Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hypomorphic Mutation of the TALE Gene Prep1 (pKnox1) Causes a Major Reduction of Pbx and Meis Proteins and a Pleiotropic Embryonic Phenotype

ABSTRACT The interaction of Prep1 and Pbx homeodomain transcription factors regulates their activity, nuclear localization, and likely, function in development. To understand the in vivo role of Prep1, we have analyzed an embryonic lethal hypomorphic mutant mouse (Prep1i/i). Prep1i/i embryos die at embryonic day 17.5 (E17.5) to birth with an overall organ hypoplasia, severe anemia, impaired angiogenesis, and eye anomalies, particularly in the lens and retina. The anemia correlates with delayed differentiation of erythroid progenitors and may be, at least in part, responsible for intrauterine death. At E14.5, Prep1 is present in fetal liver (FL) cMyb-positive cells, whose deficiency causes a marked hematopoietic phenotype. Prep1 is also localized to FL endothelial progenitors, consistent with the observed angiogenic phenotype. Likewise, at the same gestational day, Prep1 is present in the eye cells that bear Pax6, implicated in eye development. The levels of cMyb and Pax6 in FL and in the retina, respectively, are significantly decreased in Prep1i/i embryos, consistent with the hematopoietic and eye phenotypes. Concomitantly, Prep1 deficiency results in the overall decrease of protein levels of its related family member Meis1 and its partners Pbx1 and Pbx2. As both Prep1 and Meis interact with Pbx, the overall Prep1/Meis-Pbx DNA-binding activity is strongly reduced in whole Prep1i/i embryos and their organs. Our data indicate that Prep1 is an essential gene that acts upstream of and within a Pbx-Meis network that regulates multiple aspects of embryonic development.
Modulation of the Activities of Membrane Enzymes by Cereal Grain Resorcinolic Lipids

Abstract Resorcinolic lipids, amphiphilic compounds from cereal grains show strong effects upon the activity of membrane enzymes. The concentrations for 50% inhibition of erythrocyte membrane acetylcholinesterase were in the range of 18 -90 μᴍ and were dependent on the length of the aliphatic side chain of the homologue and on the modification of hydroxyl groups in the benzene ring. Sulfonation of OH groups resulted in a drastic decrease of the inhibitory potency. The effect of resorcinolic lipids on the activity of Ca2+(calmodulin)-ATPase was the opposite. Up to concentrations of 50 μᴍ alk(en)ylresorcinols stimulated the activity of this enzyme and only slight inhibition (approx. 30%) was observed above 100 μᴍ. The results suggest that the effect of resorcinolic lipids might depend on their ability to alter the bilayer properties. Most probably these compounds decrease the mobility of membrane phospholipid molecules.
Comparison of Benefits on Myocardial Performance of Cellular Cardiomyoplasty with Skeletal Myoblasts and Fibroblasts

Cellular cardiomyoplasty (CCM), or introduction of immature cells into terminally injured heart, can mediate repair of chronically injured myocardium. Several different cell types, ranging from embryonic stem cells to autologous skeletal myoblasts, have been successfully propagated within damaged heart and shown to improve myocardial performance. However, it is unclear if the functional advantages associated with CCM depend upon the use of myogenic cells or if similar results can be seen with other cell types. Thus, we compared indices of regional contractile (systolic) and diastolic myocardial performance following transplantation of either autologous skeletal myoblasts (Mb) or dermal fibroblasts (Fb) into chronically injured rabbit heart. In vivo left ventricular (LV) pressure (P) and regional segment length (SL) were determined in 15 rabbits by micromanometry and sonomicrometry 1 week following LV cryoinjury (CRYO) and again 3 weeks after autologous skeletal Mb or dermal Fb transplantation. Quantification of systolic performance was based on the linear regression of regional stroke work and end-diastolic (ED) SL. Regional diastolic properties were assessed using the curvilinear relationships between LVEDP and strain (ε) as well as LVEDP and EDSL. At study termination, cellular engraftment was characterized histologically in a blinded fashion. Indices of diastolic performance were improved following CCM with either Mb or Fb. However, only Mb transplantation improved systolic performance; Fb transfer actually resulted in a significant decline in systolic performance. These data suggest that both contractile and noncontractile cells can improve regional material properties or structural integrity of terminally injured heart, as reflected by improvements in diastolic performance. However, only Mb improved systolic performance in the damaged region, supporting the role of myogenic cells in augmenting contraction. Further studies are needed to define the mechanism by which these effects occur and to evaluate the long-term safety and efficacy of CCM with any cell type.
Prophylactic Cervical Cerclage versus Vaginal Progesterone in Triplet Pregnancy—A Randomized Prospective Comparative Study

