Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Transmural expression of transient outward potassium current subunits in normal and failing canine and human hearts

The transient outward current (Ito), an important contributor to transmural electrophysiological heterogeneity, is significantly remodelled in congestive heart failure (CHF). The molecular bases of transmural Ito gradients and CHF‐dependent ionic remodelling are incompletely understood. To elucidate these issues, we studied mRNA and protein expression of Kv4.3 and KChIP2, the principal alpha and beta subunits believed to form Ito, in epicardial and endocardial tissues and in isolated cardiomyocytes from control dogs and dogs with CHF induced by 240 beats min−1 ventricular tachypacing. CHF decreased Ito density in both epicardium and endocardium (by 73 and 55% at +60 mV, respectively), without a significant change in relative current density (endocardium/epicardium 0.11 control, 0.17 CHF). There were transmural gradients in mRNA expression of both Kv4.3 (endocardium/epicardium ratio 0.3 under control conditions) and KChIP2 (endocardium/epicardium ratio 0.2 control), which remained in the presence of CHF (Kv4.3 endocardium/epicardium ratio 0.4; KChIP2 0.4). There were qualitatively similar protein expression gradients in human and canine cardiac tissues and isolated canine cardiomyocytes; however, the KChIP2 gradient was only detectable with a highly selective monoclonal antibody and closely approximated the Ito density gradient. Kv4.3 mRNA expression was reduced by CHF, but KChIP2 mRNA was not significantly changed. CHF decreased Kv4.3 protein expression in canine cardiac tissues and cardiomyocytes, as well as in terminally failing human heart tissue samples, but KChIP2 protein was not down‐regulated in any of the corresponding sample sets. We conclude that both Kv4.3 and KChIP2 may contribute to epicardial–endocardial gradients in Ito, and that Ito down‐regulation in human and canine CHF appears due primarily to changes in Kv4.3.
Phosphorylation regulates coilin activity and RNA association

Summary The Cajal body (CB) is a domain of concentrated components found within the nucleus of cells in an array of species that is functionally important for the biogenesis of telomerase and small nuclear ribonucleoproteins. The CB is a dynamic structure whose number and size change during the cell cycle and is associated with other nuclear structures and gene loci. Coilin, also known as the marker protein for the CB, is a phosphoprotein widely accepted for its role in maintaining CB integrity. Recent studies have been done to further elucidate functional activities of coilin apart from its structural role in the CB in an attempt to explore the rationale for coilin expression in cells that have few CBs or lack them altogether. Here we show that the RNA association profile of coilin changes in mitosis with respect to that during interphase. We provide evidence of transcriptional and/or processing dysregulation of several CB-related RNA transcripts as a result of ectopic expression of both wild-type and phosphomutant coilin proteins. We also show apparent changes in transcription and/or processing of these transcripts upon coilin knockdown in both transformed and primary cell lines. Additionally, we provide evidence of specific coilin RNase activity regulation, on both U2 and hTR transcripts, by phosphorylation of a single residue, serine 489. Collectively, these results point to additional functions for coilin that are regulated by phosphorylation.
Development and mixed-methods evaluation of a pain assessment video training program for long-term care staff.

INTRODUCTION Inadequacies in pain assessment and management in long-term care have been well documented. Insufficient pain education and inaccurate beliefs about the nature of pain and aging have been identified as possible contributors. The present study addresses the need for improved, efficient and feasible continuing pain education through the use of an assessment training video. METHODS A total of 148 long-term care staff viewed and evaluated the training video. Knowledge changes and pain beliefs were assessed postvideo and at a four-week follow-up. Beliefs about pain, as well as pain and aging, were also examined using multivariate procedures to determine whether these variables influenced participants' evaluation of the video. Focus groups were also conducted, and transcripts were analyzed using thematic content analysis. RESULTS Pain assessment knowledge improved postvideo and at the four-week follow-up. Participants positively evaluated the content and quality of the video. Individuals who held stronger beliefs (at baseline) about the organic nature of pain provided more positive evaluations. Barriers to implementation of practices in the video identified by the focus groups (and qualitative analysis) included time, workload and resistance to change. Facilitators to implementation included continued management support and observing the benefits to implementation. DISCUSSION The present study provides support for the use of video training. However, based on the focus group results, top-down implementation approaches with ongoing management involvement throughout the implementation process may be needed to achieve sustained changes in pain assessment practices. A model useful for sustained implementation was proposed and discussed, and is hoped to facilitate future research.
Genomic Polymorphism of Human Papillomavirus Type 52 in Women from Northeast China

