Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lens-specific VEGF-A expression induces angioblast migration and proliferation and stimulates angiogenic remodeling.

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is a secreted mitogen which specifically stimulates proliferation of vascular endothelial cells in vitro and in vivo. Its expression pattern is consistent with it being an important regulator of vasculogenesis and angiogenesis, and targeted disruption of VEGF-A has demonstrated that it is essential for vascular development. To determine if VEGF-A was sufficient to alter vascularization in the eye we generated transgenic mice which express human VEGF-A(165) specifically in the lens. Expression of transgenic VEGF-A led to excessive proliferation and accumulation of disorganized angioblasts and endothelial cells around the lens. The results support the hypothesis that VEGF-A can initiate the process of vascularization by stimulating chemoattraction and proliferation of angioblasts and endothelial cells and that VEGF-A expression can stimulate angiogenic remodeling. However, VEGF-A alone was not sufficient to direct blood vessel organization or maturation.
PGE2 reverses AVP inhibition of HCO3- absorption in rat MTAL by activation of protein kinase C.

In the medullary thick ascending limb (MTAL) of the rat, prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) reverses inhibition of HCO3- absorption (JHCO3) by arginine vasopressin (AVP) by inhibiting AVP-stimulated adenosine 3',5'-cyclic monophosphate (cAMP) production. To determine whether this regulation by PGE2 involves protein kinase C (PKC), MTAL segments were perfused in vitro with physiological solutions containing 25 mM HCO3- (pH 7.4). With 10(-10) MAVP in the bath, addition of 10(-6) M PGE2 to the bath increased JHCO3 from 7.8 +/- 0.4 to 13.0 +/- 1.1 pmol.min-1.mm-1 (P < 0.01). This effect was blocked completely by pretreatment with the PKC inhibitors staurosporine or chelerythrine chloride (10(-7) M in the bath). With both AVP and PGE2 in the bath, addition of staurosporine or chelerythrine to the bath decreased JHCO3 from 12.2 +/- 1.1 to 7.3 +/- 0.6 pmol.min-1.mm-1 (P < 0.005). Neither staurosporine nor chelerythrine affected JHCO3 under basal conditions or in the presence of AVP alone. With AVP in the bath, addition of phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA, 10(-6) M) to the bath increased JHCO3 from 5.0 +/- 0.5 to 9.1 +/- 1.0 pmol.min-1.mm-1 (P < 0.01). Similar to PGE2, PMA had no effect on JHCO3 in the absence of AVP or in the presence of 10(-6) M bath forskolin. The effect of PMA to stimulate JHCO3 in the presence of AVP was abolished by pretreatment with pertussis toxin (2 x 10(-11) M). We conclude that 1) PGE2 reverses AVP inhibition of HCO3- absorption by activation of PKC, 2) PKC likely increases JHCO3 by inhibiting AVP-stimulated cAMP production via a Gi-dependent mechanism, and 3) PKC activity has no influence on basal HCO3- absorption rate.
A closer look at teachers’ individual learning in collaborative settings

A considerable amount of current research on teaching and teacher education focuses on teacher collaboration. Teacher collaboration is presumed to be a powerful learning environment for teachers’ professional development. However, empirical research about how teachers actually learn in collaborative settings is lacking. In this study, learning activities were explored in relation to reported changes in cognition and/or behaviour of six teachers that participated in collaborative groups. These six teachers were interviewed after group meetings and also asked to report learning experiences in a digital logbook six times during a period of one year. Qualitative analyses of both data sources resulted in seven configurations of (successions of) learning activities and reported changes in cognition and/or behaviour. A closer look at these configurations showed that (successions of) learning activities in collaborative settings resulted mostly in reported changes in cognition. These reported changes in cognition often concerned confirmation of own ideas or teaching methods. The high number of confirmations of own ideas or teaching methods may be explained by the reform context in which these teachers work. Teachers who are experimenting with new teaching methods can feel insecure about these newly acquired methods and, therefore, seek confirmation from their colleagues.
Health Literacy Practices and Educational Competencies for Health Professionals: A Consensus Study

