Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Direct Access to Plant Epicuticular Wax Crystals by a New Mechanical Isolation Method

A new method for the isolation of wax crystals from plant surfaces is presented. The wax‐covered plant surface, e.g., a piece of a leaf or fruit, is brought into contact with a preparation liquid, e.g., glycerol or triethylene glycol, and cooled to ca. −100°C. When the plant specimen is removed, the epicuticular wax remains embedded in the frozen liquid. After it warms up, the wax layer can be captured on appropriate carriers for further studies. This isolation method causes very little stress on the wax crystals; thus the shape and crystal structure are well preserved. In many cases it is possible, by choosing a preparation liquid with appropriate wettability, to isolate either the entire epicuticular wax layer or only discrete wax crystals without the underlying wax film. These crystals are well suited for electron diffraction studies by transmission electron microscopy and high resolution imaging by atomic force microscopy. The absence of intracuticular components and other impurities and the feasibility of the selective isolation of wax crystals enable improved chemical analysis and a more detailed study of their properties.
Siblings with glaucoma, mental retardation and short stature

&NA; We report a sibling pair, whose parents are distantly related, with congenital glaucoma and mental retardation. There are similarities to ter Haar syndrome, but severe mental retardation has not been described previously in that condition. Clin Dysmorphol 12:191‐194 © 2003 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Towards Good Social Science

The paper investigates what is meant by "good science" and "bad science" and how these differ as between the natural (physical and biological) sciences on the one hand and social sciences on the other. We conclude on the basis of historical evidence that the natural science are much more heavily constrained by evidence and observation than by theory while the social sciences are constrained by prior theory and hardly at all by direct evidence. Current examples of the latter proposition are taken from recent issues of leading social science journals. We argue that agent based social simulations can be used as a tool to constrain the development of a new social science by direct (what economists dismiss as anecdotal) evidence and that to do so would make social science relevant to the understanding and influencing of social processes. We argue that such a development is both possible and desirable. We do not argue that it is likely.
Cooperativity between calmodulin-binding sites in Kv7.2 channels

Summary Among the multiple roles assigned to calmodulin (CaM), controlling the surface expression of Kv7.2 channels by binding to two discontinuous sites is a unique property of this Ca2+ binding protein. Mutations that interfere with CaM binding or the sequestering of CaM prevent this M-channel component from exiting the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), which reduces M-current density in hippocampal neurons, enhancing excitability and offering a rational mechanism to explain some forms of benign familial neonatal convulsions (BFNC). Previously, we identified a mutation (S511D) that impedes CaM binding while allowing the channel to exit the ER, hinting that CaM binding may not be strictly required for Kv7.2 channel trafficking to the plasma membrane. Alternatively, this interaction with CaM might escape detection and, indeed, we now show that the S511D mutant contains functional CaM-binding sites that are not detected by classical biochemical techniques. Surface expression and function is rescued by CaM, suggesting that free CaM in HEK293 cells is limiting and reinforcing the hypothesis that CaM binding is required for ER exit. Within the CaM-binding domain formed by two sites (helix A and helix B), we show that CaM binds to helix B with higher apparent affinity than helix A, both in the presence and absence of Ca2+, and that the two sites cooperate. Hence, CaM can bridge two binding domains, anchoring helix A of one subunit to helix B of another subunit, in this way influencing the function of Kv7.2 channels.
Reliable Power Gating With NBTI Aging Benefits

In this paper, we show that negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) aging of sleep transistors (STs), together with its detrimental effect for circuit performance and lifetime (LT), presents considerable benefits for power-gated circuits. Indeed, it reduces static power due to leakage current, and increases ST switch efficiency, making power gating more efficient and effective over time. The magnitude of these aging benefits depends on operating and environmental conditions. By means of HSPICE simulations, considering a 32-nm CMOS technology, we demonstrate that static power may reduce by more than 80% in 10 years of operation. Static power decrease over time due to NBTI aging is also proven experimentally, using a test chip manufactured with a 65-nm technology. We propose an ST design strategy for reliable power gating, in order to harvest the benefits offered by NBTI aging. It relies on the design of STs with a proper lower Vth compared with the standard STs. This can be achieved by either redesigning the STs with the identified Vth value or applying a proper forward body bias to the available power switching fabrics. Through the HSPICE simulations, we show LT extension up to 21.4× and average static power reduction up to 16.3% compared with the standard ST design approach, without additional area overhead. Finally, we show LT extension and several performance-cost tradeoffs when a target maximum LT is considered.
Plasminogen Activator Inhibitor-1 Predicts Quantity of Hepatic Steatosis Independent of Insulin Resistance and Body Weight