Human papillomavirus (HPV) 52 is an oncogenic HPV type prevalent in Asia. The aim of the study was to analyze HPV 52 genetic variations in women from Northeast China. To explore the intratypic variants of HPV 52, the genomic regions of L1, E6, E7 and long control region (LCR) of HPV 52, which have been identified in women from Northeast China by HPV GenoArray test, were analyzed. Twenty-five mutations were identified in the regions examined. Of the mutations found in the L1 gene, three novel nonsynonymous mutations of C5640T, A5641T and G5642A were located within the region that encodes the binding domain of neutralizing antibodies against HPV 52. Although four variations were identified in HPV 52 E6 and E7 genes, no significant association was found between the mutations and the cytological lesion of the patients. Eight mutations, including a novel CTT7681–7683 deletion, found in the LCR of HPV 52 encompassed the known transcription binding sites, which may possibly affect the transcription of the oncogenic genes of E6 and E7. The most prevalent HPV 52 variant in women from northeastern China belongs to clade L1-LN-A. The genetic variations of HPV 52, including three novel nonsynonymous mutations of C5640T, A5641T and G5642A in the L1 gene and a novel CTT7681–7683 deletion in the LCR, were first documented in strains from women in Northeast China. The statistical result showed no associations between the variants and the severities of the infected women. These findings provide new data regarding gene variations of HPV 52.
Influence of point-of-sale tobacco displays and graphic health warning signs on adults: evidence from a virtual store experimental study.

OBJECTIVES We tested the impact of banning tobacco displays and posting graphic health warning signs at the point of sale (POS). METHODS We designed 3 variations of the tobacco product display (open, enclosed [not visible], enclosed with pro-tobacco ads) and 2 variations of the warning sign (present vs absent) with virtual store software. In December 2011 and January 2012, we randomized a national convenience sample of 1216 adult smokers and recent quitters to 1 of 6 store conditions and gave them a shopping task. We tested for the main effects of the enclosed display, the sign, and their interaction on urge to smoke and tobacco purchase attempts. RESULTS The enclosed display significantly lowered current smokers' (B = -7.05; 95% confidence interval [CI] = -13.20, -0.91; P < .05) and recent quitters' (Β = -6.00, 95% CI = -11.00, -1.00; P < .01) urge to smoke and current smokers' purchase attempts (adjusted odds ratio = 0.06; 95% CI = 0.03, 0.11; P < .01). The warning sign had no significant main effect on study outcomes or interaction with enclosed display. CONCLUSIONS These data show that POS tobacco displays influence purchase behavior. Banning them may reduce cues to smoke and unplanned tobacco purchases.
Measurement variability in single-breath diffusing capacity of the lung.

STUDY OBJECTIVES The single-breath diffusing capacity of the lung (DLCO) is a commonly performed pulmonary function test. The current American Thoracic Society (ATS) recommendations for reproducibility of DLCO measurements suggest that two measurements for the DLCO agree within 10% or 3 mL/min/mm Hg of the average value. The European Respiratory Society (ERS) recommends that two measurements should agree within 10%. The objectives of the present study were to examine whether the current reproducibility criteria were met in a general pulmonary function laboratory and to determine whether alternative criteria might be appropriate. DESIGN Cross-sectional study. SETTING University-based pulmonary function laboratory. PATIENTS OR PARTICIPANTS Patients referred for spirometry, helium lung volumes, and DLCO measurement. INTERVENTIONS None. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS In a sample of 6,193 patients referred for clinical testing, 98.3% had two DLCO values that fulfilled the current ATS criteria for reproducibility. The coefficient of variation (CV) and the percentage difference between two repeat measurements were inversely associated with the baseline DLCO and the FEV(1). As the baseline DLCO (percentage of predicted) or FEV(1) (percentage of predicted) decreased, there was an increase in the CV and the percentage difference. In contrast, the absolute difference between repeat measurements was relatively stable irrespective of the baseline DLCO or FEV(1) values. Other patient factors, such as gender and race, were not associated with measurement variability. Using an absolute difference of 2 to 2.5 mL/min/mm Hg between two DLCO measurements as alternative criteria for reproducibility, 91.5% and 95.8% of the patient sample fulfilled these criteria, respectively. CONCLUSIONS Reproducibility of the DLCO measurement is generally much better than current standards allow. Future standards should consider an absolute difference rather than a percentage difference criterion for DLCO reproducibility.
Describing three‐dimensional cervical spine movement in a diseased and a non‐diseased group using multilevel modelling

Clinicians often request patients to perform movements of joints as an aid to assessment and diagnosis of many diseases. However, patients may perform abnormal secondary movements where their primary movement is limited. A new measuring system, the FASTRAK, has the potential to measure movement in three dimensions, and to measure movements of the body away from the primary movement. This paper explores the use of multilevel modelling to describe the patterns of movement where subjects are measured on several occasions for both a non‐diseased group and for a group of subjects suffering from ankylosing spondylitis. Three‐level multilevel models are described with level 3 being the subjects, level 2 being the measurement occasions (up to three) and level 1 being the measurements (three) on each occasion. The models highlight which are the most important secondary movements during the primary movement and show clinically interpretable patterns of movement that can highlight differences between diseased and non‐diseased groups. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Signatures in Simian Immunodeficiency Virus SIVsmE660 Envelope gp120 Are Associated with Mucosal Transmission but Not Vaccination Breakthrough in Rhesus Macaques