Objective: To compare the effect of prophylactic cervical cerclage with vaginal progesterone in triplet (with normal cervical measurements) to evaluate its efficacy in improving pregnancy outcome and prolonging gestation. Design: A randomized prospective comparative study. Setting: At Tanta university hospitals and outpatient clinics. Patients: 51 selected cases of triplet pregnancy were recruited and classified into 2 groups randomly, progesterone group (n = 28 cases) and cerclage group (n = 23 cases). Interventions: Transvaginal ultrasound was done for number of fetuses, viability, cervical measurements, vaginal progesterone for progesterone starting at 20 weeks, and applying McDonald cerclage at 14 - 16 weeks for cerclage group. Main Outcome Measures: Time of occurrence of preterm labor, premature rupture of membranes (PROM), stitch removal, gestational age at delivery, mode of delivery, and neonatal complications. Results: Preterm labor occurred in 9, 8 cases and PROM in 4, and 3 cases in progesterone and cerclage groups respectively. The mean gestational age was 33.57 ± 2.97 and 31.74 ± 3.21 weeks in progesterone and cerclage groups; mean birth weight was 2049 ± 591 gm, and 1686 ± 512 gm in progesterone and cerclage groups respectively; Apgar score 7 or more was found in 52 (60.8%), and 39 (56.3%) newborn in progesterone and cerclage group respectively. Perinatal mortality was lower in progesterone group 26.1% (3 IUFD+19 neonatal) than in cerclage group 30.4% (2 IUFD + 19 neonatal). Respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) occurred in 43.9%, 49.76%, while need of mechanical ventilation occurred in 12.2%, 16.41% of progesterone and cerclage groups respectively and neonatal jaundice was found in 49.38%, 53.7% of progesterone and cerclage groups respectively. Conclusion: Vaginal progesterone seems to be more effective than prophylactic cerclage in reducing preterm delivery in triplet pregnancies with normal cervical measurements even in those with prior history of preterm labour and minimizing neonatal morbidity and mortality.
Language Lateralization in a Bimanual Language

Unlike spoken languages, sign languages of the deaf make use of two primary articulators, the right and left hands, to produce signs. This situation has no obvious parallel in spoken languages, in which speech articulation is carried out by symmetrical unitary midline vocal structures. This arrangement affords a unique opportunity to examine the robustness of linguistic systems that underlie language production in the face of contrasting articulatory demands and to chart the differential effects of handedness for highly skilled movements. Positron emission tomography (PET) technique was used to examine brain activation in 16 deaf users of American Sign Language (ASL) while subjects generated verb signs independently with their right dominant and left nondominant hands (compared to the repetition of noun signs). Nearly identical patterns of left inferior frontal and right cerebellum activity were observed. This pattern of activation during signing is consistent with patterns that have been reported for spoken languages including evidence for specializations of inferior frontal regions related to lexicalsemantic processing, search and retrieval, and phonological encoding. These results indicate that lexicalsemantic processing in production relies upon left-hemisphere regions regardless of the modality in which a language is realized, and that this left-hemisphere activation is stable, even in the face of conflicting articulatory demands. In addition, these data provide evidence for the role of the right posterolateral cerebellum in linguisticcognitive processing and evidence of a left ventral fusiform contribution to sign language processing
An assembly defect as a result of an attenuating mutation in the capsid proteins of the poliovirus type 3 vaccine strain