Objective: The aim of the present study was to examine the association between plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1), an acute phase protein strongly associated with cardiovascular disease risk, and adiposity, insulin resistance, and inflammation among overweight and obese children with a wide range of hepatic steatosis. Methods: Plasma PAI-1 levels were measured in a prospectively recruited cohort of 39 overweight or obese children who underwent comprehensive anthropometric assessment and metabolic measurements. Hepatic steatosis was quantified using magnetic resonance spectroscopy and participants were divided into 3 groups based on whether they had normal hepatic steatosis (<5%), low hepatic steatosis (≥5%–10%), and high hepatic steatosis (>10%). Results: Plasma PAI-1 levels significantly increased across the severity of hepatic steatosis in overweight and obese children, and this association was independent of body mass index z score, visceral fat, insulin resistance, and inflammatory markers (P < 0.05). Conclusion: Hepatic steatosis in children is positively associated with circulating levels of PAI-1 independent of body mass index, insulin resistance, and inflammatory markers. Further studies are needed to clarify the potential role of PAI-1 as a therapeutic target in pediatric nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.
Structure-aware halftoning

This paper presents an optimization-based halftoning technique that preserves the structure and tone similarities between the original and the halftone images. By optimizing an objective function consisting of both the structure and the tone metrics, the generated halftone images preserve visually sensitive texture details as well as the local tone. It possesses the blue-noise property and does not introduce annoying patterns. Unlike the existing edge-enhancement halftoning, the proposed method does not suffer from the deficiencies of edge detector. Our method is tested on various types of images. In multiple experiments and the user study, our method consistently obtains the best scores among all tested methods.
Chronic intestinal pseudo-obstruction: treatment and long term follow up of 44 patients

AIMS To document the long term course of chronic idiopathic intestinal pseudo-obstruction syndrome (CIIPS) in children with defined enteric neuromuscular disease, and the place and type of surgery used in their management; in addition, to identify prognostic factors. METHODS Children with CIIPS were investigated and treated prospectively. RESULTS Twenty four children presented congenitally, eight during the 1st year of life, and 10 later. Twenty two had myopathy and 16 neuropathy (11 familial). Malrotation was present in 16 patients, 10 had short small intestine, six had non-hypertrophic pyloric stenosis, and 16 had urinary tract involvement. Thirty two patients needed long term parenteral nutrition (TPN): for less than six months in 19 and for more than six months in 13, 10 of whom are TPN dependent; 14 are now enteral feeding. Prokinetic treatment improved six of 22. Intestinal decompression stomas were used in 36, colostomy relieved symptoms in five of 11, and ileostomy in 16 of 31. A poor outcome (death (14) or TPN dependence (10)) was seen with malrotation (13 of 16), short small bowel (eight of nine), urinary tract involvement (12 of 16), and myopathic histology (15 of 22). CONCLUSIONS In CIIPS drugs are not helpful but decompression stomas are. Outcome was poor in 24 of 44 children (15 muscle disorder, 10 nerve disease). Key messages Chronic intestinal pseudo-obstruction requires coordinated investigation by physician, surgeon, and pathologist Manometry and histopathological diagnosis provide prognostic information Decompression stomas provide treatment, allow diagnosis, and may prevent unnecessary further surgery Long term total parenteral nutrition may be required
Team Performance in Distributed Virtual Environments

Abstract : The U.S. Army is using virtual simulations for mission planning, training, rehearsal, and concept development Viral environment (VE) technology can provide simulated real world activities for dismounted soldiers. One issue in the use of distributed simulations is whether team members learn, perform, and transfer their skills in distributed situations in the same ways as individuals in local situations. In this experiment, local and distributed teams completed a series of mission rehearsals in a VE over two days. Eighteen, two-person teams of college students performed synthetic tasks representative of tasks performed by police, emergency response, and military teams. All participants were trained to criterion in a VE before being assigned to a team. Biographical information and subjective self-report questionnaires were administered before, during, and after training and mission sessions. Local teams interacted face-to-face between mission rehearsal sessions, while distributed teams only interacted by phone during the after action review session following each mission. Local teams performed significantly better than distributed teams on several collective task measures over the repeated missions. Simulator sickness and presence during the mission rehearsals were also investigated.
Systemic Immunity and Mucosal Immunity Are Induced against Human Immunodeficiency Virus Gag Protein in Mice by a New Hyperattenuated Strain of Listeria monocytogenes

ABSTRACT Vaccines designed to control chronic infections by intracellular agents such as human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) require the induction of cell-mediated immune responses to rid the host of pathogen-infected cells. Listeria monocytogenes has characteristics that make it an attractive vaccine vector for use against such infections. Here we show that parenteral immunization with a new highly attenuated strain of this organism provided complete protection against systemic and mucosal challenges with a recombinant vaccinia virus expressing HIV-1 gag. Immunization also generated a strong, long-term memory cytotoxic-T-lymphocyte (CTL) response in spleen, mesenteric lymph nodes, and Peyer's patches directed against the gag protein. Oral immunization with this attenuated strain also produced complete, long-lasting protection against the recombinant virus but only against mucosal virus challenge. Curiously, oral immunization was associated with a transient CTL response in the three lymphoid tissues examined.
Circulating leptin levels in juvenile idiopathic arthritis: a marker of nutritional status?

