Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ABCB1 transporter and Toll-like receptor 4 in trabecular meshwork cells

Purpose The aqueous humor nourishes the avascular tissues of the anterior segment, and the trabecular meshwork (TM) plays a role in the efflux of endogenous substances and xenobiotics from the aqueous humor. ATP (ATP)-binding cassette (ABC) transporter superfamily members respond to stressors such as hypoxia, cytokine signaling, and aging. The innate immune system within the TM, particularly Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) and its ligands, e.g., low-molecular-weight hyaluronic acid (LMW-HA) and lipopolysaccharide (LPS), plays a significant role in maintaining a normal environment in the anterior chamber. We hypothesize that the innate immune system may interact with ATP-binding cassette sub-family members ABCB1 (p-glycoprotein and multidrug resistance protein 1) to detoxify xenobiotics from the aqueous humor and in the TM. Methods Cell lysates of human TM cells, RAW 264.7 macrophages, and PC12 cells were subjected to western blot analysis. The TM cells were positive for TLR4, ABCB1, and CYP3A5 and were negative for the ABCC1 transporter. Human TM cells and RAW 264.7 macrophages were plated on eight-well chamber slides at 5,000 cells/well overnight in 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS) cell growth medium. The medium was changed to 0.1% FBS 2 h before treatment. Cells were challenged with 1 and 10 mM lactate, 100 ng LMW-HA (20 kDa), 100 ng high-molecular-weight HA (HMW-HA, 1,000 kDa), 100 ng LPS, and/or 100 μM naloxone for 0.5, 1, 2, and 4 h. Calcein acetyoxymethyl ester (calcein AM; 0.25 μM) was added for 30 min as the reporting molecule. After calcein AM was administered, it was cleaved by an esterase into a fluorescent product that is normally transported out of the cell by ABCB1. Positive controls were 100 μM verapamil and 50 μM digoxin. After the challenge, the TM cells were fixed at 4 °C in 3% paraformaldehyde for 15 min, mounted with Vectashield and 4',6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI) mounting medium, and analyzed by a masked observer using a Leica confocal microscope and software. Results Verapamil, an ABCB1 inhibitor, significantly (p<0.001) increased fluorescent calcein retention in the cytoplasm of the TM and RAW 264.7 cells compared to the PBS control. Digoxin, an ABCB1 activator, increased calcein efflux (p<0.001). Lactate reduced ABCB1 activity. HMW-HA significantly (p<0.001) reduced ABCB1 activity, whereas LMW-HA decreased ABCB1 activity, and the HA effects were blocked by naloxone (p<0.001), a TLR4 inhibitor. LPS alone did not change ABCB1 activity whereas dephosphorylated LPS significantly (p<0.001) enhanced ABCB1 activity in the TM cells. β-amyloid significantly reduced ABCB1 activity, and the β-amyloid effects were blocked by naloxone. Conclusions TM cells are responsive to ABCB1 inhibitors and activators. ABCB1 functional activity is affected by TLR4 agonists suggesting that modulation of TLR4 is important in ABCB1 function. The innate immune inflammatory response in the TM may play a role in the ABCB1 detoxification of potentially harmful constituents in the aqueous humor.
Clinical Usefulness of Urinary Growth Hormone Measurements in Normal and Short Children According to Different Expressions of Urinary Growth Hormone Data

ABSTRACT: To assess the clinical usefulness of urinary growth hormone (UGH) measurements, a UGH determination technique, including dialysis, ultrafiltration, and measurement by polyclonal-coated tube RIA, was established. Sixty-three short children were studied: 56 idiopathic growth retarded (37 prepubertal and 19 pubertal) and seven prepubertal with classic GH (growth hormone) deficiency. Forty-two healthy children (32 prepubertal and 10 pubertal) served as controls. Two groups of adults were studied: eight with active acromegaly and 11 healthy controls. UGH was measured in 24-h urine samples from all patients and controls. Mean ± SD UGH excretion expressed as ng/24 h was significantly lower in the GH-deficient group compared with prepubertal growth-retarded and control children (p < 0.01). No differences were found between UGH excreted by controls and by the growth-retarded groups. Pubertal children excreted significantly higher amounts of GH when UGH was expressed as ng/24 h (p < 0.02 and p < 0.03, respectively), but this difference disappeared when UGH was expressed as ng/g creatinine. UGH was significantly higher in acromegalic patients compared with adult controls (p < 0.001). Differences between day, night, and 24-h UGH were studied in 23 children. UGH in night urine was significantly lower whether expressed as the total amount or as ng/g creatinine. The effect of recombinant hGH administration on UGH was studied in 13 children after 6 and 12 mo of treatment. UGH increased significantly under recombinant hGH treatment. An endogenous GH secretion study was performed in 41 children: UGH expressed as ng/24 h correlated significantly with mean serum 24-h GH, IGF-I concentration, chronologic age, and growth velocity, whereas when expressed as ng/g creatinine, UGH correlated only with mean serum 24-h GH and growth velocity. In conclusion, UGH determination is a noninvasive, easily repeatable way of assessing GH secretion. UGH expressed as the total amount per 24 h would appear to be a more advantageous approach to the expression of UGH data for clinical purposes.
An Effective and Less Invasive Treatment of Post-Traumatic Cerebrospinal Fluid Fistula: Closed Lumbar Drainage System

Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leakage may develop when a defect is formed in dural layers by traumatic or iatrogenic processes. Traumatic CSF leakage was encountered in 2% of head injuries. CSF leakage is an associated feature of 12-30% of skull base fractures. Numerous treatment modalities are proposed for the management of CSF leaks. A closed lumbar drainage system (CLDS) is recommended as an alternative method to surgery for preventing complications related to leakage. In the present study, we report the clinical details of 46 patients who suffered from rhinorrhea/otorrhea (R/O), three of whom were urgently operated due to other causes like subdural hematoma and tension pneumocephalus. Leakage spontaneously ceased in 26 (60.4%) patients whereas CLDS insertion was found to be necessary in 17 patients. A prophylactic antibiotic regimen was started in the CLDS group and these patients were followed with daily CSF cell counts. Fifteen patients (88.2%) were successfully treated by CLDS, however meningitis developed in 2 patients (11.7%). Severe complications like meningitis could be avoided by a simple daily microbiological analysis of CSF.
Job characteristics, burnout and negative work-home interference in a nursing environment

The objectives of this study were 1) to determine which job characteristics are associated with burnout and 2) to determine the mediating role of negative work-home interference (WHI) in the relationship between job characteristics and burnout within a nursing environment. Random samples (n = 300) were taken of nurses working in the Johannesburg, Klerksdorp, Krugersdorp, Pretoria and Potchefstroom areas. The results of the regression analyses indicated that the main job characteristics that predict exhaustion were pressure and a lack of autonomy, role clarity, colleague support and financial support. A lack of role clarity, colleague support and financial support were the main job characteristics that predict mental distance. Negative WHI played a partially mediating role in the relationship between job characteristics and burnout.
High Peritoneal Transport Status is Not an Independent Risk Factor for High Mortality in Patients Treated with Automated Peritoneal Dialysis

We undertook this study to elucidate whether baseline peritoneal membrane transport characteristics are associated with high mortality in incident automated peritoneal dialysis (APD) patients. This retrospective study includes 117 patients who started APD at Yonsei University Health System from 1996 to 2008 and had a PET within 3 months of APD initiation. High transporters were significantly older and had a higher incidence of cardiovascular disease. Patient survival for years 1, 3, and 5 were 85%, 64%, and 35% for high transporter and 94%, 81%, and 68% for non-high transporter group (P<0.01). Multivariate analysis revealed that age, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, serum albumin level, and residual renal function were independently associated with high mortality in APD patients. In contrast, high transport status was not a significant predictor for mortality in this population when the other covariates were included. Even though high transport was significantly associated with mortality in the univariate analysis, its role seemed to be influenced by other comorbid conditions. These findings suggest that the proper management of these comorbid conditions, as well as appropriate ultrafiltration by use of APD and/or icodextrin, must be considered as protective strategies to improve survival in peritoneal dialysis patients with high transport.
Accurate Active Measurement in the Internet and its Applications

Since the early days of ARPANET, network performance measurement has played a key role in the continuous enhancement and evolution of the Internet. During this research project first a high accuracy measurement infrastructure ensuring highly accurate and reliable timestamping and test traffic generation was developed, and second, once the proper infrastructure was available, existing measurement methodologies were improved and new measurement methods were proposed and verified. As the result of this, the thesis contributes both to the Internet measurement infrastructure and to the are of measurement analysis. A highly accurate active probing infrastructure is provided without the need for GPS, based on an alternative software clock for PC’s running Unix. With respect to clock rate, it’s performance exceeds common GPS and NTP synchronized software clock accuracy. It is based on the TSC register counting CPU cycles and offers a resolution of around 1ns, a rate stability of 0.1PPM equal to that of the underlying hardware, and a processing overhead well under 1μs per timestamp. It is scalable and can be run in parallel with the usual clock. A highly accurate Real-Time Linux based probe stream sender solution is also introduced. A generic sample path based analysis of a multiple hop model of a network route carrying probe traffic and cross traffic is given. It provides a unifying context for active and passive end-to-end measurement techniques, and a framework to enhance existing and to generate new estimation methods. Novel aspects include focusing on delay variation and allowing general probe stream definitions. All network effects are identified and four canonical measurable signatures are defined and illustrated. The new delay variation based route model allows the principles of packet-pair to be formalised and extended. This enables the effect of probe size to be evaluated, downstream noise understood, peak detection recognised as superior to mode or minimum based filtering, and new estimation methods to be proposed and evaluated. Using insight from the governing equations and simulation, it is shown how real measurements made over typical routes can be interpreted. Unexpected additional probe size dependencies were found, inspiring an extension of the route model to include lower layer headers. It is shown how the enhanced model accounts very well for the observed dependencies, allowing more
Más Tecnologia, Más Cambio?: Investigating an Educational Technology Project in Rural Peru

