Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Follistatin Suppresses the Production of Experimental Multiple-Organ Metastasis by Small Cell Lung Cancer Cells in Natural Killer Cell–Depleted SCID Mice

Purpose: Follistatin (FST), an inhibitor of activin, regulates a variety of biological functions, including cell proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis. However, the role of FST in cancer metastasis is still unknown. Previous research established a multiple-organ metastasis model of human small cell lung cancer in natural killer cell–depleted SCID mice. In this model, i.v. inoculated tumor cells produced metastatic colonies in multiple organs including the lung, liver, and bone. The purpose of this study is to determine the role of FST in multiple-organ metastasis using this model. Experimental Design: A human FST gene was transfected into the small cell lung cancer cell lines SBC-3 and SBC-5 and established transfectants secreting biologically active FST. The metastatic potential of the transfectants was evaluated using the metastasis model. Results: FST-gene transfection did not affect the cell proliferation, motility, invasion, or adhesion to endothelial cells in vitro. I.v. inoculated SBC-3 or SBC-5 cells produced metastatic colonies into multiple organs, including the lung, liver, and bone in the natural killer cell–depleted SCID mice. FST transfectants produced significantly fewer metastatic colonies in these organs when compared with their parental cells or vector control clones. Immunohistochemical analyses of the liver metastases revealed that the number of proliferating tumor cells and the tumor-associated microvessel density were significantly less in the lesions produced by FST transfectants. Conclusions: These results suggest that FST plays a critical role in the production of multiple-organ metastasis, predominantly by inhibiting the angiogenesis. This is the first report to show the role of FST in metastases.
Risk assessment before extraction for immediate implant placement in the posterior mandible: a computerized tomographic scan study.

BACKGROUND Controversy exists in treatment planning relative to the attempt of saving a tooth with unfavorable prognosis or extracting it and placing an immediate or delayed implant. Preextraction radiographic assessments of teeth are traditionally performed using two-dimensional periapical and panoramic radiographs. These can reveal bone loss around a tooth, but have limited use in assessing implant risk before tooth extraction. Three-dimensional radiographs or cone-beam (CB) or computerized tomographic (CT) scans are often taken after tooth extraction and socket healing to assess the healed ridge as a potential implant site. However, when treatment planning for an immediate implant in the posterior mandible, a CT scan taken before tooth extraction can be of value in assessing the available bone and anatomy of the area. This allows the clinician and patient to consider alternative options, such as treating and maintaining the tooth or using a delayed implant protocol, when the site presents a high risk for immediate implant placement (IIP). The purpose of the present study is to assess the prevalence of sites associated with the mandibular second premolar, mandibular first molar, and mandibular second molar teeth that present high risk for IIP using a preextraction CT scan to assess the available apical bone and the anatomy of the posterior mandible in the area of the anticipated extraction site. METHODS One hundred consecutive CT scans were obtained and screened from the New York University College of Dentistry, Office of Quality Assurance-Approved Implant Dentistry Database. Forty-one of these CT scans were further assessed because they included the presence of ≥2 of the following tooth types: mandibular second premolars, mandibular first molars, and mandibular second molars. Measurements were obtained on the axial sections of the selected teeth to evaluate the amount of bone available apical to the root apices to determine the frequency of sites where an IIP protocol presented a high risk for inferior alveolar nerve injury or lingual plate perforation. RESULTS Of the 135 teeth assessed from 41 CT scans, 65% of the mandibular second premolars, 53% of the mandibular first molars, and 73% of mandibular second molars had <6 mm of bone available for IIP, presenting high risk for inferior alveolar nerve injury. Of the sites in which the inferior alveolar canal did not limit available bone for IIP, 7% of the second premolars, 9% of the first molars, and 31% of the second molars presented high risk for lingual plate perforation. CONCLUSIONS Preextraction CT scans may present a useful diagnostic aid to assess the risk of inferior alveolar nerve injury and lingual plate perforation for IIP in the posterior mandible. This information may be used for assessing risk when deciding whether to retain a questionable tooth or replace it with an implant with either an IIP or delayed protocol.
An illusion of power: qualitative perspectives on abortion decision-making among teenage women in Sweden.