Health care professionals often lack adequate knowledge about health literacy and the skills needed to address low health literacy among patients and their caregivers. Many promising practices for mitigating the effects of low health literacy are not used consistently. Improving health literacy training for health care professionals has received increasing emphasis in recent years. The development and evaluation of curricula for health professionals has been limited by the lack of agreed-upon educational competencies in this area. This study aimed to identify a set of health literacy educational competencies and target behaviors, or practices, relevant to the training of all health care professionals. The authors conducted a thorough literature review to identify a comprehensive list of potential health literacy competencies and practices, which they categorized into 1 or more educational domains (i.e., knowledge, skills, attitudes) or a practice domain. The authors stated each item in operationalized language following Bloom's Taxonomy. The authors then used a modified Delphi method to identify consensus among a group of 23 health professions education experts representing 11 fields in the health professions. Participants rated their level of agreement as to whether a competency or practice was both appropriate and important for all health professions students. A predetermined threshold of 70% agreement was used to define consensus. After 4 rounds of ratings and modifications, consensus agreement was reached on 62 out of 64 potential educational competencies (24 knowledge items, 27 skill items, and 11 attitude items), and 32 out of 33 potential practices. This study is the first known attempt to develop consensus on a list of health literacy practices and to translate recommended health literacy practices into an agreed-upon set of measurable educational competencies for health professionals. Further work is needed to prioritize the competencies and practices in terms of relative importance.
Dismantling Segregation Together: Interconnections between the Méndez v. Westminster (1946) and Brown v. Board of Education (1954) School Segregation Cases

May 17, 2004 marked the 50th anniversary of the most significant school segregation case: Brown v. Board of Education (1954). While the Brown decision eliminated the legal theory of “separate but equal,” the success of the Méndez et al. v. Westminster School District et al. (1946) case helped boost public sentiment against segregation, setting the stage for Brown. Méndez made possible the defeat of school segregation laws by revealing the detrimental effects and moral dangers of segregation; in California, it helped bring about the end of de jure school segregation. In this essay, I analyze the similarities of Méndez and Brown by comparing key legal strategies and rhetoric in each case. I also show that civil rights leaders of the time thought that Méndez had ramifications for black desegregation efforts, even if the basis for Chicano and black discrimination were not the same. Before examining the ties between the two, I discuss important historical works on Méndez written between 1976 and 2001 that this essay builds upon.
Effects of the supplemental chromium form on performance and oxidative stress in broilers exposed to heat stress

&NA; This experiment was conducted to investigate effects of the organic complex form of supplemental chromium (Cr) on performance, oxidative stress markers, and serum profile in broilers exposed to heat stress (HS). A total of 1,200 10‐day‐old boilers (Ross‐308) was divided into one of the 6 treatments (2 environmental temperatures x 3 diets with different Cr forms). The birds were kept in temperature‐controlled rooms at either 22 ± 2°C 24 h/d (thermoneutral, TN group) or 34 ± 2°C for 8 h/d, 08:00 to 17:00 h, followed by 22°C for 16 h (HS group) and fed either a basal diet (C) or the basal diet supplemented with Cr (200 &mgr;g/kg) through 1.600 mg of CrPic (12.43% Cr) and 0.788 mg of CrHis (25.22% Cr). Feed intake and body weight were recorded weekly. After cervical dislocation, liver samples were harvested to analyze Cr concentration and glucose transporter‐2,4 (GLUT‐2,4) expression. The breast meat also was sampled for the concentration of Cr and expressions of nuclear factor erythroid 2‐related factor 2 (Nrf2) and nuclear factor kappa B (NF‐&kgr;B). Data were analyzed by 2‐way ANOVA. Heat stress caused depressions in feed intake (12.1%) and weight gain (21.1%) as well as elevations in feed conversion (11.2%) and abdominal fat (32.8%). It was also associated with depletion of Cr reserves and increases in serum concentrations of glucose, cholesterol, creatine, and enzymes. Exposure to HS was accompanied by suppression of the expressions of Nrf2 and GLUT‐2 in muscle and GLUT‐4 in the liver and amplification of the expression of NF‐&kgr;B in muscle. Both Cr sources partially alleviated detrimental effects of HS on performance and metabolic profile. The efficacy of Cr as CrHis was more notable than Cr as CrPic, which could be attributed to higher bioavailability. In conclusion, CrHis can be added into the diet of broilers during hot seasons to overcome deteriorations in performance and wellbeing related to oxidative stress.
Endogenous Nitric Oxide Protects Bacteria Against a Wide Spectrum of Antibiotics