The molecular basis of the temperature-sensitive (ts) phenotype of P3/Sabin, the type 3 vaccine strain of poliovirus, was investigated in light of the known correlation between ts and attenuation phenotypes. A phenylalanine at residue 91 of the capsid protein VP3 was a major determinant of both phenotypes, and attenuation and ts could be reverted by the same second-site mutations. The ts phenotype was due to a defect early in the assembly process that inhibited the formation of 14S pentamers, empty capsids, and virions. It was further shown that capsid proteins that were not incorporated into higher-order structures had short half-lives at the nonpermissive temperature.
Importance of staff training in hotel industry Case Study: Hotel Dukagjini

In every business, independently of the activity, human resources are the most precious capital. In terms of global competition and rapid change, personnel training are essential. Every manager should be able to attract qualified and capable personnel, in order to use their skills in achieving organizational objectives. In a market economy where uncertainty is rather widespread, obtaining knowledge and information is becoming a source for creating competing advantages. One of the most important aspects in contemporary hotel industry is getting to know the new methods and techniques through training. Staff training is an important part in Human Resource Management, in order to improve employee performance, respectively it helps putting their skills to better use and specialization in their work. Application of an efficient training process has an important impact in increasing employee performance. The aim of this study is to understand the importance of personnel training in hotel industry. The study includes the theoretical part for staff training, importance and benefits. The empirical part is composed by a qualitative method research of Hotel Dukagjini in Peja. The paper’s results have shown that management has a relatively good understan-ding of the importance of personnel training; the hotel may be in a favorable situation if the employees keep taking continuous training.
Determinants of Factors that Affecting Inflation in Malaysia

Inflation became a one of the serious matters over a period of time. It can be said that, throughout the past few years, Malaysia’s inflation is caused by many factors. The aim of the paper is to determinants of factors that affecting inflation in Malaysia This paper consists of quantitative method and the econometric model is used for identify the relationship between the dependent and independent variables. It can be categorized two models in this paper namely mathematical model and econometric model. In this paper, it has been discussed the autocorrelation, multicollinearity and Heteroscedasticity. High inflation may cause negative impact to a particular country.
Microglia expressing interleukin‐13 undergo cell death and contribute to neuronal survival in vivo

How to minimize brain inflammation is pathophysiologically important, since inflammation induced by microglial activation can exacerbate brain damage. In the present report, we show that injection of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) into the rat cortex led to increased levels of interleukin‐13 (IL‐13) and to IL‐13 immunoreactivity, followed by the substantial loss of microglia at 3 days post‐LPS. IL‐13 levels in LPS‐injected cortex reached a peak at 12 h post‐injection, remained elevated at 24 h, and returned to basal levels at day 4. In parallel, IL‐13 immunoreactivity was detected as early as 12 h post‐LPS and maintained up to 24 h; it disappeared at 4 days. Surprisingly, IL‐13 immunoreactivity was detected exclusively in microglia, but not in neurons or astrocytes. Following treatment with LPS in vitro, IL‐13 expression was also induced in microglia in the presence of neurons, but not in the presence of astrocytes or in cultured pure microglia alone. In experiments designed to determine the involvement of IL‐13 in microglia cell death, IL‐13‐neutralizing antibodies significantly increased survival of activated microglia at 3 days post‐LPS. Consistent with these results, the expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and tumor necrosis factor‐α (TNF‐α) was sustained in activated microglia and neuronal cell death was consequently increased. Taken together, the present study is the first to demonstrate the endogenous expression of IL‐13 in LPS‐activated microglia in vivo, and to demonstrate that neurons may be required for IL‐13 expression in microglia. Our data strongly suggest that IL‐13 may control brain inflammation by inducing the death of activated microglia in vivo, resulting in an enhancement of neuronal survival. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Contributions of the Medial Prefrontal Cortex to Social Influence in Economic Decision-Making

