Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Probiotics for Helicobacter pylori eradication therapy: not ready for prime time.

Probiotics have been recently defined by the World Health Organization as “live microorganisms which, when administered in adequate amounts, may confer a health benefit” (1). Probiotics are a widely accepted therapy for both bacterial and viral acute gastroenteritis as well as diarrhea secondary to antibiotics, particularly in children. The most commonly used microorganisms for probiotic formulations in clinical practice include species of Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium, Saccharomyces, Bacillus, and Streptococcus, as well as Escherichia coli (2). Multiple benefits of probiotics have been described against bacterial conditions, including the synthesis of substances with antimicrobial properties (lactic acid, hydrogen peroxide, bacteriocins), a competitive interaction with bacteria for adhesion receptors, and the modulation of the host’s immune response (2). A field of gastroenterology where probiotics gained scientific interest in recent years is as adjuvants in the eradication therapy of Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection. In the present issue of Revista Española de Enfermedades Digestivas, Zheng et al. publish a meta-analysis assessing the impact of probiotic formulations with Lactobacillus for H. pylori eradication therapy (3). This is the eighth meta-analysis on the subject since 2007, and is surprising at first glance that it reports notably divergent results as compared to previous studies (4-10). As may be seen in table I, all meta-analyses reported to date, except two (6,8), reveal a consistent, statistically significant increase in eradication rates and reduced side effects from antibiotic therapy. However, the meta-analysis by Zheng et al. (3) shows a notable increase in H. pylori eradication rates with no benefits on adverse effects. The authors state that these diverging results from the previously reported evidence are accounted for by their rigorous methodology, which includes: a) exclusion of non-randomized or incorrectly randomized Probiotics for Helicobacter pylori eradication therapy: Not ready for prime time
Identification of Chromosomal Genes in Yersinia pestis that Influence Type III Secretion and Delivery of Yops into Target Cells

Pathogenic Yersinia species possess a type III secretion system, which is required for the delivery of effector Yop proteins into target cells during infection. Genes encoding the type III secretion machinery, its substrates, and several regulatory proteins all reside on a 70-Kb virulence plasmid. Genes encoded in the chromosome of yersiniae are thought to play important roles in bacterial perception of host environments and in the coordinated activation of the type III secretion pathway. Here, we investigate the contribution of chromosomal genes to the complex regulatory process controlling type III secretion in Yersinia pestis. Using transposon mutagenesis, we identified five chromosomal genes required for expression or secretion of Yops in laboratory media. Four out of the five chromosomal mutants were defective to various extents at injecting Yops into tissue culture cells. Interestingly, we found one mutant that was not able to secrete in vitro but was fully competent for injecting Yops into host cells, suggesting independent mechanisms for activation of the secretion apparatus. When tested in a mouse model of plague disease, three mutants were avirulent, whereas two strains were severely attenuated. Together these results demonstrate the importance of Y. pestis chromosomal genes in the proper function of type III secretion and in the pathogenesis of plague.
Listening to children’s voices on intercultural education policy and practice

The overarching purpose of this research is to investigate native and immigrant children’s experiences of intercultural pedagogical practices in Cyprus schools. It also explores their suggestions for the improvement of policies and practices for intercultural education. Last but not least, it examines whether Cypriot and immigrant students share similar or different conceptualisations and understandings regarding the above aspects. To this end, interviews were carried out with 40 pupils, aged 11–12, of five primary schools, which presented high concentrations of immigrant students. On the basis of our analysis of our data, the children appeared to perceive intercultural education in terms of culturally responsive discussions, collaborative learning and language learning.
The Immediate Effects of Systematic Relaxation Training on Peak Expiratory Flow Rates in Asthmatic Children

&NA; Clinical experience has often suggested that having asthmatic patients sit quietly and/or relax during asthma attacks is helpful. The present study was an attempt to provide a controlled experimental demonstration of the effect of systematic relaxation on peak expiratory flow rate in asthmatic children. Eighteen male and 18 female asthmatic children were divided into two groups matched for mean age, sex composition and asthma severity. One group of subjects underwent three sessions of modified jacobsonian systematic relaxation training, while the second group sat quietly for three sessions. Peak expiratory flow rate measures were obtained prior to and following each session. It was found that relaxation subjects manifested a significant mean increase in peak expiratory flow rate over sessions compared to a nonsignificant mean peak expiratory flow decrease for control subjects. It was suggested that these results have important implications both for the clinical treatment and the understanding of bronchial asthma.
Integrin Activation Dynamics between the RGD-binding Site and the Headpiece Hinge*