It's a Gas Many antibiotics, including beta-lactams, aminoglycosides, and quinolones, kill bacteria (at least in part) by oxidative stress. Gusarov et al. (p. 1380) show that nitric oxide (NO) produced by bacterial NO synthases (bNOS) protects bacteria, including Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus anthracis, against toxic agents they may encounter in the soil or in host organisms. Thus, bNOS activity is specifically induced in response to antibiotics and, in turn, activates the expression of another key antioxidant enzyme: superoxide dismutase. Hence, NO-mediated antibiotic resistance not only operates by direct chemical modification of toxic molecules, but also alleviates oxidative stress caused by naturally occurring antibiotics. Bacteria deploy nitric oxide synthases to counter oxidative stress from natural toxins and antibiotic drugs. Bacterial nitric oxide synthases (bNOS) are present in many Gram-positive species and have been demonstrated to synthesize NO from arginine in vitro and in vivo. However, the physiological role of bNOS remains largely unknown. We show that NO generated by bNOS increases the resistance of bacteria to a broad spectrum of antibiotics, enabling the bacteria to survive and share habitats with antibiotic-producing microorganisms. NO-mediated resistance is achieved through both the chemical modification of toxic compounds and the alleviation of the oxidative stress imposed by many antibiotics. Our results suggest that the inhibition of NOS activity may increase the effectiveness of antimicrobial therapy.
Time in Therapeutic Range, as a Determinant of All‐Cause Mortality in Patients With Hypertension

Background Accumulating evidence indicates that reducing systolic blood pressure (BP) to <140 mm Hg improves health outcomes; however, an optimal level has not yet been determined. Many population studies or post hoc analyses suggest a target systolic BP between 120 and 140 mm Hg with increased risk above and below that range. We tested the hypothesis that consistent control of systolic BP between 120 and 140 mm Hg—time in therapeutic range—is a strong determinant of all‐cause mortality among US veterans. Methods and Results A total of 689 051 individuals from 15 Veterans Administration Medical Centers were followed over a 10‐year period. Participants were classified as hypertensive, intermediate hypertensive, and normotensive according to the number of elevated BP recordings (>3, 1 or 2, and none, respectively). Time within, above, or below therapeutic range (120–140 mm Hg) was considered in quartiles and related to all‐cause mortality. The study population consisted of 54% hypertensive, 19.9% intermediate, and 26.1% normotensive participants; the corresponding mortality rates for the 3 groups were 11.5%, 8%, and 1.9%, respectively (P<0.0001 for all comparisons). Mortality rates for hypertensive participants with BP consistently within, above, or below the therapeutic range were 6.5%, 21.9%, and 33.1%, respectively (P<0.0001 for all comparisons). Mortality rates in hypertensive participants increased from 6.5% in the most consistently controlled quartile (>75%) to 8.9%, 15.6%, and 23.5% towards the less consistently controlled quartiles (50–75%, 25–50%, and <25%, respectively; P<0.0001 for all comparisons). Conclusions An inverse and gradual association between time in therapeutic range and all‐cause mortality was observed in this large veteran cohort. Consistency of BP control over time is a strong determinant of all‐cause mortality, and consistency of BP control should be monitored in everyday clinical practice.
Visualizing Developer Interactions

Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) have become the de facto standard vehicle to develop software systems. The user interface (UI) of an IDE offers a staggering amount of facilities to manipulate source code, such as inspectors, debuggers, recommenders, alternative viewers, etc. It is unclear how developers use the UI of an IDE and whether such UIs actually give appropriate support to the developers. We present a visual approach to understand and characterize development sessions from the UI perspective. The tool supporting our approach mines and processes the finest-grained UI-level events making up development sessions and presents them visually. We have collected, visualized, and analyzed hundreds of development sessions and report on our findings.
Development of Attendance Management System using Biometrics.