Background: Weight loss is common in juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) and has been positively correlated with an increase in the production of proinflammatory cytokines. Objective: To assess if plasma leptin is a mediator of cytokine dependent decreased food intake during inflammatory diseases and if it is increased in JIA. Methods: Leptin levels were determined in 31 patients with polyarticular disease and in 37 with oligoarticular disease; 32 healthy children served as controls. Results: Patients had significantly reduced body mass index (BMI) compared with controls (17.3 (3) v 19.1 (3) kg/m2; p<0.005). Leptin was significantly lower in patients than controls (8.1 (4.8) v 10.7 (7.3) ng/ml; p = 0.036), but leptin/BMI values were similar. Absolute (8.2 (4.8) v 8 (4.9); p>0.05) and normalised (0.45 (0.24) v 0.47 (0.24); p>0.05) leptin levels were not significantly different between patients with active and inactive disease and between patients with oligoarticular and polyarticular arthritis (7.8 (4.4) v 8.6 (5.3); p>0.05 and 0.45 (0.23) v 0.48 (0.26); p>0.05, respectively). Conclusions: Leptin production per unit of fat mass is similar in patients and controls. The hypothesis that high levels of proinflammatory cytokines that characterise JIA might induce an increase of adipocytes leptin production is not supported by the results. Leptin may be a marker of nutritional status of JIA.
Transcriptional Profiles of the Human Pathogenic Fungus Paracoccidioides brasiliensis in Mycelium and Yeast Cells*

Paracoccidioides brasiliensis is the causative agent of paracoccidioidomycosis, a disease that affects 10 million individuals in Latin America. This report depicts the results of the analysis of 6,022 assembled groups from mycelium and yeast phase expressed sequence tags, covering about 80% of the estimated genome of this dimorphic, thermo-regulated fungus. The data provide a comprehensive view of the fungal metabolism, including overexpressed transcripts, stage-specific genes, and also those that are up- or down-regulated as assessed by in silico electronic subtraction and cDNA microarrays. Also, a significant differential expression pattern in mycelium and yeast cells was detected, which was confirmed by Northern blot analysis, providing insights into differential metabolic adaptations. The overall transcriptome analysis provided information about sequences related to the cell cycle, stress response, drug resistance, and signal transduction pathways of the pathogen. Novel P. brasiliensis genes have been identified, probably corresponding to proteins that should be addressed as virulence factor candidates and potential new drug targets.
Trading Networks with Bilateral Contracts

We consider general networks of bilateral contracts that include supply chains. We define a new stability concept, called trail stability, and show that any network of bilateral contracts has a trail-stable outcome whenever agents' preferences satisfy full substitutability. Trail stability is a natural extension of chain stability, but is a stronger solution concept in general contract networks. Trail-stable outcomes are not immune to deviations of arbitrary sets of firms. In fact, we show that outcomes satisfying an even more demanding stability property -- full trail stability -- always exist. We pin down conditions under which trail-stable and fully trail-stable outcomes have a lattice structure. We then completely describe the relationships between all stability concepts. When contracts specify trades and prices, we also show that competitive equilibrium exists in networked markets even in the absence of fully transferrable utility. The competitive equilibrium outcome is trail-stable.
Distinct plasma immune signatures in ME/CFS are present early in the course of illness

Cytokine alterations are more strongly correlated with illness duration than with measures of illness severity. Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) is an unexplained incapacitating illness that may affect up to 4 million people in the United States alone. There are no validated laboratory tests for diagnosis or management despite global efforts to find biomarkers of disease. We considered the possibility that inability to identify such biomarkers reflected variations in diagnostic criteria and laboratory methods as well as the timing of sample collection during the course of the illness. Accordingly, we leveraged two large, multicenter cohort studies of ME/CFS to assess the relationship of immune signatures with diagnosis, illness duration, and other clinical variables. Controls were frequency-matched on key variables known to affect immune status, including season of sampling and geographic site, in addition to age and sex. We report here distinct alterations in plasma immune signatures early in the course of ME/CFS (n = 52) relative to healthy controls (n = 348) that are not present in subjects with longer duration of illness (n = 246). Analyses based on disease duration revealed that early ME/CFS cases had a prominent activation of both pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines as well as dissociation of intercytokine regulatory networks. We found a stronger correlation of cytokine alterations with illness duration than with measures of illness severity, suggesting that the immunopathology of ME/CFS is not static. These findings have critical implications for discovery of interventional strategies and early diagnosis of ME/CFS.
A comparative analysis of the physiological properties of neurons in the anterolateral bed nucleus of the stria terminalis in the Mus musculus, Rattus norvegicus, and Macaca mulatta