CONTEXT Swedish law permits abortion at the request of a pregnant woman until the 18th week of gestation. However, the extent to which the decision is truly the woman's own is subject to debate; women are often influenced, directly or indirectly, by the attitudes of their partners, family and friends or by social norms. METHODS Individual in-depth interviews about the pregnancy and the abortion decision were conducted 3-4 weeks postabortion with 25 women aged 16-20 at different periods in 2003, 2005 and 2007. Interviews were audio-taped, transcribed verbatim and analyzed using latent content analysis. RESULTS The main reasons for unplanned pregnancy were underestimation of pregnancy risk and inconsistent contraceptive use. Pregnancy prevention was perceived as the woman's responsibility. The abortion decision was accompanied by mixed emotions, and was seen as a natural yet difficult choice. Social norms and the negative attitudes of family and friends strongly influenced the decision. Partners and parents were regarded as the most important sources of support. After the abortion, the women felt pressured by contraceptive counselors to use highly effective contraceptives despite their previous negative experiences or worries about side effects. CONCLUSIONS Swedish teenagers' basic right to decide whether to have an abortion may be limited by societal norms and disapproval of teenage childbearing. Given the perception that women are responsible for contraception, programs need to emphasize that pregnancy prevention is a shared responsibility; greater efforts to include males in prevention practices are needed.
The relationship between social support, self-esteem and exposure to community violence on adolescent's perceptions of well-being

Violence is considered to be one of the most critical and threatening global problems plaguing the world today, leaving a trail of devastating consequences to societies, economies, cultures, families and individuals (Desjarlais & Kleinman, 1997). Adolescents who grow up in a context of violence learn distorted ways of thinking, acting, living and interacting. Aggressive tendencies and violent behaviour become internalised and adopted as acceptable ways to resolve conflict situations. Chronic, continuous exposure to violence results in physical, psychological and emotional disturbances, such as depression, anxiety, lowered self-confidence, sleep disturbances, decreased attention and concentration spans. This study addressed the form of violence known as community violence, i.e. violence that children experience within their communities (either as witnesses or as victims). This study investigated the effects of this negative environmental experience and investigated potential mediating and moderating variables that could influence the harmful effects of such experiences. The variables considered as mediating and/or moderating variables were social support and self-esteem. The theoretical framework adopted for this study was Bronfennbrenner’s Bioecological Systems theory. This framework provides a theory through which the interaction of the variables of this study can be explained and understood. This study is part of a larger study which explored community violence, hope and well-being, therefore secondary data was utilised. The sample consisted of 568 Grade nine learners and data was collected through the administration of a questionnaire compiled through the combination of five scales: the Children’s Hope Scale, the Recent Exposure to Violence Scale (REVS), the KIDSCREEN-52, social support scale and Rosenberg’s self-esteem scale. The data was analysed through regression and multiple regression. The results of the study found that neither social support nor self-esteem were mediators and only social support functioned as a moderator variable.
Culture, immortalization, and characterization of human meibomian gland epithelial cells.