In this paper, the development of an attendance management system using biometrics is proposed. Managing student attendance during lecture periods has become a difficult challenge. The ability to compute the attendance percentage becomes a major task as manual computation produces errors, and also wastes a lot of time. For the stated reason, an efficient attendance management system using biometrics is designed. This system takes attendance electronically with the help of a finger print device and the records of the attendance are stored in a database. Attendance is marked after student identification.
The Cross-Domain Effects of Work and Family Role Stressors on Public Employees in South Korea

Understanding work and family role transition activities is very important as without knowing the mechanism, policymakers cannot design effective family-friendly programs. This research addressed two research questions: (a) Do work and family role stressors in the public sector have cross-domain effects? and (b) Does gender moderate the cross-domain effects? The Korea Labor and Income Panel Study (KLIPS) was used as a secondary data set to address these research questions. A random-effects model (i.e., a three-level hierarchical linear model) was used to take into account heterogeneity across families and individuals. Findings revealed that work role stressors such as monthly salary and working hours were positively related to life satisfaction, but family stressors were not significantly associated with job satisfaction, partially supporting the cross-domain effect. Furthermore, gender did not moderate the cross-domain effects.
Men, Movements, and Gender Transformation in South Africa

In the last decade, South Africa has undergone a major political transformation. The ending of apartheid and the installation of a democratically elected, black majority government has had major implications for gender policy and gender relations in the country. This paper examines how men collectively have responded to these changes. It identifies a number of different men's movements and locates them in terms of their relationship to the goal of gender equity being pursued by government. It draws on the work of Mike Messner to suggest what contribution these movements might, or might not, make to gender transformation in the country. Finally, it examines the importance of race and the apartheid past to suggest that any analysis of men and gender politics should be sensitive to different understandings of gender and location within the current gender order.
Comparison of Antibacterial Effects of ZnO and CuO Nanoparticles Coated Brackets against Streptococcus Mutans

Statement of the Problem During the orthodontic treatment, microbial plaques may accumulate around the brackets and cause caries, especially in high-risk patients. Finding ways to eliminate this microbial plaque seems to be essential. Purpose The aim of this study was to compare the antibacterial effects of nano copper oxide (CuO) and nano zinc oxide (ZnO) coated brackets against Streptococcus mutans (S.mutans) in order to decrease the risk of caries around the orthodontic brackets during the treatment. Materials and Method Sixty brackets were coated with nanoparticles of ZnO (n=20), CuO (n=20) and CuO-ZnO (n=20). Twelve uncoated brackets constituted the control group. The brackets were bonded to the crowns of extracted premolars, sterilized and prepared for antimicrobial tests (S.mutans ATCC35668). The samples taken after 0, 2, 4, 6 and 24 hours were cultured on agar plates. Colonies were counted 24 hours after incubation. One-way ANOVA and Tukey tests were used for statistical analysis. Results In CuO and CuO-ZnO coated brackets, no colony growth was seen after two hours. Between 0-6 hours, the mean colony counts were not significantly different between the ZnO and the control group (p>0.05). During 6-24 hours, the growth of S.mutans was significantly reduced by ZnO nanoparticles in comparison with the control group (p< 0.001). However, these bacteria were not totally eliminated. Conclusion CuO and ZnO-CuO nanoparticles coated brackets have better antimicrobial effect on S.mutans than ZnO coated brackets.
The attachment styles of stalkers