Providing access to and training in ICTs is seen as key to bridging the digital divide between technology-rich communities and those with poor IT infrastructures. Several projects have focused on providing ICTs for education in developing countries, of which the best known is One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). Although, there has been significant criticism of some of these projects, in particular OLPC, due to its use of a top-down implementation strategy and the limited evidence for its educational benefits, there has been comparatively little analysis of what underlies successful approaches. We aimed to address this deficit by conducting an ethnographic study of community-based projects organised by Blue Sparrow, a small charity that donates refurbished desktop computers to schools in rural Peru, as this organisation has experienced both successes and failures when implementing its educational technology projects. The relative success of Blue Sparrow highlights the benefits of: understanding local contexts; using a bottom up approach; involving stakeholders in setting programme objectives; and empowering communities. We argue that the educational impact of such projects can be improved by: providing teacher training; integrating computers into the wider curriculum; and providing teaching materials and clear objectives for volunteers.
Telework as a Dependent Care Solution: Examining Current Practice to Improve Telework Management Strategies

To explore the influences of common telework practices on employee dependent care responsibilities, job performance, and work experience, quantitative and qualitative data were collected from 863 teleworking federal government employees with dependents. Respondents reported that teleworking positively influences their job performance and intentions to remain with their organizations. Teleworking assists them in meeting their dependent care responsibilities, but current policies and management practices undercut the full potential of telework as a mechanism for meeting employee caregiving demands and reaping the associated benefits to the employer. Results show that employees would like dependent care to be a formal factor in telework policy and that they would like to telework more days than currently allowed. Findings suggest that management should consider the circumstances under which dependent care needs could be a formally accepted rationale for telework.
Household income is associated with the risk of metabolic syndrome in a sex-specific manner.

OBJECTIVE To assess the relationship between household income and metabolic syndrome in men and women. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS A total of 1,695 men and 1,664 women, aged 35-64 years, from three distinct geographical areas of France were investigated. Waist girth, plasma triglycerides, HDL cholesterol, glucose, and systolic blood pressure were used to define metabolic syndrome according to the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP)/Adult Treatment Panel III (ATPIII) guidelines. Household income, educational level, occupational category, working status, consumption of psychotropic drugs, accommodation status, household composition, physical activity at work and during leisure time, alcohol consumption, and smoking habits were recorded with a standardized questionnaire. RESULTS There were 390 (23.0%) men and 381 (16.9%) women who satisfied NCEP/ATPIII criteria for metabolic syndrome. Household income (P < 0.0001) and consumption of psychotropic drugs (P = 0.0005) were associated with metabolic syndrome in women but not in men. In contrast, educational level, occupational category, working status, and accommodation status were associated with metabolic syndrome in both men and women. After adjustment on lifestyle variables, household income (interaction P < 0.004) remained inversely associated with metabolic syndrome in women but not in men. CONCLUSIONS These data suggest that limited household income, which reflects a complex unfavorable social and economic environment, may increase the risk of metabolic syndrome in a sex-specific manner.
Overcoming Selfishness: Reciprocity, Inhibition, and Cardiac-Autonomic Control in the Ultimatum Game

The processes underlying decision-making in response to unfair offers in the ultimatum game (UG) have recently been discussed in light of models of reciprocity and fairness-related behavior. It has been suggested that behavior following norm-oriented, internalized expectations of reciprocity requires overcoming economic self-interest. In this study we investigated both, behavioral and peripheral-physiological indicators of inhibitory capacity related to neuronal networks that are likely to be involved in the behavioral response to unfair offers. Both heart-rate variability as an index of inhibitory capacity, and performance in a motor response inhibition task predicted rejection of unfair offers in an UG, suggesting an important role of inhibitory processes in overcoming economic temptations and regulating behavior conforming to social norms of reciprocity and fairness. The role of parasympathetic activity as a physiological trait-marker predicting inter-individual differences in the rejection of unfair offers is discussed.
Performance of electroencephalogram-derived parameters in prediction of depth of anaesthesia in a rabbit model.

