Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exogenous 24-Epibrassinolide Interacts with Light to Regulate Anthocyanin and Proanthocyanidin Biosynthesis in Cabernet Sauvignon (Vitis vinifera L.)

Anthocyanins and proanthocyanidins (PAs) are crucial factors that affect the quality of grapes and the making of wine, which were stimulated by various stimuli and environment factors (sugar, hormones, light, and temperature). The aim of the study was to investigate the influence of exogenous 24-Epibrassinolide (EBR) and light on the mechanism of anthocyanins and PAs accumulation in grape berries. Grape clusters were sprayed with EBR (0.4 mg/L) under light and darkness conditions (EBR + L, EBR + D), or sprayed with deionized water under light and darkness conditions as controls (L, D), at the onset of veraison. A large amount of anthocyanins accumulated in the grape skins and was measured under EBR + L and L treatments, whereas EBR + D and D treatments severely suppressed anthocyanin accumulation. This indicated that EBR treatment could produce overlay effects under light, in comparison to that in dark. Real-time quantitative PCR analysis indicated that EBR application up-regulated the expression of genes (VvCHI1, VvCHS2, VvCHS3, VvDFR, VvLDOX, VvMYBA1) under light conditions. Under darkness conditions, only early biosynthetic genes of anthocyanin biosynthesis responded to EBR. Furthermore, we also analyzed the expression levels of the BR-regulated transcription factor VvBZR1 (Brassinazole-resistant 1) and light-regulated transcription factor VvHY5 (Elongated hypocotyl 5). Our results suggested that EBR and light had synergistic effects on the expression of genes in the anthocyanin biosynthesis pathway.
Cord Metabolic Profiles in Obese Pregnant Women: Insights Into Offspring Growth and Body Composition

Context Offspring exposed in utero to maternal obesity have an increased risk of later obesity; however, the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. Objective To assess the effect of an antenatal lifestyle intervention in obese women on the offspring's cord blood metabolic profile and to examine associations of the cord blood metabolic profile with maternal clinical characteristics and offspring anthropometry at birth and age 6 months. Design Randomized controlled trial and cohort study. Setting The UK Pregnancies Better Eating and Activity Trial. Participants Three hundred forty-four mother-offspring pairs. Intervention Antenatal behavioral lifestyle (diet and physical activity) intervention. Main Outcome Measures Targeted cord blood metabolic profile, including candidate hormone and metabolomic analyses. Results The lifestyle intervention was not associated with change in the cord blood metabolic profile. Higher maternal glycemia, specifically fasting glucose at 28 weeks gestation, had a linear association with higher cord blood concentrations of lysophosphatidylcholines (LPCs) 16.1 (β = 0.65; 95% confidence interval: 0.03 to 0.10) and 18.1 (0.52; 0.02 to 0.80), independent of the lifestyle intervention. A principal component of cord blood phosphatidylcholines and LPCs was associated with infant z scores of birth weight (0.04; 0.02 to 0.07) and weight at age 6 months (0.05; 0.00 to 0.10). Cord blood insulin growth factor (IGF)-1 and adiponectin concentrations were positively associated with infant weight z score at birth and at 6 months. Conclusions Concentrations of LPCs and IGF-1 in cord blood are related to infant weight. These findings support the hypothesis that susceptibility to childhood obesity may be programmed in utero, but further investigation is required to establish whether these associations are causally related.
A survey of MRI-based medical image analysis for brain tumor studies

MRI-based medical image analysis for brain tumor studies is gaining attention in recent times due to an increased need for efficient and objective evaluation of large amounts of data. While the pioneering approaches applying automated methods for the analysis of brain tumor images date back almost two decades, the current methods are becoming more mature and coming closer to routine clinical application. This review aims to provide a comprehensive overview by giving a brief introduction to brain tumors and imaging of brain tumors first. Then, we review the state of the art in segmentation, registration and modeling related to tumor-bearing brain images with a focus on gliomas. The objective in the segmentation is outlining the tumor including its sub-compartments and surrounding tissues, while the main challenge in registration and modeling is the handling of morphological changes caused by the tumor. The qualities of different approaches are discussed with a focus on methods that can be applied on standard clinical imaging protocols. Finally, a critical assessment of the current state is performed and future developments and trends are addressed, giving special attention to recent developments in radiological tumor assessment guidelines.
Consistent inter‐individual differences in common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) in Boldness‐Shyness, Stress‐Activity, and Exploration‐Avoidance