Integrins form mechanical links between the extracellular matrix and the cytoskeleton. Although integrin activation is known to be regulated by an allosteric conformational change, which can be induced from the extracellular or intracellular end of the molecule, little is known regarding the sequence of structural events by which signals propagate between distant sites. Here, we reveal with molecular dynamics simulations of the FnIII10-bound αVβ3 integrin headpiece how the binding pocket and interdomain βA/hybrid domain hinge on the distal end of the βA domain are allosterically linked via a hydrophobic T-junction between the middle of the α1 helix and top of the α7 helix. The key results of this study are: 1) that this T-junction is induced by ligand binding and hinge opening, and thus displays bidirectionality; 2) that formation of this junction can be accelerated by ligand-mediated force; and 3) how formation of this junction is inhibited by Ca2+ in place of Mg2+ at the site adjacent to the metal ion-dependent adhesion site (“ADMIDAS”). Together with recent experimental evidence that integrin complexes can form catch bonds (i.e. become strengthened under force), as well as earlier evidence that Ca2+ at the ADMIDAS results in lower binding affinity, these simulations provide a common structural model for the dynamic process by which integrins become activated.
NERVE GROWTH FACTOR PREVENTS THE DEATH AND STIMULATES THE NEURONAL DIFFERENTIATION OF CLONAL PC 12 PHEOCHROMOCYTOMA CELLS IN SERUM-FREE MEDIUM

The PC12 clone is a noradrenergic cell line derived from a rat pheochromocytoma. In culture medium containing horse serum, PC12 cells undergo mitosis; when nerve growth factor (NGF) is included in the medium, the cells cease multiplication and extend neurites. It is shown here: (a) that PC12 cells are not viable in serum-free medium. When serum is withdrawn, 90% of the cells die within 4-6 days and 99% by 2-3 wk. (b) If N G F is added at the time of serum withdrawal, the cells undergo one doubling and remain viable for at least 1 mo. (c) Addition of N G F to cultures after more than 2 days in serum-free conditions results in maintenance of surviving cells, but not in an increase in cell number. (d) N G F also induces neurite outgrowth from PC12 cells in serum-free medium. (e) NGF-treated cells exhibit much less cell-cell and neurite-neurite aggregation in the absence than in the presence of serum. ( f ) The apparent minimum level of 2.5S N G F required for PC12 survival and morphological differentiation in serumfree medium is about 10 ng/ml ( 0 . 4 nM). (g) Withdrawal of N G F in serum-free conditions results in degeneration of neurites and loss of cell viability. (h) Experiments with camptothecin demonstrate that the effects of N G F on survival and neurite outgrowth may be uncoupled and suggest that the survival effects are transcriptionally independent. The present results also suggest that PC12 cells have a requirement for N G F (similar to that of normal sympathetic neurons) and that serum may substitute for this requirement. In addition, the present system of maintaining a highly differentiated cell line in a chemically defined medium suggests certain experimental opportunities.
Crisis Analysis: Between Normalization and Avoidance

French social science research on crisis has experienced strong evolutions over the past twenty years. Attention shifted from problems that the authorities had in managing industrial accidents and natural disasters, transportation accidents, to crisis associated with the idea of an ‘affair’ or ‘scandal’ (contaminated blood affair, asbestos issue) and to collective risks characterized by a high level of uncertainty and generating multiple scientific controversies and public debates (“mad cow disease”, GMO, etc,). Another change regards the issues at stake. Whereas management problems (regarding decision, communication, etc.) were the core issues, analyses are now more and more focused on multiple scientific controversies and public debates, on public authorities and scientific experts being held accountable for serious dysfunctions in the public health field, on media coverage and legal repercussions of such problems. Because of this double change, crises tend to become a more ‘ordinary’ research topic in the academic field. Consequently new trends of analysis develop, related less to a specific, critical situation than to changes and destabilizations in systems of actors. From this point of view, crisis has a strongly endogenous character and crises analysis tends to converge with the analysis of risks as public problems and with the analysis of ‘normal’ situations.
Urinary Bisphenol A Levels in Girls with Idiopathic Central Precocious Puberty

Objective: Bisphenol A (BPA) is an industrial chemical, particularly used to harden plastics. BPA is thought to have negative health effects on both laboratory animals and humans. Consider ing the decline in age of onset of puberty noted in recent years, particularly among girls, the importance of BPA as an estrogenic endocrine disruptor has increased. In this study, we aimed to determine urinary BPA levels in girls with idiopathic central precocious puberty (ICPP). Methods: Non-obese girls newly diagnosed with ICPP (n=28, age 4-8 years) constituted the study group. The control group consisted of 25 healthy age-matched girls with no history of ICPP or any other endocrine disorder. Urinary BPA levels were measured by using high-performance liquid chromatography. Results: In the ICPP group, urinary BPA levels were significantly higher compared to the control group [median 8.34 (0.84-67.35) μg/g creatinine and 1.62 (0.3-25.79) μg/g creatinine, respectively (OR=8.68, 95% CI:2.03-32.72, p=0.001)]. There was no marked correlation between urinary BPA levels and body mass index in either group. In the ICPP group, no significant correlations were found between urinary BPA levels and serum luteinizing hormone, follicle-stimulating hormone and estradiol levels. Conclusions: To our knowledge, this is the first study evaluating the urinary BPA levels in Turkish girls with ICPP. Our results indicate that the estrogenic effects of BPA may be an etiologic factor in ICPP.
Effect of psoriasis severity on hypertension control: a population-based study in the United Kingdom.