ABSTRACT Mucosal surfaces are vulnerable to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) infection and thus are key sites for eliciting vaccine-mediated protection. Vaccine protocols carried out at the Yerkes Primate Research Center utilized SIVmac239-based immunization strategies with intrarectal and intravaginal SIVsmE660 challenge of rhesus macaques. We investigated whether there were genetic signatures associated with SIVsmE660 intrarectal and intravaginal transmissions in vaccinated and unvaccinated monkeys. When transmitted/founder (T/F) envelope (Env) sequences from 49 vaccinated and 15 unvaccinated macaques were compared to each other, we were unable to identify any vaccine breakthrough signatures. In contrast, when the vaccinated and control T/F Envs were combined and compared to the challenge stock, residues at gp120 positions 23, 45, 47, and 70 (Ile-Ala-Lys-Asn [I-A-K-N]) emerged as signatures of mucosal transmission. However, T/F Envs derived from intrarectal and intravaginal infections were not different. Our data suggest that the vaginal and rectal mucosal environments both imposed a strong selection bias for SIVsmE660 variants carrying I-A-K-N that was not further enhanced by immunization. These findings, combined with the strong conservation of A-K-N in most HIV-2/SIVsmm isolates and the analogous residues in HIV-1/SIVcpz isolates, suggest that these residues confer increased transmission fitness to SIVsmE660. IMPORTANCE Most HIV-1 infections occur across a mucosal barrier, and it is therefore important to understand why these sites are vulnerable and how to protect them with a vaccine. To gain insight into these questions, we studied rhesus macaques that were vaccinated with SIVmac239 and unvaccinated controls to determine whether the SIVsmE660 viral variants that infected these two groups were different. We did not find differences between viral variants in the absence versus presence of vaccination-induced immunity, but we did find that the SIVsmE660 viral variants that infected the monkeys, regardless of vaccination, were different from the dominant population found in the viral challenge inoculum. Our data suggest that the mucosal environments of the vagina and rectum both impose a strong selection for the SIVsmE660 variants in the challenge inoculum that are most like SIV and HIVs that circulate in nature.
Effect of pathogen-specific clinical mastitis on milk yield in dairy cows.

Our objective was to estimate the effects of the first occurrence of pathogen-specific clinical mastitis (CM) on milk yield in 3071 dairy cows in 2 New York State farms. The pathogens studied were Streptococcus spp. ,Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus spp. , Escherichia coli, Klebsiella spp. , Arcanobacterium pyogenes, other pathogens grouped together, and "no pathogen isolated. " Data were collected from October 1999 to July 2001. Milk samples were collected from cows showing signs of CM and were sent to the Quality Milk Production Services laboratory at Cornell University for microbiological culture. The SAS statistical procedure PROC MIXED, with an autoregressive covariance structure, was used to quantify the effect of CM and several other control variables (herd, calving season, parity, month of lactation, J-5 vaccination status, and other diseases) on weekly milk yield. Separate models were fitted for primipara and multipara, because of the different shapes of their lactation curves. To observe effects of mastitis, milk weights were divided into several periods both pre- and postdiagnosis, according to when they were measured in relation to disease occurrence. Another category contained cows without the type of CM being modeled. Because all pathogens were modeled simultaneously, a control cow was one without CM. Among primipara, Staph. aureus, E. coli, Klebsiella spp. , and "no pathogen isolated" caused the greatest losses. Milk yield generally began to drop 1 or 2 wk before diagnosis; the greatest loss occurred immediately following diagnosis. Mastitic cows often never recovered their potential yield. Among older cows, Streptococcus spp. , Staph. aureus, A. pyogenes, E. coli, and Klebsiella spp. caused the most significant losses. Many multipara that developed CM were actually higher producers before diagnosis than their nonmastitic herd-mates. As in primipara, milk yield in multipara often began to decline shortly before diagnosis; the greatest loss occurred immediately following diagnosis. Milk loss persisted until at least 70 d after diagnosis for Streptococcus spp. , Klebsiella spp. , and A. pyogenes. The tendency for higher producing cows to contract CM may mask its impact on cow health and production. These findings provide dairy producers with more information on which pathogen-specific CM cases should receive treatment and how to manage these cows, thereby reducing CM impact on cow well being and profitability.
Manifold-Regularized Feature Selector for High-Resolution Aerial Photographs Categorization