The study of animal personality, defined as consistent inter‐individual differences in correlated behavioral traits stable throughout time and/or contexts, has recently become one of the fastest growing areas in animal biology, with study species ranging from insects to non‐human primates. The latter have, however, only occasionally been tested with standardized experiments. Instead their personality has usually been assessed using questionnaires. Therefore, this study aimed to test 21 common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) living in three family groups, in five different experiments, and their corresponding controls. We found that behavioral differences between our animals were not only consistent over time, but also across different contexts. Moreover, the consistent behaviors formed a construct of four major non‐social personality components: Boldness‐Shyness in Foraging, Boldness‐Shyness in Predation, Stress‐Activity, and Exploration‐Avoidance. We found no sex or age differences in these components, but our results did reveal differences in Exploration‐Avoidance between the three family groups. As social environment can have a large influence on behavior of individuals, our results may suggest group‐level similarity in personality (i.e., “group personality”) in common marmosets, a species living in highly cohesive social groups. Am. J. Primatol. 78:961–973, 2016. © 2016 The Authors. American Journal of Primatology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Structural and Functional Deficits in a Neuronal Calcium Sensor-1 Mutant Identified in a Case of Autistic Spectrum Disorder

Neuronal calcium sensor-1 (NCS-1) is a Ca2+ sensor protein that has been implicated in the regulation of various aspects of neuronal development and neurotransmission. It exerts its effects through interactions with a range of target proteins one of which is interleukin receptor accessory protein like-1 (IL1RAPL1) protein. Mutations in IL1RAPL1 have recently been associated with autism spectrum disorders and a missense mutation (R102Q) on NCS-1 has been found in one individual with autism. We have examined the effect of this mutation on the structure and function of NCS-1. From use of NMR spectroscopy, it appeared that the R102Q affected the structure of the protein particularly with an increase in the extent of conformational exchange in the C-terminus of the protein. Despite this change NCS-1(R102Q) did not show changes in its affinity for Ca2+ or binding to IL1RAPL1 and its intracellular localisation was unaffected. Assessment of NCS-1 dynamics indicated that it could rapidly cycle between cytosolic and membrane pools and that the cycling onto the plasma membrane was specifically changed in NCS-1(R102Q) with the loss of a Ca2+ -dependent component. From these data we speculate that impairment of the normal cycling of NCS-1 by the R102Q mutation could have subtle effects on neuronal signalling and physiology in the developing and adult brain.
Suicidal ideation and resilience in family carers of people with dementia : A pilot qualitative study Abbreviated Title : Suicidal ideation in dementia carers

Objectives: Family carers of people with dementia have higher than average rates of depression, anxiety and hopelessness. While these are all risk factors for suicide, there has been no research on suicidal ideation in this population. The aims of this pilot study were to conduct an initial exploration of carers’ experiences of suicidality and identify factors associated with risk and resilience, which could be used to guide further research. Method: A descriptive qualitative approach was taken. In-depth interviews were conducted with nine carers of people with dementia (four male, five female) and transcripts were analysed thematically. Results: Three themes were identified in the data – ‘experiences of suicidal ideation’, ‘risk factors’, and ‘resilience’. Four of the nine participants had experienced suicidal thoughts and two had made preparations for a suicidal act. Risk factors included preexisting mental health problems, physical health conditions, and conflict with other family or care staff. Factors positively associated with resilience included the use of positive coping strategies, faith, social support, and personal characteristics. Conclusion: Some people contemplate suicide while caring for a family member with dementia. Further research is required to confirm the rate of suicidal ideation in the caring population and the relative contribution of factors associated with risk and resilience. In the meantime, service providers and health professionals should be taking steps to identify and support carers currently experiencing suicidal thoughts.
Thalamic alterations remote to infarct appear as focal iron accumulation and impact clinical outcome