IMPORTANCE Hypertension is prevalent among patients with psoriasis. The effect of psoriasis and its severity on hypertension control is unknown. OBJECTIVE To determine the association between uncontrolled blood pressure and psoriasis, both overall and according to objectively measured psoriasis severity, among patients with diagnosed hypertension. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Population-based cross-sectional study nested in a prospective cohort drawn from The Health Improvement Network (THIN), an electronic medical records database broadly representative of the general population in the United Kingdom. The study population included a random sample of patients with psoriasis (n = 1322) between the ages of 25 and 64 years in THIN who were included in the Incident Health Outcomes and Psoriasis Events prospective cohort and their age- and practice-matched controls without psoriasis (n = 11,977). All included patients had a diagnosis of hypertension; their psoriasis diagnosis was confirmed and disease severity was classified by their general practitioners. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Uncontrolled hypertension was defined as a systolic blood pressure of 140 mm Hg or higher or a diastolic blood pressure of 90 mm Hg or higher based on the blood pressure recorded closest in time to the assessment of psoriasis severity. RESULTS There was a significant positive dose-response relationship between uncontrolled hypertension and psoriasis severity as objectively determined by the affected body surface area in both unadjusted and adjusted analyses that controlled for age, sex, body mass index, smoking and alcohol use status, presence of comorbid conditions, and current use of antihypertensive medications and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 0.97; 95% CI, 0.82-1.14 for mild psoriasis; aOR, 1.20; 95% CI, 0.99-1.45 for moderate psoriasis; and aOR, 1.48; 95% CI, 1.08-2.04 for severe psoriasis; P = .01 for trend). The likelihood of uncontrolled hypertension among psoriasis overall was also increased, although not statistically significantly so (aOR, 1.10; 95% CI, 0.98-1.24). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE Among patients with hypertension, psoriasis was associated with a greater likelihood of uncontrolled hypertension in a dose-dependent manner, with the greatest likelihood observed among those with moderate to severe psoriasis defined by 3% or more of the body surface area affected. Our data suggest a need for more effective blood pressure management, particularly among patients with more severe psoriasis.
Christian-Muslim Relations: A look backwards and A look forwards

At a significant moment in the calendar of one of the two concerned traditions, as the Christian community enters the second millennium of its history, this article looks back over the history of the relationship between Christians and Muslims and selects some examples of defining moments in the relationship. These examples illustrate the wide variety of attitudes towards and perceptions of the other which are evident in history. The article then attempts to look forward and outline some features which are desirable for the future study of Christian-Muslim relations.
High silicon steel sheet realizing excellent high frequency reactor performance

JFE Steel has developed two types of high silicon steel sheets suitable for high frequency applications, JFE Super Core “JNEX-Core” and “JNHF-Core. ” In this paper, the magnetic properties of JNEX and JNHF are compared with those of thin-gauge grain-oriented electrical steel sheets and iron-based amorphous, which are representative high frequency materials. High frequency reactors were manufactured using each of these materials, and their reactor performance was examined. As results, it was found that JNHF can realize low loss performance in high frequency reactors, as it shows little deterioration in core loss as a result of the core manufacturing process, and can also improve the DC bias characteristics of high frequency reactors, while JNEX makes it possible to realize a large reduction in audible noise in high frequency reactors due to its excellent magnetostriction characteristic. Finally, this paper describes the result that investigated the workability of JNEX and JNHF.
Genetic correlation of exercise with heart rate and respiratory sinus arrhythmia.