The anterolateral group of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNSTALG) is a critical modulator of a variety of rodent and primate behaviors spanning anxiety behavior and drug addiction. Three distinct neuronal cell types have been previously defined in the rat BNSTALG based on differences in the voltage‐response to hyperpolarizing and depolarizing current injection. Differences in genetic expression profile between these three cell types suggest electrophysiological cell type may be an indicator for functional differences in the circuit of the rat BNSTALG. Although the behavioral role of the BNST is conserved across species, it is unknown if the same electrophysiological cell types exist in the BNSTALG of the mouse and nonhuman primate. Here, we used whole‐cell patch clamp electrophysiology and neuronal reconstructions of biocytin‐filled neurons to compare and contrast the electrophysiological and morphological properties of neurons in the BNSTALG from the mouse, rat, and rhesus macaque. We provide evidence that the BNSTALG of all three species contains neurons that match the three defined cell types found in the rat; however, there are intriguing differences in the relative frequency of these cell types as well as electrophysiological and morphological properties of the BNSTALG neurons across species. This study suggests that the overall landscape of the BNSTALG in the primate and mouse may be similar to that of the rat in some aspects but perhaps significantly different in others.
Automatically Evaluating Text Coherence Using Discourse Relations

We present a novel model to represent and assess the discourse coherence of text. Our model assumes that coherent text implicitly favors certain types of discourse relation transitions. We implement this model and apply it towards the text ordering ranking task, which aims to discern an original text from a permuted ordering of its sentences. The experimental results demonstrate that our model is able to significantly outperform the state-of-the-art coherence model by Barzilay and Lapata (2005), reducing the error rate of the previous approach by an average of 29% over three data sets against human upper bounds. We further show that our model is synergistic with the previous approach, demonstrating an error reduction of 73% when the features from both models are combined for the task.
Trended Profile of Internationally Educated Nurses in the United States: Implications for the Nurse Shortage and Beyond

Foreign nurses help relieve cyclic US nurse shortages by augmenting the nurse workforce. The latest National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses (NSSRN) estimated that about 4% of the 2.7 million US registered nurses were internationally educated nurses (IENs). With an intensifying nurse shortage in the United States, IENs are again become a hot commodity. To use IENs effectively, it is imperative to understand this unique part of the registered nurses’ workforce. However, there is very limited information on IENs in the United States. In fact, published national data on IENs are virtually nonexistent. This study filled some of the data gaps by examining the trends of demographical, educational, and employment characteristics of IENs using NSSRN conducted during 1977Y2000. Methods This study is a secondary analysis of NSSRN datasets available through the Health Resources and Services Administration. Due to space limitation, only a brief description of the methods is presented here; however, more detailed information regarding design, sample, and data analysis can be found elsewhere. From the 7 NSSRN conducted during 1977Y2000, this study included data from 1977, 1984, 1992, and 2000. The rationale to include every other NSSRN was to allow maximal time span for trends to emerge while recognizing resources constraints. Response rates for the selected years ranged from 71.7% in 2000 to 82.2% in 1977, whereas sample sizes varied from 20,417 in 1977 to 54,000 in 2000. Descriptive statistics were performed using the statistical software package STATAi, and observations of interested variables in the 4 selected surveys were compared. Missing data, which were extremely rare, were excluded from data analysis; thus the reported data on each variable reflected only valid replies. In situations where data were unavailable for some variables of interest for selected years, available data from the nearest, unselected year were substituted to trend the data.
Atypical Protein Kinase C Zeta: Potential Player in Cell Survival and Cell Migration of Ovarian Cancer

Ovarian cancer is one of the most aggressive gynaecological cancers, thus understanding the different biological pathways involved in ovarian cancer progression is important in identifying potential therapeutic targets for the disease. The aim of this study was to investigate the potential roles of Protein Kinase C Zeta (PRKCZ) in ovarian cancer. The atypical protein kinase C isoform, PRKCZ, is involved in the control of various signalling processes including cell proliferation, cell survival, and cell motility, all of which are important for cancer development and progression. Herein, we observe a significant increase in cell survival upon PRKCZ over-expression in SKOV3 ovarian cancer cells; additionally, when the cells are treated with small interference RNA (siRNA) targeting PRKCZ, the motility of SKOV3 cells decreased. Furthermore, we demonstrate that over-expression of PRKCZ results in gene and/or protein expression alterations of insulin-like growth factor 1 receptor (IGF1R) and integrin beta 3 (ITGB3) in SKOV3 and OVCAR3 cells. Collectively, our study describes PRKCZ as a potential regulatory component of the IGF1R and ITGB3 pathways and suggests that it may play critical roles in ovarian tumourigenesis.