BACKGROUND The index of consciousness (IoC), the permutation entropy (PE), and the approximate entropy are recent EEG-derived indices of anaesthetic depth. In this study, a rabbit model under fentanyl and isoflurane anaesthesia was used to compare the performance of these indices and also the classic median and spectral edge frequency 95%. METHODS EEG recordings were obtained from six rabbits. Animals received fentanyl for premedication, followed by induction with propofol and maintenance with isoflurane. Anaesthetic depth was evaluated according to a clinical scale from 1 (awake) to 4 (surgical anaesthesia). Animals were submitted to surgical implantation of a small device in the lumbar muscles. A correction factor for the EEG suppression ratio was applied to the spectral parameters and to the PE. The correlation of the indices with the clinical scale of anaesthesia was analysed using prediction probability. Repeated-measures analysis of variance or its non-parametric equivalent was used to analyse the indices values at the study times and to compare their variability. RESULTS The IoC showed the best mean prediction probability value [0.94 (0.01)] followed by burst suppression-corrected PE [0.91(0.03)]. Both parameters also showed less variability than the others. CONCLUSIONS The IoC and PE are promising indices for anaesthetic depth monitoring. The PE might benefit from the application of a burst suppression correction at deeper stages of anaesthesia. The rabbit is useful as a translational research animal model for the validation of clinical indices.
Nonperturbative Recursion Relations in N=2 Supersymmetric Gauge Theories

Linear recursion relations for the instanton corrections to the effective prepotential are derived for two cases of N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories; the first case with an arbitrary number of hypermultiplets in the fundamental representation of an arbitrary classical gauge group, and the second case with one hypermultiplet in the adjoint representation of SU(N). The construction for both cases proceed from the Seiberg-Witten solutions and the renormalization group type equations for the prepotential. Successive iterations of these recursion relations allow us to simply obtain instanton corrections to an arbitrarily high order. Checks with previous results in the literature were performed. Other theoretical properties and generalizations are also discussed.
Evaluation of Threatened Preterm Delivery by Transvaginal Ultrasonographic Measurement of Cervical Length

Objective: To establish a nomogram for the length of the uterocervical canal and to determine whether this can be used to predict preterm delivery. Methods: Cervical length was measured by transvaginal ultrasonography in 32. women (21 primigravid, 11 multigravid) with threatened preterm delivery, and in 177 normal singleton pregnancies between 18-37 weeks' gestation. Regression analysis was used to create the nomogram. Student t test was used to compare the groups. Results: A linear relationship was found between cervical length and gestational age (r=—0.4, P < .001). Comparison of cervical length on admission in the patients with threatened preterm delivery showed that 11 preterm deliveries occurred in women who had a mean cervical length of 23.2 mm (range 17-29), whereas 21 term deliveries occurred in women with a mean cervical length of 31.7 mm (range 21-42). The difference was significant (P < .001). A cervical length of less than 20 mm on admission had a positive predictive value of 100%. These patients had preterm delivery despite tocolytic therapy during hospitalization. Conclusion: The risk of preterm delivery is high in women whose cervical length on admission is less than 30 mm, and strict management is required for those with a cervical length of less than 20 mm.
Stability and change in burnout profiles over time: A prospective study in the working population

Abstract This is a prospective study on the development of burnout in the general Swedish working population from a person-oriented perspective. A large random sample of the general working population (N=1118) was cluster analyzed, using scores on the subscales of the Maslach Burnout Inventory at baseline and at 1-year follow-up. The individual and structural stability of the configurations over time, as well as accompanying changes on work-related and mental health variables were investigated. The results show the occurrence of several different configurations of burnout variables. Scoring patterns with high exhaustion and cynicism reflected burnout; those with a high level of professional efficacy reflected engagement; there were also scoring patterns characterized by only one of the dimensions in the relative absence of others. These patterns show structural, as well as individual stability over time. The risk factors for development of burnout or engagement from clusters with only one burnout characteristic varied according to the cluster. These results give new insights, indicating that the road to burnout may be different for subgroups of different burnout profiles, and that these subgroups may potentially have different risk factors associated with the development of burnout. This is of importance for the development of early interventions.
Building Potemkin schools: Science curriculum reform in a STEM school

‘Potemkin schools’ is used as the phrase to capture what a US science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) public speciality high school becomes as a result of its institutional branding. By way of an examination of the efforts of one teacher drawn into school branding through his ‘inquiry-based reform’ of an Advanced Chemistry course, this paper illuminates the tensions between the rhetorical intentions to engage in curriculum innovation and the reality of constraints and conflicting goals. The teacher, unable to resolve the tensions, was pushed into formalizing and routinizing his ideas into a reform project without understanding what was behind the rhetoric of the school’s self-image statements. The need to find and develop a ‘language’ to talk and think about ‘inquiry-based’ reform and its processes in meaningful terms and not in slogans is discussed. The irrationality and complexity of the reform which emerged from the findings contrast with the rationality of building Potemkin villages, hence illuminating the complexity in curriculum reform in STEM schools.