PURPOSE Meibomian gland epithelial cells are essential in maintaining the health and integrity of the ocular surface. However, very little is known about their physiological regulation. In this study, the cellular control mechanisms were explored, first to establish a defined culture system for the maintenance of primary epithelial cells from human meibomian glands and, second, to immortalize these cells, thereby developing a preclinical model that could be used to identify factors that regulate cell activity. METHODS Human meibomian glands were removed from lid segments after surgery, enzymatically digested, and dissociated. Isolated epithelial cells were cultured in media with or without serum and/or 3T3 feeder layers. To attempt immortalization, the cells were exposed to retroviral human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) and/or SV40 large T antigen cDNA vectors, and antibiotic-resistant cells were selected, expanded, and subcultured. Analyses for possible biomarkers, cell proliferation and differentiation, lipid-related enzyme gene expression, and the cellular response to androgen were performed with biochemical, histologic, and molecular biological techniques. RESULTS It was possible to isolate viable human meibomian gland epithelial cells and to culture them in serum-free medium. These cells proliferated, survived through at least the fifth passage, and contained neutral lipids. Infection with hTERT immortalized these cells, which accumulated neutral lipids during differentiation, expressed multiple genes for lipogenic enzymes, responded to androgen, and continued to proliferate. CONCLUSIONS The results show that human meibomian gland epithelial cells may be isolated, cultured, and immortalized.
ANTI-DIABETIC EFFECTS OF ZHUODUQING FORMULA, A CHINESE HERBAL DECOCTION, ON A RAT MODEL OF TYPE 2 DIABETES

Background: Zhuoduqing formula (ZDQ) is a Chinese herbal decoction and used to treat type 2 diabetes in clinical practice, but the potential evidence needs to be provided. Materials and Methods: Type 2 diabetic model rats were induced by feeding high fat diet (HFD) and intraperitoneal injection of streptozotocin (STZ). The model rats were given ZDQ for 4 weeks. Insulin sensitivity was evaluated by homeostasis model assessment of basal insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) and intraperitoneal glucose tolerance test (IPGTT). Blood insulin and tumour necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) levels as well as SOCS-3 levels in skeletal muscles were analyzed by ELISA. Results: ZDQ significantly decreased fasting blood glucose, ameliorated HOMA-IR and IPGTT, and reduced triglyceride and total cholesterol in type 2 diabetic rats. Moreover, ZDQ remarkably lowered blood TNF-α levels and inhibited SOCS-3 levels in skeletal muscles. Conclusion: The results display that ZDQ performs anti-diabetic functions in type 2 diabetic rats induced by feeding HFD and intraperitoneal injection of STZ. Abbreviations: ZDQ, zhuoduqing formula; ROS, rosiglitazone; HOMA-IR, homeostasis model assessment of basal insulin resistance; IPGTT, intraperitoneal glucose tolerance test; HFD, high fat diet; SOCS-3, suppressor of cytokine signaling-3; TNF-α, tumour necrosis factor-α.
Open innovation for innovation tools: the case of co-design platforms

This paper explores the dynamics of openness and enclosure of innovation activities with IT artifacts on the example of co-design platforms. While modern information and communication technologies offer many new possibilities for innovation, they also subject innovation to the underlying technical structures, which can misdirect the activities on the platform. In order to avoid this, we propose an open innovation approach for open innovation solutions. We perform an empirical study on two co-design platforms which become subjects of innovation themselves in an open laboratory in the downtown area of a European city. Visitors to the laboratory are allowed to engage in innovate activities regarding the co-design platforms in whatever way they want. The results show that they do not only address technical improvements of the platforms, but also look into new directions to make the platforms more relevant or to replace them by other ways of innovating in the given contexts.
Skew-aware automatic database partitioning in shared-nothing, parallel OLTP systems