See Duering and Schmidt (doi:10.1093/awx135) for a scientific commentary on this article.Thalamic alterations have been observed in infarcts initially sparing the thalamus but interrupting thalamo-cortical or cortico-thalamic projections. We aimed at extending this knowledge by demonstrating with in vivo imaging sensitive to iron accumulation, one marker of neurodegeneration, that (i) secondary thalamic alterations are focally located in specific thalamic nuclei depending on the initial infarct location; and (ii) such secondary alterations can contribute independently to the long-term outcome. To tackle this issue, 172 patients with an infarct initially sparing the thalamus were prospectively evaluated clinically and with magnetic resonance imaging to quantify iron through R2* map at 24-72 h and at 1-year follow-up. An asymmetry index was used to compare R2* within the thalamus ipsilateral versus contralateral to infarct and we focused on the 95th percentile of R2* as a metric of high iron content. Spatial distribution within the thalamus was analysed on an average R2* map from the entire cohort. The asymmetry index of the 95th percentile within individual nuclei (medio-dorsal, pulvinar, lateral group) were compared according to the initial infarct location in simple and multiple regression analyses and using voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping. Associations between the asymmetry index of the 95th percentile and functional, cognitive and emotional outcome were calculated in multiple regression models. We showed that R2* was not modified at 24-72 h but showed heterogeneous increase at 1 year mainly within the medio-dorsal and pulvinar nuclei. The asymmetry index of the 95th percentile within the medio-dorsal nucleus was significantly associated with infarcts involving anterior areas (frontal P = 0.05, temporal P = 0.02, lenticular P = 0.01) while the asymmetry index of the 95th percentile within the pulvinar nucleus was significantly associated with infarcts involving posterior areas (parietal P = 0.046, temporal P < 0.001) independently of age, gender and infarct volume, which was confirmed by voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping. The asymmetry index of the 95th percentile within the entire thalamus at 1 year was independently associated with poor functional outcome (P = 0.04), poor cognitive outcome (P = 0.03), post-stroke anxiety (P = 0.04) and post-stroke depression (P = 0.02). We have therefore identified that iron accumulates within the thalamus ipsilateral to infarct after a delay with a focal distribution that is strongly linked to the initial infarct location (in relation with the pattern of connectivity between thalamic nuclei and cortical areas or deep nuclei), which independently contributes to functional, cognitive and emotional outcome.
On The Role of Wetting, Structure Width, and Flow Characteristics in Polymer Replication on Micro‐ and Nanoscale

on Microand Nanoscale DTU Orbit (04/11/2018) On The Role of Wetting, Structure Width, and Flow Characteristics in Polymer Replication on Microand Nanoscale The replication of functional polymeric microand nanostructures requires a deep understanding of material and process interrelations. In this investigation the dewetting potential of a polymer is proposed as a simple rationale for estimation of the replicability of functional microand nanostructures by injection molding. The dewetting potential of a polymer is determined by integrating the spreading coefficient over the range from melt temperature to no-flow temperature. From all polymers tested, the lowest dewetting potential is calculated for PP and the highest for polymethylmethacrylate. The dewetting potential correlates well with the replicated height of four different structures covering both the microand the nanorange on two different surfaces (brass and fluorocarbon modified nickel) and polymers with different spreading coefficients. It is clearly shown that a lower dewetting potential of a polymer leads to a better replication accuracy. Additionally a parabolic relationship is demonstrated between filled height and structure width.
Oldest Evidence of Toolmaking Hominins in a Grassland-Dominated Ecosystem

