and Growth in Emerging Europe

This paper analyses the in_uence of NEER and REER volatility on growth in a panel of six developing European countries. Two measures of volatility are employed (standard deviation and ARCH/GARCH models) and its in_uence on growth is tested both through a GLS and a GMM estimation. Moreover, given the properties of the time series used, both panel and individual cointegration are tested using the Pedroni and, re-spectively, the Johansen methodology.
Assessing the Degree of Implementation of the Important Features of a Curricular Innovation. Paper Presented at the Bat-Sheva Seminar on Curriculum Implementation and its Relationship to Curriculum Development in Science (Rehovot-Jerusalem, Israel, July 1978).

This paper, designed to assess the degree of implementation of the important features of a curriculum innovation, was presented at the 1978 Bat-Sheva Seminar on Curriculum Implementation and-its Relationship to Curriculum Development in Science, Rehovot-Jerusalem, Israel. It investigates the use of sub interviews within the main interview to assess the level of use of each of the components of interest innovation bundle. The methodology described is used, to measure the level of implementation of the junior high school science program, The National World's (TNW). This is the revision and. modular Adaptation of the Intermediate . Science CurriCulum Study (ISCS). A total of five teachers using the . TRW program were interviewed personally or by telephone. Results show that all teachers are ,regular users of the program and there are considerable variations in their degree and level use of the program. Scales "used to measure the use of innovation and interview format are also presented. (HM; *********************************************************************** * ( Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** 4 ASSESSING THE DEGREE, OF IMPLEMENTATION OF THE IMPORTANT FEATURES OF A CURRICULAR INNOVATION
The RoadRunner Web Data Extraction System

Extracting data from HTML text files and making them available to computer applications is becoming of utmost importance for developing several emerging e-services. This paper presents RoadRunner, a research project that aims at developing solutions for automatically extracting data from large HTML data sources. We concentrate on data-intensive Web sites, that is, sites that deliver large amounts of data through a complex graph of linked HTML pages. The paper describes the top-level software architecture of the RoadRunner System, which has been specifically designed to automatize the data extraction process. The paper is organized as follows. First, Section 2 illustrates an overview of the project and gives an intuition of its key ideas. Then, Section 3 describes the overall architecture of the RoadRunner system. Section 4 concludes the paper discussing related works.
Repeated exposure to one song leads to a rapid and persistent decline in an immediate early gene's response to that song in zebra finch telencephalon

Conspecific song induces a prompt increase in the expression of the zenk gene in the caudo-medial neostriatum (NCM), a part of the auditory telencephalon of songbirds. To test the hypothesis that zenk gene induction in NCM is related to the acquisition of new song-related memories, we presented adult male zebra finches with repeated playbacks of one song. In response, zenk mRNA levels in NCM increased for the first 30 min, but then declined back to baseline levels despite continued stimulation with the same song. When a novel song was then introduced, however, a full zenk response was triggered once again. Even when a full day had passed between the last exposure to a song and the testing period, the song that had been rendered “familiar#x201D; by repetition caused no zenk response, whereas a novel song caused a full response. Quantitative analysis indicates that individual cells in NCM must have undergone a selective loss in their zenk responsiveness to the repeated song, while still maintaining their ability to respond to the novel song. These results support the hypothesis that the induction of zenk is related to the formation of long-term memories. Analysis of the stimulus-specific modulation of zenk responses, coupled with appropriate behavioral assays, should provide insight into neural mechanisms responsible for the discrimination and storage of complex perceptual information.
Dietary Factors: Major Regulators of the Gut's Microbiota

Dietary factors and the associated lifestyle play a major role in the pathophysiology of many diseases. Several diets, especially a Western lifestyle with a high consumption of meat and carbohydrates and a low consumption of vegetables, have been linked to common diseases, such as metabolic syndrome, atherosclerosis, inflammatory bowel diseases, and colon cancer. The gastrointestinal tract harbors a complex and yet mainly molecularly defined microbiota, which contains an enormous number of different species. Recent advances in sequencing technologies have allowed the characterization of the human microbiome and opened the possibility to study the effect of "environmental" factors on this microbiome. The most important environmental factor is probably "what we eat," and the initial studies have revealed fascinating results on the interaction of nutrients with our microbiota. Whereas short-term changes in dietary patterns may not have major influences, long-term diets can affect the microbiota in a substantial manner. This issue may potentially have major relevance for human gastrointestinal health and disease because our microbiota has features to regulate many immune and metabolic functions. Increasing our knowledge on the interaction between nutrients and microbiota may have tremendous consequences and result in a better understanding of diseases, even beyond the gastrointestinal tract, and finally lead to better preventive and therapeutic strategies.
Firm-Specific Gender and Ethnicity Pay Differentials in Britain

Using matched employer-employee data we examine firm-specific gender and ethnicity pay differentials in Britain. We estimate an econometric earnings model using the partially-observed pay variable provided in the data and test the normality assumption that underlies the usual interval regression technique. We then estimate alternative specifications allowing for firm-specific random effects, using a semi-parametric finite mixture estimator. The empirical estimation reveals a 22% (13%) weekly (hourly) gender pay gap and a 28% (19%) weekly (hourly) pay race gap. Strikingly, although significant and sizeable the firm-specific effects are not correlated with other variables that may act as indirect indicators of pay differentials
Neighborhoods, Economic Self-Sufficiency, and the MTO Program

JOHN M. QUIGLEY University of California, Berkeley STEVEN RAPHAEL University of California, Berkeley Neighborhoods, Economic Self- Sufﬁciency, and the MTO Program Despite the substantial decline in the degree of racial segregation in the U.S. housing market reported in the 2000 census, most African Americans still reside in communities that are geographically separate from those of white Amer- icans. 1 Continued racial disparities in income, education, and employment mean that housing segregation is accompanied by the concentration of poverty and high rates of joblessness in predominantly black neighborhoods. The concentration of black households in older, predominantly inner-city neighborhoods, coupled with the continuing decentralization of employment within metropolitan areas, reduces the access to jobs of low-skilled inner-city residents. Lack of access is compounded by public transit systems that do not facilitate reverse commuting and by low rates of automobile ownership among poor minority households. This “spatial mismatch” between the locations of low-skilled jobs and the residences of low-skilled workers has been a focus of labor economists since the late 1960s. 2 During the 1980s, concern with the employment effects of residential seg- regation was subordinated to a more general concern with the external effects of economic and racial segregation on social outcomes—for example, rates of school completion, teenage pregnancy, crime, and disease. These “neighbor- hood effects” were thought to contribute to the pathology of an urban “underclass. ” 3 The spatial concentration of the poor declined during the 1990s, and the number of “underclass” census tracts declined by one-third. 4 Never- We thank Gary Burtless, David Card, Ingrid Gould Ellen, Jeffrey Kling, Helen Ladd, Jens Lud- wig, Janet Rothenberg Pack, Lisa Sanbonmatsu, Michael Stoll, and Bruce Weinberg for their valuable input. 1. See Jargowsky (2003). 2. Kain (1968). 3. Jencks and Peterson (1991). 4. Jargowsky and Yang (2006).