Recognizing each aerial photo with high-resolution (HR) is a useful technology in image understanding. Herein, a manifold-regularized feature selection (MRFS) is designed to acquire discriminative perceptual features that classify HR aerial images into different categories. Practically, human visual cognition process reflects that, in a scenic picture, the less visually attractive image patches are highly related. Meanwhile, the foreground highly visually attractive image patches are practically unrelated with each other. Following this observation, we in this work propose a multi-layer low-rank paradigm which calculates a succinct set of visually attractive patches in foreground. We sequentially link the above attractive image patches to build a so-called gaze shifting path (GSP). GSP can mimick how humans perceiving different aerial images. Afterward, we formulate a MRFS framework to obtain a subset of high quality features from the entire deep GSP representation. Thereby, an SVM is learned simultaneously. Moreover, the distribution of HR aerial images on the underlying manifold can be maximally preserved during feature selection (FS). To comprehensively evaluate our method, we collect a massive-scale aerial image set containing over 4.87 million high- and low-resolution aerial images. Extensive empirical validations on have shown our algorithm’s efficiency and effectiveness: 1) the testing time cost is 0.8s faster than the second best one to categorize each HR aerial image, 2) the average categorization accuracy is over 4.5% higher than the second best one.
Angiogenesis in newly augmented bone observed in rabbit calvarium using a titanium cap.

OBJECTIVES In our previous work using a rabbit experimental model, we identified the importance of using a rigid support device for augmenting the development of mineralized bone. In the early stage of healing, newly generated tissue has not filled occlusive spaces, and mineralized bone forms and tends to climb along the inner wall of a device. Even though the blood supply is critical for successful bone augmentation, few studies have been conducted on angiogenesis in augmented bone. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate a method for observing angiogenesis in newly augmented bone. MATERIAL AND METHODS The right and left sections of the calvarium of six adult male Japanese white rabbits were exposed. The cortical bone was penetrated, and custom-made, standardized, hemispherical titanium caps were fixed to the exposed bone. The caps on the right side of each rabbit were filled with granulated beta-tricalcium phosphate (beta-TCP). After a healing period of 1 month, the animals were injected with MICROFIL into the right and left common carotid arteries to form a three-dimensional cast of the vasculature, and the newly generated blood vessels in the augmented bone were observed. RESULTS The newly generated blood vessels were observed entering the space beyond the existing calvarial bone. Furthermore, angiogenesis was seen to have occurred to a similar extent through the inter-granular beta-TCP in the right caps. These areas of angiogenesis were observed in a histological study with cross-sections. CONCLUSIONS The results of the present study suggest that this observation method allows the examination of angiogenesis in hard tissue before the preparation of histological specimens.
A Comparison of Nonabsorbable Polymeric Clips and Endoloop Ligatures for the Closure of the Appendicular Stump in Laparoscopic Appendectomy: A Prospective, Randomized Study

The aim of this prospective randomized trial was to evaluate the clinical outcomes of hem-o-lok ligation system in laparoscopic appendix stump closure by comparing the endoloop ligature. A total of 53 patients were evaluated in this study (n=26 and 27 for hem-o-lok and endoloop groups, respectively). The mean operation time were shorter in hem-o-lok group than endoloop group (64.7±19.2 vs. 75.4±23, respectively); however, the difference was not significant. Other surgical findings were similar. There was no statistically significant difference in overall nonsurgically or surgically related complications. The mean postoperative hospitalization time was also similar in both groups. Although it is not possible to make general conclusions on basis of such a limited study, in our opinion, closure of the appendix stump with polymeric nonabsorbable clips in laparoscopic appendectomy may be a cheaper and simpler alternative to other widely used methods.
Lung-specific induction of heme oxygenase-1 and hyperoxic lung injury.

Heme oxygenase (HO)-1, which catalyzes heme breakdown, is induced by oxidative stress and may protect against oxidative injury. We hypothesized that induction of HO-1 by hemoglobin (Hb) in the lung would protect the rat from pulmonary O2 toxicity. Rats given intratracheal (i.t.) Hb showed lung-specific induction of HO-1 by 8 h by Western analysis. Rats were then pretreated for 8 h before 60 h of exposure to 100% O2 with either IT normal saline, HB, or Hb plus the HO-1 inhibitor tinprotoporphyrin (SnPP). Both the Hb + O2 and Hb + O2 + SnPP animals had less lung injury than normal saline controls as indicated by lower pleural fluid volumes and wet-to-dry weight ratios (P < 0.01). The improvement in injury in the two Hb-treated groups was the same despite a 61% decrease in HO enzyme activity in the Hb + SnPP group after 60 h of O2. In addition, inhibition of HO activity with SnPP alone before O2 exposure did not augment the extent of hyperoxic lung injury. These results demonstrate that IT Hb induces lung HO-1 in the rat and protects against hyperoxia; however, the protection is not mediated by increased HO enzyme activity.