Background Major biological and cultural innovations in late Pliocene hominin evolution are frequently linked to the spread or fluctuating presence of C4 grass in African ecosystems. Whereas the deep sea record of global climatic change provides indirect evidence for an increase in C4 vegetation with a shift towards a cooler, drier and more variable global climatic regime beginning approximately 3 million years ago (Ma), evidence for grassland-dominated ecosystems in continental Africa and hominin activities within such ecosystems have been lacking. Methodology/Principal Findings We report stable isotopic analyses of pedogenic carbonates and ungulate enamel, as well as faunal data from ∼2.0 Ma archeological occurrences at Kanjera South, Kenya. These document repeated hominin activities within a grassland-dominated ecosystem. Conclusions/Significance These data demonstrate what hitherto had been speculated based on indirect evidence: that grassland-dominated ecosystems did in fact exist during the Plio-Pleistocene, and that early Homo was active in open settings. Comparison with other Oldowan occurrences indicates that by 2.0 Ma hominins, almost certainly of the genus Homo, used a broad spectrum of habitats in East Africa, from open grassland to riparian forest. This strongly contrasts with the habitat usage of Australopithecus, and may signal an important shift in hominin landscape usage.
Chemical-induced disease relation extraction via convolutional neural network

Abstract This article describes our work on the BioCreative-V chemical–disease relation (CDR) extraction task, which employed a maximum entropy (ME) model and a convolutional neural network model for relation extraction at inter- and intra-sentence level, respectively. In our work, relation extraction between entity concepts in documents was simplified to relation extraction between entity mentions. We first constructed pairs of chemical and disease mentions as relation instances for training and testing stages, then we trained and applied the ME model and the convolutional neural network model for inter- and intra-sentence level, respectively. Finally, we merged the classification results from mention level to document level to acquire the final relations between chemical and disease concepts. The evaluation on the BioCreative-V CDR corpus shows the effectiveness of our proposed approach. Database URL: http://www.biocreative. org/resources/corpora/biocreative-v-cdr-corpus/
Rebound Modeling of Spinning Ping-Pong Ball Based on Multiple Visual Measurements

The research on the collision between a spinning ball and a table, as a general issue for the trajectory analysis of the spinning-flying objects, is important but complicated. Traditionally, it is studied either by simplifying the collision process as a black box in which the ball's motion state changes abruptly before and after collision, or by assuming that the coefficient of restitution and the coefficient of friction are simply piecewise linear or even constant during the whole collision process. In this paper, we first analyze the mechanism of the collision dynamics and conclude from mathematical derivations that the collision between a ping-pong ball and a table is a continuous transition process and its collision duration is a constant irrelevant to the ball's motion state. These two conclusions are also verified by the visual measurement using an ultrahigh-speed camera. Then, we propose a novel rebound model using the mean value theorem, momentum theorem, and angular momentum theorem. The novelty of the proposed model is that the forces and the parameters in it are formulated as the continuous functions related to the ball's motion state, which is more accurate, rather than as constants. The integrations of these functions over time can be formulated by using the mean value theorem, and their expressions are learned using multilayer perception with a large data set collected by the position vision system and the pan-tilt vision system. The experimental results verify the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed model.
The Testicular Hormones AMH, InhB, INSL3, and Testosterone Can Be Independently Deficient in Older Men

Background Late-onset hypogonadism is symptomatically diverse and not fully explained by circulating testosterone level. The adult testes secrete four distinct hormones (testosterone, AMH, INSL3, and InhB) into the circulation. Testosterone and InhB have proven dynamic regulation, with limited information available for AMH and INSL3. During aging, there is cellular senescence, which may underlie the diversity of hypogonadism. This leads to the postulate that the relative levels (profile) of the four testicular hormones in older men are variable and cannot be evaluated by the measurement of one hormone. Methods 111 men aged 19-50 years and 98 men aged 70-90 years were examined. The circulating levels of the testicular hormones were measured using ELISAs, and the variation in the levels of hormones was analyzed by various correlative analyses. Results All four hormones were largely or totally independent. Some men were deficient in multiple hormones, but no man had multiple elevated hormones. The average hormonal levels were lower in older men, with diverse profiles of the four testicular hormones. Hence, some men had one or more hormones below the reference range, with testosterone the most conserved. Consequently, testosterone levels were not indicative of the complete state of the endocrine testes. Conclusions The four hormones vary independently of each other, in younger and older men. This indicates that they are regulated dynamically rather than influenced by endocrine cell number. Older men exhibited diverse profiles of low levels of testicular hormones, suggesting that the testes age differently between men. Testosterone alone inadequately describes gonadal states.
Dinaciclib Induces Anaphase Catastrophe in Lung Cancer Cells via Inhibition of Cyclin-Dependent Kinases 1 and 2

