Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Vernon Young and the development of current knowledge in protein and amino acid nutrition Vernon Young 1937–2004

Vernon Young, undoubtedly the best-known and most highly honoured nutritionist globally of his generation and a unique personality in the history of nutrition, died 30 March 2004 of complications from renal cancer. He was 66. At the time of his death he held posts at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Tufts University, and was Director of the Mass Spectrometry Facility at Shriners Burns Institute, Boston. His many honours and prizes started in 1973 with the Mead-Johnson Award from the American Institute of Nutrition, included the BristolMyers Squibb/Mead Johnson Award for Distinguished Achievement in Nutrition Research in 1995, the Danone International Prize for Nutrition in 1997 and most recently the Conrad Elvehjem Award from the American Society for Nutritional Sciences in 2003. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences USA in 1990 and to the Institute of Medicine in 1993 in recognition of his scientific accomplishments in the field of human nutrition. In 2001, he was named to the Board of Directors of Nestlé Corporation, which sought his nutritional expertise. Vernon was born in Rhyl, North Wales on 15 November 1937, but lived in Cardiff from an early age. His twin sister says that his interests in agriculture developed during his visits to an uncle’s farm in Nottinghamshire. He studied agriculture at Reading (BSc 1959) and Cambridge (postgraduate diploma 1960). He moved to the University of California at Davis in 1960 to gain his PhD in 1965 for work on Ca and P homeostasis in sheep, moving to MIT to work with Nevin Scrimshaw and meeting Janice his wifeto-be that same year. His work was characterised by three main interests; human protein and amino acid metabolism and requirements, nutrition and ageing and nutrient bioavailability. His output was quite remarkable (especially given two triple bypass operations), just short of 600 full-length peer-reviewed papers, book chapters and reviews, more than one paper per month for 42 years and at his peak in 1980 nearly one paper per week (Fig. 1). He was a man who lived for his work and thought about little else apart from his wife Janice and his five children. Throughout this work I have had very similar interests, closely following Vernon’s work having first met him in the late 1960s when a life-long friendship was established with him and his wife. This was notwithstanding the lively debate which characterised our scientific relationship. In what follows I have made no attempt to present a comprehensive review of his work, instead presenting a personal and selective view of his major interests in the context of the development of our understanding of protein and amino acid nutrition.
Flagellin from Recombinant Attenuated Salmonella enterica Serovar Typhimurium Reveals a Fundamental Role in Chicken Innate Immunity

ABSTRACT Recombinant attenuated Salmonella vaccines have been extensively studied, with a focus on eliciting specific immune responses against foreign antigens. However, very little is known about the innate immune responses, particularly the role of flagellin, in the induction of innate immunity triggered by recombinant attenuated Salmonella in chickens. In the present report, we describe two Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium vaccine strains, wild-type (WT) or flagellin-deficient (flhD) Salmonella, both expressing the fusion protein (F) gene of Newcastle disease virus. We examined the bacterial load and spatiotemporal kinetics of expression of inflammatory cytokine, chemokine, and Toll-like receptor 5 (TLR5) genes in the cecum, spleen, liver, and heterophils following oral immunization of chickens with the two Salmonella strains. The flhD mutant exhibited an enhanced ability to establish systemic infection compared to the WT. In contrast, the WT strain induced higher levels of interleukin-1β (IL-1β), CXCLi2, and TLR5 mRNAs in cecum, the spleen, and the heterophils than the flhD mutant at different times postinfection. Collectively, the present data reveal a fundamental role of flagellin in the innate immune responses induced by recombinant attenuated Salmonella vaccines in chickens that should be considered for the rational design of novel vaccines for poultry.
Familial Clustering of Chronic Kidney Disease

The incidence and prevalence rates of most forms of chronic kidney disease (CKD) had steadily been increasing for the past 30 years, although these rates now appear to have reached a plateau. It is clear that an individual’s likelihood of developing progressive CKD results from complex interactions between multiple genetic and environmental factors. Familial clustering of CKD and end‐stage renal disease (ESRD) is observed among all the common etiologies of nephropathy. This article reviews the epidemiology of the familial clustering of kidney disease, as well as potential environmental and genetic contributors. The related impact of familial clustering of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and the impact of CVD on the current epidemic of ESRD is also discussed. It is imperative that nephrologists and primary care physicians recognize that individuals who have relatives with advanced nephropathy are themselves at high risk for subsequent kidney disease, proteinuria, and atherosclerotic cardiovascular complications. Until kidney failure genes are identified, it is reasonable to use “family history” (FH) as a surrogate marker for risk of future nephropathy. The detection of kidney disease genes holds great promise for detecting novel pathways that initiate renal fibrosis and lead to progressive loss of renal function. These pathways are likely to offer new therapies that may slow or halt development of chronic kidney failure.
Hemifacial spasm: 20-year surgical experience, lesson learned