Economic decisions are guided by highly subjective reward valuations (SVs). Often these SVs are over-ridden when individuals conform to social norms. Yet, the neural mechanisms that underpin the distinct processing of such normative reward valuations (NVs) are poorly understood. The dorsomedial and ventromedial portions of the prefrontal cortex (dmPFC/vmPFC) are putatively key regions for processing social and economic information respectively. However, the contribution of these regions to economic decisions guided by social norms is unclear. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and computational modeling we examine the neural mechanisms underlying the processing of SVs and NVs. Subjects (n = 15) indicated either their own economic preferences or made similar choices based on a social norm-learnt during a training session. We found that that the vmPFC and dmPFC make dissociable contributions to the processing of SV and NV. Regions of the dmPFC processed "only" the value of rewards when making normative choices. In contrast, we identify a novel mechanism in the vmPFC for the coding of value. This region signaled both subjective and normative valuations, but activity was scaled positively for SV and negatively for NV. These results highlight some of the key mechanisms that underpin conformity and social influence in economic decision-making.
Different measures of alcohol consumption and risk of coronary heart disease and all-cause mortality: 11-year follow-up of the Whitehall II Cohort Study.

AIMS To investigate the relationship between three measures of alcohol consumption obtained simultaneously in a large cohort and the validated risk of coronary heart disease and all-cause mortality during follow-up. DESIGN Prospective cohort study with median follow-up of 11 years. SETTING The Whitehall II Cohort Study: London-based civil service. PARTICIPANTS A total of 10,308 (33% female) civil servants aged 35-55 years at baseline (1985-88). MEASUREMENTS Self-reported volume of alcohol consumed during past week, frequency of drinking over past year, usual amount consumed per drinking session. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Coronary heart disease and all-cause mortality until 1999. FINDINGS A U-shaped relationship was found between volume of alcohol consumed per week and outcome. Compared to those who drank moderately (10-80 g alcohol per week), non-drinkers and those drinking more than 248 g per week had approximately a twofold increased risk of mortality. The optimal frequency of drinking was between once or twice a week and daily, after adjustment for average volume consumed per week. Those drinking twice a day or more had an increased risk of mortality (male hazard ratio 2.44 95% CI 1.31-4.52) compared to those drinking once or twice a week. Drinking only once a month or only on special occasions had a 50% increased risk of mortality. The usual amount consumed per drinking session was not indicative of increased health risk in this cohort. CONCLUSIONS Epidemiological studies should collect information on frequency of drinking in addition to average volume consumed in order to inform sensible drinking advice.
Hybrid VAE: Improving Deep Generative Models using Partial Observations

Deep neural network models trained on large labeled datasets are the state-of-the-art in a large variety of computer vision tasks. In many applications, however, labeled data is expensive to obtain or requires a time consuming manual annotation process. In contrast, unlabeled data is often abundant and available in large quantities. We present a principled framework to capitalize on unlabeled data by training deep generative models on both labeled and unlabeled data. We show that such a combination is beneficial because the unlabeled data acts as a data-driven form of regularization, allowing generative models trained on few labeled samples to reach the performance of fully-supervised generative models trained on much larger datasets. We call our method Hybrid VAE (H-VAE) as it contains both the generative and the discriminative parts. We validate H-VAE on three large-scale datasets of different modalities: two face datasets: (MultiPIE, CelebA) and a hand pose dataset (NYU Hand Pose). Our qualitative visualizations further support improvements achieved by using partial observations.
Slm1 and Slm2 Are Novel Substrates of the Calcineurin Phosphatase Required for Heat Stress-Induced Endocytosis of the Yeast Uracil Permease