Despite advances in targeted therapy, lung cancer remains the most common cause of cancer-related mortality in the United States. Chromosomal instability is a prominent feature in lung cancer and, because it rarely occurs in normal cells, it represents a potential therapeutic target. Our prior work discovered that lung cancer cells undergo anaphase catastrophe in response to inhibition of cyclin-dependent kinase 2 (CDK2), followed by apoptosis and reduced growth. In this study, the effects and mechanisms of the multi-CDK inhibitor dinaciclib on lung cancer cells were investigated. We sought to determine the specificity of CDK-dependent induction of anaphase catastrophe. Live cell imaging provided direct evidence that dinaciclib caused multipolar cell divisions resulting in extensive chromosome missegregation. Genetic knockdown of dinaciclib CDK targets revealed that repression of CDK2 and CDK1, but not CDK5 or CDK9, triggered anaphase catastrophe in lung cancer cells. Overexpression of CP110, which is a mediator of CDK2 inhibitor–induced anaphase catastrophe (and a CDK1 and 2 phosphorylation substrate), antagonized anaphase catastrophe and apoptosis following dinaciclib treatment. Consistent with our previous findings, acquisition of activated KRAS sensitized lung cancer cells to dinaciclib-mediated anaphase catastrophe and cell death. Combining dinaciclib with the mitotic inhibitor taxol augmented anaphase catastrophe induction and reduced cell viability of lung cancer cells. Thus, the multi-CDK inhibitor dinaciclib causes anaphase catastrophe in lung cancer cells and should be investigated as a potential therapeutic for wild-type and KRAS-mutant lung cancer, individually or in combination with taxanes. Mol Cancer Ther; 15(11); 2758–66. ©2016 AACR.
Midterm results of the Ross procedure in children: an appraisal of the subannular implantation with interrupted sutures technique†

OBJECTIVES The support of the pulmonary autograft root by the fibromuscular left ventricular outflow tract is emphasized to address the concern related to the dilatation of the pulmonary autograft structures in the paediatric population. METHODS This retrospective study analyses the outcomes of 75 children who were operated between 1998 and 2012 with the subannular interrupted sutures technique at a median age of 10.2 years (range, 5.3 months‐18.0 years). Median follow‐up time was 5.2 years (range, 3 days‐13.2 years). RESULTS There were no deaths, but there were 3 reinterventions on the autograft for regurgitation and 2 resections of left ventricular outflow tract obstruction. There was no significant autograft stenosis, and freedom from moderate‐to‐severe regurgitation was 95% (95% confidence interval: 89‐100) and 88% (95% confidence interval: 77‐99) at 5 and 10 years, respectively. Median z‐scores at the latest follow‐up examination were, at the annulus, 0.31 [interquartile range (IQR) = −0.81 to 1.2]; at the sinus of Valsalva, 2.7 (IQR = 1.5‐3.5); and at the sinotubular junction, 3.1 (IQR = 1.7‐4.2). The correlation between z‐scores and time after the operation was negative at the level of the annulus (r = −0.29, P = 0.034) but positive at the level of the sinus (r = +0.37, P = 0.005) and the sinotubular junction (r = +0.26, P = 0.068). The median rate of change in the z‐score at the annulus was low, 0.065 z‐score/year (IQR = −0.13 to 0.43). CONCLUSIONS The subannular interrupted sutures implantation technique is associated with acceptable risks and, in the midterm, delivers limited annular dilatation, autograft regurgitation and delayed need for autograft reintervention.