Background: Hemifacial spasm is characterized by unilateral, paroxysmal, and involuntary contractions. It is more common in women on the left side. Its evolution is progressive, and it rarely improves without treatment. Methods: Microvascular decompressions (N = 226) were performed in 194 Hispanic patients (May 1992–May 2011). Outcomes were evaluated on a 4-point scale: Excellent (complete remission); good (1–2 spasms/day); bad (>2 spasms/day); and recurrence (relapse after initial excellent/good response). Results: Most patients were female (n = 123); 71 were male. Mean (±SD) age was 49.4 (±11.7) years; age at onset, 43.9 (±11.9) years; time to surgery, 5.7 (±4.7) years. The left side was affected in 114 patients. Typical syndrome occurred in 177 (91.2%); atypical in 17 (8.8%). Findings were primarily vascular compression (n = 185 patients): Anterior inferior cerebellar artery (n = 147), posterior inferior cerebellar artery (n = 12), basilar artery (n = 10), superior cerebellar artery (n = 8), and 2 vessels (n = 8); 9 had no compression. Postsurgical results were primarily excellent (79.9% [n = 155]; good, 4.6% [n = 9]; bad, 15.5% [n = 30]), with recurrence in 21 (10.8%) at mean 51-month (range, 1–133 months) follow-up. Complications included transient hearing loss and facial palsy. Conclusions: The anterior inferior cerebellar artery is involved in most cases of hemifacial spasm. Failure to improve postsurgically after 1 week warrants reoperation. Sex, side, and onset are unrelated to treatment response. Microvascular decompression is the preferred treatment. It is minimally invasive, nondestructive, and achieves the best long-term results, with minor morbidity. To our knowledge, this series is the largest to date on a Hispanic population.
Temporal models of streaming social media data

There are significant temporal dependencies between online behaviour and occurring real world activities. Particularly in text modelling, these are usually ignored or at best dealt with in overly simplistic ways such as assuming smooth variation with time. Social media is a new data source which present collective behaviour much more richly than traditional sources, such as newswire, with a finer time granularity, timely reflection of activities, multiple modalities and large volume. Analysing temporal patterns in this data is important in order to discover newly emerging topics, periodic occurrences and correlation or causality to real world indicators or human behaviour patterns. With these opportunities come many challenges, both engineering (i.e.\ data volume and processing) and algorithmic, namely the inconsistency and short length of the messages and the presence of large amounts of irrelevant messages to our goal. Equipped with a better understanding of the dynamics of the complex temporal dependencies, tasks such as classification can be augmented to provide temporally aware responses. In this thesis we model the temporal dynamics of social media data. We first show that temporality is an important characteristic of this type of data. Further comparisons and correlation to real world indicators show that this data gives a timely reflection of real world events. Our goal is to use these variations to discover emerging or recurring user behaviours. We consider both the use of words and user behaviour in social media. With these goals in mind, we adapt existing and build novel machine learning techniques. These span a wide range of models: from Markov models to regularised regression models and from evolutionary spectral clustering which models smooth temporal variation to Gaussian Process regression which can identify more complex temporal patterns. We introduce approaches which discover and predict words, topics or behaviours that change over time or occur with some regularity. These are modeled for the first time in the NLP literature by using Gaussian Processes. We demonstrate that we can effectively pick out patterns, including periodicities, and achieve state-of-the-art forecasting results. We show that this performance gain transfers to improve tasks which do not take temporal information in account. Further analysed is how temporal variation in the text can be used to discover and track new content. We develop a model that exploits the variation in word co-occurrences for clustering over time. Different collection and processing tools, as well as several datasets of social media data have been developed and published as open-source software. The thesis posits that temporal analysis of data, from social media in particular, provides us with insights into real-world dynamics. Incorporating this temporal information into other applications can benefit standard tasks in natural language processing and beyond.
H-NS regulates OmpF expression through micF antisense RNA in Escherichia coli

