Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MicroRNA-155 Is Required for Clearance of Streptococcus pneumoniae from the Nasopharynx

ABSTRACT Pneumonia caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae is a major cause of death and an economic burden worldwide. S. pneumoniae is an intermittent colonizer of the human upper respiratory tract, and the ability to control asymptomatic colonization determines the likelihood of developing invasive disease. Recognition of S. pneumoniae by resident macrophages via Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR-2) and the macrophage receptor with collagenous structure (MARCO) and the presence of interleukin-17 (IL-17)-secreting CD4+ T cells are required for macrophage recruitment and bacterial clearance. Despite the fact that the primary cellular effectors needed for bacterial clearance have been identified, much of the underlying regulatory mechanisms are unknown. Herein, we demonstrate that the small, noncoding RNA microRNA-155 (mir-155) is critical for the effective clearance of S. pneumoniae. Our studies show that mir-155-deficient mice maintain the ability to prevent acute invasive pneumococcal infection but have significantly higher bacterial burdens following colonization, independently of macrophage recognition by TLR-2, MARCO expression, or bactericidal capacity. The observed defects in bacterial clearance parallel reduced IL-17A and gamma interferon CD4+ T-cell responses in vivo, lower IL-17A mRNA levels in the nasopharynx, and a reduced capacity to induce Th17 cell polarization. Given that knockout mice are also limited in the capacity to generate high-titer S. pneumoniae-specific antibodies, we conclude that mir-155 is a critical mediator of the cellular effectors needed to clear primary and secondary S. pneumoniae colonizations.
Intellectual Property Law and Public Sponsorship of R & D in a Schumpeterian Growth Model with Fundamental and Applied R & D

We investigate, within a Schumpeterian growth model, how intellectual property (IP) law and public sponsorship of research and development (R? &? D) activities may provide appropriate incentives simultaneously to fundamental (or basic) research and to applied R&D. In order to consider and to distinguish between these two types of research, we merge the seminal models of Romer [1990] and Aghion and Howitt [1992]? : knowledge accumulation stems from a series of inventions (horizontal / fundamental knowledge accumulation) and from a succession of innovations (vertical / applied knowledge accumulation) building upon each of these inventions. Then, we study a decentralized economy in which the creative destruction mechanism does not deter investments in fundamental research through an IP law design that induces profit-division between an inventor and his following innovators. We show that providing optimal incentives to fundamental research requires, not only a design of IP law that ensures a sufficient positive transfer from innovators to inventors, but also public policies in form of subsidies supporting both fundamental research and applied R? &? D activities.
Genetic characterization of Bagarius species using cytochrome c oxidase I and cytochrome b genes

Abstract In this study, we first inferred the genetic variability of two Bagarius bagarius populations collected from Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers of India using two mtDNA markers. Sequence analysis of COI gene did not show significant differences between two populations whereas cytochrome b gene showed significant differences between two populations. Followed by, genetic relationship of B. bagarius and B. yarrielli was analyzed using COI and cytochrome b gene and the results showed a higher level genetic variation between two species. The present study provides support for the suitability of COI and cytochrome b genes for the identification of B. bagarius and B. yarrielli.
Iron bioavailability of cocoa powder as determined by the Hb regeneration efficiency method

Fe deficiency is a public-health problem worldwide, and effective measures for preventing Fe deficiency are needed. The aim of the present study was to determine the bioavailability of Fe in cocoa using the Hb regeneration efficiency (HRE) method. Thirty-five F344/N male weanling rats were fed a low-Fe diet for 4 weeks to deplete body Fe stores. Then, four groups of seven animals each were repleted for 20 d using a modified AIN-93G diet fortified with ferrous sulphate, ferric citrate or two brands of cocoa powder to provide a total dietary Fe concentration of 20 mg/kg. As a negative control, seven rats were maintained on the low-Fe diet. The HRE were 0·733, 0·350, 0·357 and 0·336 for ferrous sulphate, ferric citrate and the two brands of cocoa powder, respectively. The relative biological values (RBV), defined as the ratio of the sample HRE to that of ferrous sulphate, were 0·478, 0·488 and 0·459 for ferric citrate and the two brands of cocoa powder, respectively. The Fe bioavailability of cocoa was significantly less than that of ferrous sulphate and was similar to that of ferric citrate. The difference in Fe bioavailability between the two brands of cocoa powder was negligible. When the negative control was used to correct the data, estimates of the RBV derived from Hb gain were similar to those derived from the HRE. These results suggest that cocoa is a significant source of moderately bioavailable Fe.
Dipeptide transport and hydrolysis in isolated loops of rat small intestine: effects of stereospecificity.