PURPOSE A twin design was used to test whether the association between exercise behavior and heart rate and the association between exercise behavior and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) derive from a common genetic factor. METHODS Data were available from 157 adolescent (aged 13-22) and 208 middle-aged twin pairs (aged 35-62), divided into five sex by zygosity groups (male and female monozygotic twin pairs, and dizygotic twin pairs of same or opposite sex). Exercise behavior was assessed as the average weekly METs spent on sports activities or other vigorous activities in leisure time (sportMETS) in the last 3 months. RSA and heart period (HP) were assessed in the time domain from the combined ECG and respiration signals. RESULTS Heritability estimates were 16% and 29% for RSA, 64% and 68% for HP, and 79% and 41% for sportMETS in young and middle-aged twins, respectively. A significant association was found between RSA and sportMETS (0.17) in the adolescent twins that derived entirely from a common genetic factor. No association was found between sportMETS and RSA in the older twins. A significant association was found between HP and sportMETS in both adolescent (0.35) and middle-aged (0.18) twins. A large contribution of common genetic factors to these associations was found amounting to 84% and 88% in the young and middle-aged twins, respectively. CONCLUSIONS Although the results of this study do not preclude causal effects of exercise on RSA and heart rate, they show that the association between exercise and these cardiovascular risk factors largely derives from a common genetic factor.
Safety and immunological responses to human mesenchymal stem cell therapy in difficult-to-treat HIV-1-infected patients

Objective:HAART largely decreases morbidity and mortality in chronic HIV-1-infected patients, but immune nonresponders (INRs) with full viral suppression still fail to reverse the immune deficiency. This study evaluated the safety and immunological responses of human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) therapy in HIV-1-infected INRs. Design and Methods:A total of 13 HIV-1-infected INRs were enrolled in this pilot prospectively open-labeled controlled clinical trial. Seven patients were administered three umbilical cord-MSC transfusions at 1-month interval during 12-months of follow-up, whereas six control patients were treated with saline in parallel. Immunological parameters were monitored in these patients throughout the trial. Results:All patients tolerated the umbilical cord-MSC transfusions well throughout the trial. The umbilical cord-MSC transfusions preferentially increased circulating naive and central memory CD4 T-cell counts and restored HIV-1-specific IFN-&ggr; and IL-2 production in the INRs. These enhancements in immune reconstitution were also associated with the reduction of systemic immune activation and inflammation in vivo. Conclusions:umbilical cord-MSC transfusions are well tolerated and can efficiently improve host immune reconstitution in INRs, suggesting that such treatments may be used as a novel immunotherapeutic approach to reversing immune deficiency in HIV-1-infected INRs (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT01213186).
Understanding Synaptogenesis and Functional Connectome in C. elegans by Imaging Technology

Formation of functional synapses is a fundamental process for establishing neural circuits and ultimately for expressing complex behavior. Extensive research has interrogated how such functional synapses are formed and how synapse formation contributes to the generation of neural circuitry and behavior. The nervous system of Caenorhabditis elegans, due to its relatively simple structure, the transparent body, and tractable genetic system, has been adapted as an excellent model to investigate synapses and the functional connectome. Advances in imaging technology together with the improvement of genetically encoded molecular tools enabled us to visualize synapses and neural circuits of the animal model, which provide insights into our understanding of molecules and their signaling pathways that mediate synapse formation and neuronal network modulation. Here, we review synaptogenesis in active zones and the mapping of local connectome in C. elegans nervous system whose understandings have been extended by the advances in imaging technology along with the genetic molecular tools.
Exploring Sparsity in Recurrent Neural Networks

Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN) are widely used to solve a variety of problems and as the quantity of data and the amount of available compute have increased, so have model sizes. The number of parameters in recent state-of-the-art networks makes them hard to deploy, especially on mobile phones and embedded devices. The challenge is due to both the size of the model and the time it takes to evaluate it. In order to deploy these RNNs efficiently, we propose a technique to reduce the parameters of a network by pruning weights during the initial training of the network. At the end of training, the parameters of the network are sparse while accuracy is still close to the original dense neural network. The network size is reduced by 8x and the time required to train the model remains constant. Additionally, we can prune a larger dense network to achieve better than baseline performance while still reducing the total number of parameters significantly. Pruning RNNs reduces the size of the model and can also help achieve significant inference time speed-up using sparse matrix multiply. Benchmarks show that using our technique model size can be reduced by 90% and speed-up is around 2x to 7x.
Preschoolers' memory monitoring: Feeling-of-knowing judgments.

CULTICE, JOAN C. ; SOMERVILLE, SUSAN C. ; and WELLMAN, HENRY M. Preschoolers' Memory Monitoring: Feeling-of-Knowing Judgments. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1983, 54, 1480-1486. The memory-monitoring abilities of 4and 5-year-olds were investigated using a recall-failure, judgment, recognition sequence involving personal names. Children were shown color photographs of other children and adults, varying in familiarity, and asked initially to recall their names. Feeling-of-knowing judgments and judgments about whether the child had seen the person were obtained in all cases where naming failed. Both types of judgment were found to predict subsequent recognition performance, indicating accurate memory monitoring. Signal detection analyses revealed sensitivity and lack of bias in the monitoring activities of both age groups. These results demonstrated that preschoolers possess basic monitoring abilities that are important for the development of subsequent skills such as the allocation of mnemonic effort.