H-NS is a major constituent of the Escherichia coli nucleoid. Expression of the major outer membrane proteins, OmpC and OmpF, is influenced by hns mutations such that OmpC expression increases whereas OmpF expression decreases irrespective of the osmolarity of the medium (K. A. Graeme-Cook, G. May, E. Bremer, and C. F. Higgins, Mol. Microbiol. 3:1287-1294, 1989). In this study we show that the effect of an hns::neo mutation on OmpF expression is largely diminished in a deletion mutant carrying the micF gene that encodes the ompF mRNA-specific antisense RNA. In addition, the micF transcript levels in the hns::neo mutation are high compared with transcript levels in wild-type cells. On the basis of these results, we provide evidence for a link between OmpC/OmpF expression and the regulatory function of H-NS. We suggest that H-NS most likely affects OmpC expression directly at the level of transcription, but OmpF expression is indirectly regulated by micF antisense RNA.
Pandemic influenza: Studying the lessons of history

Next year will mark the 90th anniversary of the great influenza pandemic of 1918, an event widely considered to be one of the greatest natural disasters in human history. Historians estimate that ≥50 million people died worldwide, including >450,000 documented deaths in the United States alone (1). Since then, the 20th century witnessed two more influenza pandemics, although fortunately none comparable in ferocity to the 1918 pandemic (2). Pandemics—epidemics so large that virtually the entire world is affected—have occurred several times in each of the last several centuries. Most virologists therefore believe that it is inevitable that we will experience at least one pandemic in this century, and very likely more. However, if a pandemic were to strike in the near future, it is likely that vaccine would not be available for at least 4–6 months (3). Antivirals, if effective against the pandemic strain, would probably also be in short supply. Few of these measures can be applied at pandemic scale, in which half the population of the world would likely be infected over the course of a year or more. We would be left with other measures, now termed “nonpharmaceutical interventions,” to stave off the worst effects of a pandemic until a vaccine could be produced and widely administered (4, 5). Because many of these interventions, such as closing schools or shutting down mass transit, could be very disruptive to society, it is important to use effective measures in a rational way. But which measures are most effective, and how should they be applied? Do any nonpharmaceutical interventions actually help? Until now, there has been very little systematic examination of these questions. However, different U.S. cities showed marked differences in influenza attack rates and mortality in 1918. Some cities, St. Louis for example, appeared to have weathered the …
Significance of cardiovascular hypertrophy in the development and maintenance of hypertension.

The amplifier properties associated with the structural changes in the heart and resistance vessels in chronic hypertension together play a major role in maintaining the elevated blood pressure (BP) in chronic hypertension, which is greater than that of the initiating cause. In patients with primary hypertension, long-term antihypertensive drug therapy causes substantial regression of the structural changes, as assessed by normalization of the total peripheral resistance (including the nonautonomic component) and of the left ventricular (LV) mass. Reversal of LV hypertrophy (LVH) took considerably longer than reversal of the vascular changes and the more complete the reversal of LVH, the slower the rate of redevelopment of hypertension upon cessation of treatment. We observed no change in sympathetic activity or in renin-angiotensin-aldosterone levels during the redevelopment phase and we hypothesized that the cardiovascular amplifiers played a role in pathogenesis. This hypothesis was examined in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs), where the vascular amplifier properties were developed substantially by 4 weeks of age, i.e., before the development of hypertension, whereas LVH occurred pari passu the rise in BP. When young SHRs were treated with enalapril for brief periods, there was almost complete long-term regression of vascular amplifier properties, but attenuation of LVH and hypertension were both smaller and more transient. In 4-week-old SHRs, complete abolition of sympathetic activity had a minimal effect on vascular amplifier properties, but affected LVH. Our findings suggest that LVH is as important in both the development and maintenance of hypertension as the structurally determined amplifier properties of the resistance vessels.
Comparative energy content and amino acid digestibility of barley obtained from diverse sources fed to growing pigs

Objective Two experiments were conducted to determine the content of digestible energy (DE) and metabolizable energy (ME) as well as the apparent ileal digestibility (AID) and standardized ileal digestibility (SID) of crude protein (CP) and amino acids (AA) in barley grains obtained from Australia, France or Canada. Methods In Exp. 1, 18 growing barrows (Duroc×Landrace×Yorkshire; 31.5±3.2 kg) were individually placed in stainless-steel metabolism crates (1.4×0.7×0.6 m) and randomly allotted to 1 of 3 test diets. In Exp. 2, eight crossbred pigs (30.9±1.8 kg) were allotted to a replicate 3×4 Youden Square designed experiment with three periods and four diets. Two pigs received each diet during each test period. The diets included one nitrogen-free diet and three test diets. Results The relative amounts of gross energy (GE), CP, and all AA in the Canadian barley were higher than those in Australian and French barley while higher concentrations of neutral detergent fiber, acid detergent fiber, total dietary fiber, insoluble dietary fiber and β-glucan as well as lower concentrations of GE and ether extract were observed in the French barley compared with the other two barley sources. The DE and ME as well as the SID of histidine, isoleucine, leucine and phenylalanine in Canadian barley were higher (p<0.05) than those in French barley but did not differ from Australian barley. Conclusion Differences in the chemical composition, energy content and the SID and AID of AA were observed among barley sources obtained from three countries. The feeding value of barley from Canada and Australia was superior to barley obtained from France which is important information in developing feeding systems for growing pigs where imported grains are used.
Light polymerization during cavity filling: Effect of ‘exposure reciprocity law' and the resulted shrinkage forces on restoration margins