1. Isolated jejunal loops of rat small intestine were perfused by a single pass of bicarbonate Krebs‐Ringer solution containing either D‐ or L‐phenylalanine or one of eight dipeptides formed from D‐ or L‐alanine plus D‐ or L‐phenylalanine. 2. At 0.5 mM L‐phenylalanyl‐L‐alanine increased serosal phenylalanine appearance to forty times the control rate giving a value similar to that found with 0.5 mM free L‐phenylalanine. No serosal dipeptide could be detected. 3. Perfusions with the two mixed dipeptides with N‐terminal D‐amino acids (D‐alanyl‐L‐phenylalanine and D‐phenylalanyl‐L‐alanine) gave rise to the appearance of intact dipeptides in the serosal secretions although there were substantial differences in their rates of absorption and subsequent hydrolysis. 4. L‐Alanyl‐D‐phenylalanine was absorbed from the lumen three to five times as fast as L‐phenylalanyl‐D‐alanine. At 1 mM L‐alanyl‐D‐phenylalanine transferred D‐phenylalanine across the epithelial layer at more than seven times the rate found with the same concentration of the free D‐amino acid. 5. Perfusions with D‐alanyl‐D‐phenylalanine or D‐phenylalanyl‐D‐alanine showed that these two dipeptides are poor substrates for both transport and hydrolysis by the rat small intestine. 6. Analysis of mucosal tissue extracts after perfusion with the two mixed dipeptides with N‐terminal D‐amino acids revealed that both dipeptides were accumulated within the mucosa and suggested that exit across the basolateral membrane was rate limiting for transepithelial dipeptide transport.
Multicultural Education for Young Children through Information Books

This study aims to determine the impact of information book-based multicultural education for young children in terms of their knowledge and attitudes towards other cultures and their positive feelings towards other countries. Fifty-nine five-year-old children were placed into three groups: an information book-based multicultural education group, photograph-based multicultural education group, and control group. To implement multicultural education for the information book-based group, information books were produced on the top five countries of origin of parents of students from multiethnic families in Korea. For the photograph-based group, photographs from the same five countries were used to implement multicultural education. The study found that, compared to the other two groups, the young children from the group that used illustrated information books had greater positive changes with respect to knowledge and attitude towards other cultures and positive feelings towards other countries.
Study of five cell salvage machines in coronary artery surgery

Summary We evaluated the effectiveness, ease of use and safety of five machines for blood salvage during coronary artery surgery. All were equally effective in concentrating red cells. We measured haemoglobin, packed cell volume, free haemoglobin, white cells, neutrophil elastase, platelets, thrombin–antithrombin complex (TAT), prothrombin activation peptide F1·2, fibrin degradation product (d‐dimers), tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) and heparin in wound blood, in washed cell suspensions and in a unit of bank blood prepared for each patient. All machines were equally safe and easy to use and were equally effective in removing heparin and the physiological components measured. There were no adverse effects on patients. Clotting factors are severely depleted both in salvaged blood, even before washing, and in bank blood. Cell savers are a valuable adjunct to coronary artery surgery, but careful monitoring of coagulation is required when the volumes of either bank blood or salvaged blood are large.
Convergence in Tourism Management Research: A Bibliometric Analysis

The tourism sector has correspondingly attracted a great deal of interest from many researchers with particular focuses falling on tourism management and witnessing exponential growth in the research on this field. Given this, the objective of this current study involves producing a chart of these scientific publications, identifying their intellectual structure and the research trends in tourism management. Our research thus seeks to contribute towards: (i) mapping the intellectual structure of research on tourism management as depicted in the academic literature, (ii) identifying the fundamental contributions made by the tourism management research field, (iii) determining the lines of research constituting its intellectual structure, (iv) identifying the scientific journals with the greatest impact on this area and (v) identifying the geographic distribution of knowledge, by universities and countries, and the collaborative structures.
Electronic health record surveillance algorithms facilitate the detection of transfusion‐related pulmonary complications

BACKGROUND: Transfusion‐related acute lung injury (TRALI) and transfusion‐associated circulatory overload (TACO) are leading causes of transfusion‐related mortality. Notably, poor syndrome recognition and underreporting likely result in an underestimate of their true attributable burden. We aimed to develop accurate electronic health record–based screening algorithms for improved detection of TRALI/transfused acute lung injury (ALI) and TACO.
Histologic Subclassification of Nodular Sclerosis Hodgkin's Disease