This study measured stalkers' retrospective childhood attachment and current adult attachment using two self-report measures. The three groups were: 21 stalkers detained under the Mental Health Act (1983) under conditions of security; 24 people detained in the same way but with no history of stalking; and an ad-hoc community sample of 33. It was found that the stalkers had significantly more overprotective fathers and Insecure adult attachment styles than the control groups. A new typology of stalkers was proposed based on splitting the stalking group into fixated (one victim) and serial (more than one victim) groups. Fixated stalkers were more Preoccupied than serial stalkers.
Environmental and occupational exposure to chemicals and telomere length in human studies

Telomeres are complexes of tandem repeats of DNA (5′-TTAGGG-3′) and protein that cap eukaryotic chromosomes and play a critical role in chromosome stability. Telomeres shorten with aging and this process can be accelerated by increased oxidative stress and episodes of inflammation. Evidence is rapidly growing that telomere length (TL) may be affected by environmental chemicals that have frequently been associated with chronic diseases. In this article, we review the published data on TL in relation to environmental and occupational exposure to several chemicals based on our own and others’ studies. The environmental and occupational exposures associated with shorter TL include traffic-related air pollution (ie, particulate matter (PM), black carbon (BC), and benzene and toluene), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), N-nitrosamines, pesticides, lead, exposure in car mechanical workshops, and hazardous waste exposure. Arsenic, persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and short-term exposure to PM are associated with longer TL. We discuss the possible reasons for the differences in results, including time- and dose-related issues, study design, and possible mechanisms involved in telomere regulation. We also discuss the future directions and challenges for TL-related environmental and occupational health research, such as investigation of TL in subpopulations of blood leukocytes, and the study of genetic and epigenetic factors that may regulate telomere integrity using longitudinal designs.
Synergistic Moderator Effects of Situation and Person Factors of Awareness and Adjustment on the Consistency of Implicit and Explicit Attitudes

A moderated consistency model is presented, which attempts to explain the consistency between explicit and implicit indicators as a function of awareness and adjustment. In a study on attitudes of Germans toward Turks, we tested the hypothesis that functionally equivalent person and situation moderators pertaining to awareness and adjustment show a synergistic interplay. Concerning moderators of adjustment, no effects on explicit-implicit consistency were obtained for situational variables nor for the interaction of personal and situational variables. However, concerning moderators of awareness, a reliable first-order effect was found for Private Self-Consciousness. Moreover, Private Self-Consciousness and experimentally manipulated motivation to introspect showed the assumed synergistic interaction moderator effect. The empirical findings are discussed with regard to the role of awareness of implicit attitudes and the potentially underlying mechanisms of implicit-explicit consistency.
A Numerical Study of a Simple Stochastic/ Deterministic Model of Cycle-to-Cycle Combustion Fluctuations in Spark Ignition Engines

We examine a simple, fuel-air model of combustion in a spark ignition (SI) engine with indirect injection. In our two-fluid model, variations of fuel mass burned in cycle sequences appear due to stochastic fluctuations of a fuel feed amount. We have shown that a small amplitude of these fluctuations affects considerably the stability of a combustion process strongly depending on the quality of the air-fuel mixture. The largest influence was found in the limit of a lean combustion. The possible effect of nonlinearities in the combustion process has been also discussed.
The Temporal Reorganization of Employment and the Household Rhythm of Work Schedules

Working-time arrangements are being restructured across Europe in parallel with the spread of dual-earner arrangements for couples. This article elaborates the different temporal dimensions to the employment relationship, distinguishing between the different dimensions of working-time schedules, work-time intensity, and the time-money exchange. This conceptualization is used to draw attention to occupational class, gender, and household differences in the temporal organization of employment illustrated with the example of the United Kingdom. The argument made is that class differences between households must be integrated into analyses of gender inequalities in work time. This is necessary to develop an understanding of the implications of the temporal reorganization of employment and to compare how the outcomes may vary between countries due to societal differences in regulations and political debates.