The advent of affordable, shared-nothing computing systems portends a new class of parallel database management systems (DBMS) for on-line transaction processing (OLTP) applications that scale without sacrificing ACID guarantees [7, 9]. The performance of these DBMSs is predicated on the existence of an optimal database design that is tailored for the unique characteristics of OLTP workloads. Deriving such designs for modern DBMSs is difficult, especially for enterprise-class OLTP systems, since they impose extra challenges: the use of stored procedures, the need for load balancing in the presence of time-varying skew, complex schemas, and deployments with larger number of partitions. To this purpose, we present a novel approach to automatically partitioning databases for enterprise-class OLTP systems that significantly extends the state of the art by: (1) minimizing the number distributed transactions, while concurrently mitigating the effects of temporal skew in both the data distribution and accesses, (2) extending the design space to include replicated secondary indexes, (4) organically handling stored procedure routing, and (3) scaling of schema complexity, data size, and number of partitions. This effort builds on two key technical contributions: an analytical cost model that can be used to quickly estimate the relative coordination cost and skew for a given workload and a candidate database design, and an informed exploration of the huge solution space based on large neighborhood search. To evaluate our methods, we integrated our database design tool with a high-performance parallel, main memory DBMS and compared our methods against both popular heuristics and a state-of-the-art research prototype [17]. Using a diverse set of benchmarks, we show that our approach improves throughput by up to a factor of 16x over these other approaches.
Avirulence and altered physiological properties of cystic fibrosis strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Twenty Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains isolated from patients with cystic fibrosis in good and poor clinical condition were typed by the American Scientific (Difco Laboratories, Detroit, Mich.) Typing Scheme. Only five strains were agglutinated with a single typing serum. Ten strains were agglutinated with more than one serum, and five were not agglutinated with any serum, suggesting some type of lipopolysaccharide alteration in the majority of these strains. Of the strains from patients in good clinical condition, 72% demonstrated proteolytic activity, while 60% of the strains from patients in poor clinical condition demonstrated no proteolytic activity. Twenty-three cystic fibrosis strains of P. aeruginosa examined demonstrated reduced bacteremic virulence when compared with a virulent burn strain with a 50% lethal dose (LD50) of 1.5 X 10(1) CFU in an invasive burned mouse model. Ninety-two percent of the strains tested were avirulent at doses of 10(3) to 10(5) CFU. The LD50s were determined for 10 selected strains which exhibited specific important morphological and physiological deficiencies. Five of the strains tested gave LD50s greater than 10(6) CFU. Reduced virulence of these strains was associated with loss of two or more physiological characteristics associated with virulence. The cystic fibrosis strains of P. aeruginosa which morphologically and physiologically resembled the virulent burn strain were the most virulent (LD50s of 10(2) to 10(4). Results suggest that some degree of virulence is associated only with classic strains prevalent in early infections. The data suggest that a selection transition occurs in the lungs of patients with cystic fibrosis that favors P. aeruginosa avirulence. The avirulent state may be caused by alterations in the cell envelope, including associated factors such as motility and chemotaxis and protease production.
Wolf spider predator avoidance tactics and survival in the presence of diet-associated predator cues (Araneae: Lycosidae)

Some prey can distinguish between chemical cues from predators fed different diets. Here we document the first evidence of diet-based chemical discrimination of predators in a terrestrial arthropod and measure the survival value of behavioural responses to predator chemical cues. We tested activity level and avoidance behaviour of the wolf spider, Pardosa milvina, to faeces and silk associated with the predatory wolf spider, Hogna helluo, fed either P. milvina or crickets (Acheta domesticus). We then measured survival of Pardosa in the presence of Hogna when placed on blank paper or paper previously occupied by Hogna fed either crickets or Pardosa. Filter paper previously occupied by Hogna from each diet treatment or a blank control were simultaneously presented to adult female Pardosa among four treatment pairs (N=15/treatment): (1) blank paper/blank paper, (2) Hogna fed crickets/blank, (3) Hogna fed Pardosa /blank and (4) Hogna fed Pardosa / Hogna fed crickets. Cues from Hogna fed either crickets or Pardosa elicited significantly less activity relative to blank controls. Cues from Hogna fed Pardosa elicited a significantly greater reduction in activity than Hogna fed crickets. When given a choice, Pardosa initially chose the blank substrate significantly more often than either substrate with Hogna cues. Spiders survived longer in the presence of cues from either Hogna diet treatment relative to blank paper, but there was no significant effect of predator diet on survival. Results suggest diet-based predator cues elicit different levels of activity in Pardosa that reduce predation in the presence of Hogna. Copyright 2001 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.
Perception and production of vowel paragoge by Brazilian EFL students