Nodular sclerosis (NS) Hodgkin's disease was pathologically subdivided by cellular composition and degree of fibrosis in a series of 49 children admitted to the Istituto Nazionale Tumori of Milan between 1967 and 1977. NS showed lymphocytic predominance (LP) in 26 cases, mixed cellularity (MC) in 16 cases, and lymphocytic depletion (LD) in 7 cases. « Early fibrosis » (EF) and « advanced fibrosis » (AF) subgroups in 28 and 21 cases, respectively, were observed. Of the cases with LP 76.9 % (20/26) presented with stages I and II disease, compared with 37.5 % (6/16) and 28.6 % (2/7) of the MC and LD subgroups, respectively. LP and EF subgroups coexisted in 12 of 28 (42.9 %) patients at stages I and II. Predominance of lymphocytes, rarity of lacunar cells, and a mild degree of fibrosis were associated with early stages of disease. This data confirms that subclassification of NS is feasible.
Mycobacterium simiae Outbreak Associated With a Hospital Water Supply

Abstract Objective: Mycobacterium simiae is found primarily in the southwestern United States, Israel, and Cuba, with tap water as its suspected reservoir. Our institution saw an increase in M. simiae isolates in 2001. An investigation into possible contaminated water sources was undertaken. Design: Environmental cultures were performed from water taps in the microbiology laboratory, patient rooms, points in the flow of water to the hospital, and patients' homes. Patient and environmental M. simiae were compared by PFGE. Setting: Military treatment facility in San Antonio, Texas. Patients: All patients with cultures positive for M. simiae between January 2001 and April 2002. Medical records were reviewed. Results: M. simiae was recovered from water samples from the hospital, patients' home showers, and a well supplying the hospital. A single PFGE clone was predominant among water isolates (9 of 10) and available patient isolates (14 of 19). There was an association between exposure to hospital water and pulmonary samples positive for the clonal M. simiae strain (P = .0018). Only 3 of 22 culture-positive patients met criteria for M. simiae pulmonary disease. Of them, two had indistinguishable M. simiae strains from tap water to which they were routinely exposed. Conclusions: This represents an outbreak of M. simiae colonization with one nosocomial infection. It is only the second time that M. simiae has been recovered from hospital tap water and its first presentation in municipal water. This study raises issues about the need and feasibility of eliminating or avoiding exposure to M. simiae from tap water.
Spike timing-dependent conduction delay learning model classifying spatio-temporal spike patterns

Precise spike timing is considered to play a fundamental role in communication and signal processing in biological neural networks. Understanding such mechanism contributes to both deep understanding of biological system and development of engineering applications such as efficient computational architectures. However, the biological mechanism which adjusts and maintains the spike timing still remains unclear. Previous studies have proposed algorithms adjusting synaptic efficacy and axonal conduction delay so that the spike timings get close to the desired spike timings in supervised manner. Supervised learning always requires desired spike timings as teacher signal, and thus it should not be dominant in biological system, which is considered to adapt to environment without teacher. This study proposes a spike timing-dependent learning model adjusting synaptic efficacy and axonal conduction delay in both unsupervised and supervised manners. The proposed learning algorithm approximates Expectation-Maximization algorithm and can classify the input data coded into spatio-temporal spike patterns. Furthermore, the proposed learning algorithm agrees with various results of existing biological experiments such as spike timing-dependent plasticity, and therefore it could be a good candidate of a model of biological delay learning.
Optimal Export Policy with Upstream Price Competition

We constructed a third-market model with a vertical trading structure in which input suppliers engage in the homogeneous price competition `a la Dastidar (1995). We show that in the case of downstream Bertrand competition, a non-monotonic export policy may appear, that is, the optimal export policy can change like a tax-subsidy-tax as the degree of product-substitutability rises. We also show that when the number of domestic input suppliers is at an intermediate level, the conventional result in which the optimal policy is an export subsidy (tax) if downstream is Cournot (Bertrand) rivalry remains. We further discuss welfare comparisons between downstream Cournot and Bertrand cases.
Differential Contribution of Cortical and Subcortical Visual Pathways to the Implicit Processing of Emotional Faces: A tDCS Study

The visual processing of emotional faces is subserved by both a cortical and a subcortical route. To investigate the specific contribution of these two functional pathways, two groups of neurologically healthy humans were tested using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). In Experiment 1, participants received sham and active cathodal-inhibitory tDCS over the left occipital cortex, while, in control Experiment 2, participants received sham and active cathodal-inhibitory tDCS over the vertex, to exclude any unspecific effect of tDCS. After tDCS, participants performed a go/no-go task responding to happy or fearful target faces presented in the left visual field, while backwardly masked faces (emotionally congruent, incongruent, or neutral) were concurrently displayed in the right visual field. After both suppressing activity in the vertex (Experiment 2) and sham stimulation (Experiment 1 and 2) a reduction of reaction times was found for pairs of emotionally congruent stimuli. However, after suppressing the activity in the left occipital cortex, the congruency-dependent response facilitation disappeared, while a specific facilitative affect was evident when masked fearful faces were coupled with happy target faces. These results parallel the performances of hemianopic patients and suggest that when the occipital cortex is damaged or inhibited, and the visual processing for emotional faces is mainly dependent on the activation of the “low road” subcortical route, fearful faces represent the only visually processed stimuli capable of facilitating a behavioral response. This effect might reflect an adaptive mechanism implemented by the brain to quickly react to potential threats before their conscious identification.
The Function of Guanylate Cyclase 1 and Guanylate Cyclase 2 in Rod and Cone Photoreceptors*