ABSTRACT The Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent phosphatase calcineurin promotes yeast survival during environmental stress. We identified Slm1 and Slm2 as calcineurin substrates required for sphingolipid-dependent processes. Slm1 and Slm2 bind to calcineurin via docking sites that are required for their dephosphorylation by calcineurin and are related to the PXIXIT motif identified in NFAT. In vivo, calcineurin mediates prolonged dephosphorylation of Slm1 and Slm2 during heat stress, and this response can be mimicked by exogenous addition of the sphingoid base phytosphingosine. Slm proteins also promote the growth of yeast cells in the presence of myriocin, an inhibitor of sphingolipid biosynthesis, and regulation of Slm proteins by calcineurin is required for their full activity under these conditions. During heat stress, sphingolipids signal turnover of the uracil permease, Fur4. In cells lacking Slm protein activity, stress-induced endocytosis of Fur4 is blocked, and Fur4 accumulates at the cell surface in a ubiquitinated form. Furthermore, cells expressing a version of Slm2 that cannot be dephosphorylated by calcineurin display an increased rate of Fur4 turnover during heat stress. Thus, calcineurin may modulate sphingolipid-dependent events through regulation of Slm1 and Slm2. These findings, in combination with previous work identifying Slm1 and Slm2 as targets of Mss4/phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate and TORC2 signaling, suggest that Slm proteins integrate information from a variety of signaling pathways to coordinate the cellular response to heat stress.
The dexamethasone suppression test in affective illnesses and schizophrenia: relationship with psychotic symptoms.

The authors studied the dexamethasone suppression test (DST) on a series of 112 inpatients including 65 patients with major depressive disorder (21 bipolars: 4 with, 17 without psychotic symptoms; 44 unipolars: 13 with, 31 without psychotic symptoms), 15 patients with depressive disorder, 10 schizoaffective and 22 schizophrenic patients. Using different diagnostic criteria, they confirm the best performances of the DST in depression for the diagnosis of a major depressive disorder, primarily endogenous. They also examined the potential influence of psychotic symptoms, suicidal behavior and family history of affective illness on the DST. The only significant difference found is in the cortisol plasma level at 4 p.m. in bipolar patients with psychotic symptoms. That fact and the high rate of abnormality of the DST in schizoaffective and schizophrenic patients indicate that psychotic symptoms per se may play a role in a dysregulation of the hypothalamo-pituitary adrenal axis.
Long-term Prognosis of Resected Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumors in von Hippel-Lindau Disease Is Favorable and Not Influenced by Small Tumors Left in Place.

BACKGROUND Management of pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (PNETs) associated with von Hippel-Lindau disease (VHL) is challenging because of the malignant potential and difficulty in predicting prognosis. OBJECTIVE Compare the long-term outcome of resected VHL-PNET and sporadic PNET. METHODS Data of all patients with VHL (n = 23) operated on for nonmetastatic PNET were reviewed. Patient characteristics and recurrence-free survival rates were compared with those in patients operated on for sporadic PNET, matched for tumor size, stage, and Ki-67 index. RESULTS Patients in both groups had similar demographic characteristics, except that patients with VHL were younger (36 vs 56 years, P < 0.0001). Median tumor size was 30 mm. Median Ki-67 index was 3% and 4% in the VHL and sporadic groups (P = 0.95), respectively, and lymph node metastases were present in 43% and 30% of cases, respectively (P = 0.45). Sixteen (70%) patients with VHL had multiple PNET; lesions less than 15 mm were left in place in 11 patients. Median postoperative follow-up was 107 months (interquartile range, 57-124 months) and 71 months (interquartile range, 58-131 months) in the VHL and control groups, respectively. Median recurrence-free survival could not have been estimated in the VHL group due to the low number of events (hazard ratio, 5.6; 95% confidence interval, 1.4-22.6; P = 0.013). Five patients with VHL died (3 from VHL-related tumors including 1 from PNET), whereas only one control patient died due to unrelated causes. CONCLUSIONS The long-term outcome of resected VHL-PNET is better than that of sporadic PNET. PNET less than 15 mm left in place did not progress. A parenchyma-sparing surgical strategy seems appropriate in patients with VHL-PNET, who may develop more life-threatening tumors of other organs.