Based on Flege’s (1995) claim that inaccurate perceptual targets may be responsible for misproductions of L2 sounds, this study investigates the relationship between perception and production of vowel paragoge by Brazilian EFL learners. Production data was obtained through the reading of sentences containingmonosyllabic target words of the form CVC followed by monosyllabic context words or silence. Perception data was obtained through an oddity discrimination test. The study involved twenty undergraduate students at the beginning level of English. Support for the perception-production relationship was provided by statistically significant correlation results. This study is innovative in that previous investigations focusing on the issue have dealt with distinctions between phonemes, whereas this deals with syllable structure and the addition of an extra phone.
Association between duration of untreated psychosis and outcome in cohorts of first-episode patients: a systematic review.

CONTEXT Duration of untreated psychosis (DUP) is the time from manifestation of the first psychotic symptom to initiation of adequate treatment. It has been postulated that a longer DUP leads to a poorer prognosis. If so, outcome might be improved through earlier detection and treatment. OBJECTIVES To establish whether DUP is associated with prognosis and to determine whether any association is explained by confounding with premorbid adjustment. DATA SOURCES The CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health), EMBASE, MEDLINE, and PsychLIT databases were searched from their inception dates to May 2004. STUDY SELECTION Eligible studies reported the relationship between DUP and outcome in prospective cohorts recruited during their first episode of psychosis. Twenty-six eligible studies involving 4490 participants were identified from 11 458 abstracts, each screened by 2 reviewers. DATA EXTRACTION Data were extracted independently and were checked by double entry. Sensitivity analyses were conducted excluding studies that had follow-up rates of less than 80%, included affective psychoses, or did not use a standardized assessment of DUP. DATA SYNTHESIS Independent meta-analyses were conducted of correlational data and of data derived from comparisons of long and short DUP groups. Most data were correlational, and these showed a significant association between DUP and several outcomes at 6 and 12 months (including total symptoms, depression/anxiety, negative symptoms, overall functioning, positive symptoms, and social functioning). Long vs short DUP data showed an association between longer DUP and worse outcome at 6 months in terms of total symptoms, overall functioning, positive symptoms, and quality of life. Patients with a long DUP were significantly less likely to achieve remission. The observed association between DUP and outcome was not explained by premorbid adjustment. CONCLUSIONS There is convincing evidence of a modest association between DUP and outcome, which supports the case for clinical trials that examine the effect of reducing DUP.
Oral premedication with low dose midazolam modifies the immunological stress reaction after the setting of retrobulbar anaesthesia

Background/aims: An acute immunological stress reaction was previously reported to occur after the painful setting of retrobulbar anaesthesia before intraocular surgery. This study was conducted to find out whether an oral low dose premedication with midazolam would modify the immunological stress reaction. Methods: 32 patients undergoing intraocular surgery using retrobulbar anaesthesia were included in a randomised, double blind trial. They received premedication with either 3.75 mg midazolam or placebo 30 minutes before the retrobulbar injection. Counts of leucocyte subpopulations, cardiovascular, and psychometric parameters were measured repetitively before and after the retrobulbar injection. Results: The numbers of leucocytes increased significantly in the placebo group after the setting of retrobulbar anaesthesia (before retrobulbar injection: 6687 (SD 1025) cells ×106/l; after injection: 7067 (1022) cells ×106/l, p=0.0009) caused by rising numbers of neutrophils (before injection: 4111 (1063) cells ×106/l; after injection: 4352 (1147) cells ×106/l, p=0.0007) and natural killer cells (before injection: 290 (84) cell ×106/l; after injection 354 (133) cells ×106/l, p=0.003). There was no significant increase in total leucocytes (before injection: 5997 (1288) cells ×106/l; after injection: 6189 (1215) cells ×106/l) or in any leucocyte subpopulation in the midazolam group. A significant rise in systolic blood pressure occurred in the placebo group, but not in the midazolam group. Conclusion: A low dose premedication with midazolam attenuates the immunological and cardiovascular stress reactions occurring with retrobulbar anaesthesia.