Abstract Objective. To evaluate shrinkage development and marginal integrity of a micro hybrid restorative composite as a function of irradiance. Materials and methods. Linear displacement and shrinkage were measured with custom-made devices for irradiances of 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1600 mW/cm2 at a constant radiant exposure of 16 J/cm2. Marginal adaptation (MA) of composite restorations performed with a self-etch adhesive (Syntac Classic, Ivoclar Vivadent) and a micro hybrid composite (Tetric, Ivoclar Vivadent) was evaluated before and after mechanical loading with 300,000 cycles at 70 N. Results. The highest percentage of MA was attained by the group light cured with an irradiance of 100 mW/cm2 for 160 s. No significant differences were observed between the rest of the groups. Shrinkage development was similar in all groups. Conclusions. For the material tested in this study, the reciprocal relationship between irradiance and time of exposure had no significant effect on restoration margins and shrinkage stress development within the range of 200–1600 mW/cm2 with a constant radiant exposure of 16 J/cm2.
Interventions to improve medication adherence in schizophrenia.

OBJECTIVE Although nonadherence with the antipsychotic medication regimen is a common barrier to the effective treatment for schizophrenia, knowledge is limited about how to improve medication adherence. This systematic literature review examined psychosocial interventions for improving medication adherence, focusing on promising initiatives, reasonable standards for conducting research in this area, and implications for clinical practice. METHOD Studies were identified by computerized searches of MEDLINE and PsychLIT for the years between 1980 and 2000 and by manual searches of relevant bibliographies and conference proceedings. Key articles were summarized. RESULTS Thirteen (33%) of 39 identified studies reported significant intervention effects. Although interventions and family therapy programs relying on psychoeducation were common in clinical practice, they were typically ineffective. Concrete problem solving or motivational techniques were common features of successful programs. Interventions targeted specifically to problems of nonadherence were more likely to be effective (55%) than were more broadly based treatment interventions (26%). One-half (four of eight) of the successful interventions not specifically focused on nonadherence involved an array of supportive and rehabilitative community-based services. CONCLUSIONS Psychoeducational interventions without accompanying behavioral components and supportive services are not likely to be effective in improving medication adherence in schizophrenia. Models of community care such as assertive community treatment and interventions based on principles of motivational interviewing are promising. Providing patients with concrete instructions and problem-solving strategies, such as reminders, self-monitoring tools, cues, and reinforcements, is useful. Problems in adherence are recurring, and booster sessions are needed to reinforce and consolidate gains.
Tactile perception of computer-derived formant patterns from voiced speech.

An experimental arrangement is described which is capable of utilizing the output of a variety of computer programs for the analysis of the acoustic speech signal and assigning the extracted parameters to a tactile display in a flexible manner. A study is reported which investigated the tactile presentation of the frequencies of the two lowest formants of vowels and vowel‐like speech sounds on a matrix of 15‐by‐15 point stimulators. Six subjects learned two pronunciations of 15 words to an average accuracy of 83% and 70%. Generalization tests to unfamiliar pronunciations by the same speaker resulted in an accuracy of 54%, and tests to three different speakers yielded a score of 35% correct responses. Analysis of the errors indicated the same phonemic confusions accounted for a large proportion of the errors in all pronunciations, suggesting some specific limitations of this two‐formant tactile display.
Serum Testosterone Levels in Males with Alzheimer's Disease

This study aimed to investigate whether there are differences in serum testosterone levels between male patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and cognitively normal male controls. Testosterone and sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG) levels were measured from 14 patients with mild to moderate AD and 16 age‐matched control males. The AD patients had higher levels of serum total (P = 0.02) and free testosterone (P < 0.001), and higher free androgen index (FAI) (P = 0.02) compared to controls. No differences were found for the SHBG levels. These data provide no support for hypotheses of (disproportionally) decreased levels of serum testosterone in AD. These data also show that all cognitively normal controls had an FAI below the normal range.