Retinal guanylate cyclases 1 and 2 (GC1 and GC2) are responsible for synthesis of cyclic GMP in rods and cones, but their individual contributions to phototransduction are unknown. We report here that the deletion of both GC1 and GC2 rendered rod and cone photoreceptors nonfunctional and unstable. In the rod outer segments of GC double knock-out mice, guanylate cyclase-activating proteins 1 and 2, and cyclic GMP phosphodiesterase were undetectable, although rhodopsin and transducin α-subunit were mostly unaffected. Outer segment membranes of GC1–/– and GC double knock-out cones were destabilized and devoid of cone transducin (α- and γ-subunits), cone phosphodiesterase, and G protein-coupled receptor kinase 1, whereas cone pigments were present at reduced levels. Real time reverse transcription-PCR analyses demonstrated normal RNA transcript levels for the down-regulated proteins, indicating that down-regulation is posttranslational. We interpret these results to demonstrate an intrinsic requirement of GCs for stability and/or transport of a set of membrane-associated phototransduction proteins.
Prevention of Metastatic Pancreatic Cancer Growth in vivo by Induction of Apoptosis with Genistein, a Naturally Occurring Isoflavonoid

Introduction The critical need for novel therapeutic approaches to pancreatic cancer treatment is clear. Genistein, a naturally occurring isoflavonoid, is active against certain solid malignancies, but its effect on pancreatic cancer is unknown. Aims To investigate the bioactivity of genistein in experimental pancreatic cancer in vitro and in vivo. Methodology The effect of intraperitoneal genistein administration on local tumor growth and metastatic disease was determined in an orthotopic nude mouse model. Apoptosis in tumor specimens was determined by the terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT)–mediated dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) technique. In vitro, the effect of genistein on cell growth was assessed by cell count and MTT (3-[4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl]-2,5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide) colorimetric assay. Apoptosis was determined in vitro by DNA laddering and annexin-V. Caspase-3 and nuclear factor–&kgr;B activity were measured following genistein treatment. Results In vivo, genistein significantly improved survival, almost completely inhibited metastasis, and increased apoptosis in an orthotopic model of pancreatic cancer. In vitro genistein treatment resulted in apoptosis in all pancreatic cancer cell lines tested, and this appeared to be mediated by activation of caspase-3. Conclusion These findings suggest that the antimetastatic effect of genistein treatment in vivo is mediated by induction of apoptosis. Genistein may have a therapeutic benefit for patients with pancreatic cancer, in particular after surgery, to prevent recurrence of metastatic disease.
Re-visiting the renewable energy – economic growth nexus: empirical evidence from African OPEC countries

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the dynamic relationship between renewable energy and economic growth in African OPEC member countries (Angola, Algeria and Nigeria). Design/methodology/approach The fully modified ordinary least squares technique for heterogeneous cointegrated panels (Pedroni, 2000) is used to estimate the parameters of the model. Findings The study revealed four main findings. First, there is a bidirectional causality between renewable energy and economic growth in the long and the short run. Second, a bidirectional causality exists between non-renewable energy and economic growth in the short and long run. Third, a bidirectional causality exists between CO2 emissions and economic growth. Fourth, a unidirectional causality was also found between CO2 emissions and non-renewable energy consumption with the direction of causality stemming from the consumption of non-renewable energy to CO2 emissions. Practical implications Because renewable consumption enhances growth, OPEC-member Africa countries should encourage investment in modern renewable sources that has high conversion efficiency such as solar, wind and hydro to strengthen their response to mitigating the impacts of climate change. Originality/value This study applies multiple methods to analyze the relationship between renewable energy and economic growth in African OPEC countries.
Evaluation of retinal vessel segmentation methodologies based on combination of vessel centerlines and morphological processing

The categorization of retinal vessels morphological features and the investigation of their branching patterns are used in the process for automated diagnosis and screening of ophthalmologic diseases. Mathematical morphology has been materialized as a proficient technique for quantifying the retinal vasculature in ocular fundus images. In this paper, the performance comparison of two retinal vessel segmentation approaches based on combination of multi scale morphological reconstruction and morphological bit plane slicing with the vessel centerlines is presented. The segmentation accuracy and the processing time are taken as the performance criteria. These approaches are tested on two publicly available databases and results demonstrate that morphological bit plane slicing outperforms other approach in respect of processing time without a significant degradation of sensitivity and specificity.