Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mitochondrial Porin Por1 and Its Homolog Por2 Contribute to the Positive Control of Snf1 Protein Kinase in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

ABSTRACT Saccharomyces cerevisiae Snf1 is a member of the conserved Snf1/AMP-activated protein kinase (Snf1/AMPK) family involved in regulating responses to energy limitation, which is detected by mechanisms that include sensing adenine nucleotides. Mitochondrial voltage-dependent anion channel (VDAC) proteins, also known as mitochondrial porins, are conserved in eukaryotes from yeast to humans and play key roles in mediating mitochondrial outer membrane permeability to small metabolites, including ATP, ADP, and AMP. We previously recovered the yeast mitochondrial porin Por1 (yVDAC1) from a two-hybrid screen for Snf1-interacting proteins. Here, we present evidence that Snf1 interacts with Por1 and its homolog Por2 (yVDAC2). Cells lacking Por1 and Por2, but not respiratory-deficient rho0 cells lacking the mitochondrial genome, exhibit reduced Snf1 activation loop phosphorylation in response to glucose limitation. Thus, Por1 and Por2 contribute to the positive control of Snf1 protein kinase. Physical proximity to the VDAC proteins and mitochondrial surface could facilitate Snf1's ability to sense energy limitation.
Emotion and Explicit Verbal Memory: Evidence Using Malay Lexicon

The dichotomy of emotional system and cognitive system has been debated for centuries. As a result, there is still much to know about the effects of emotions on memory. In two experiments, emotion was manipulated to investigate its effect on recall and recognition of words. Experiment 1 used a recognition test and experiment 2 used a free recall test. Emotion was manipulated in word stimuli: positive words, negative words and neutral words (baseline condition). Malay words were used as the verbal stimuli. The valences of the words were taken from ANEW. Results revealed that memory was better on the recognition test than recall test. Emotion had a significant effect on memory performance where both positive and negative emotions improved memory when compared to the baseline condition. The implication is that Malay words elicit a different result on explicit memory when emotional content of the words was manipulated.
NEED FOR CLOSURE AND JUMPING-TO-CONCLUSIONS IN DELUSION-PRONE INDIVIDUALS

Members of the general population were screened for delusion-proneness using the Peters et al. Delusions Inventory (PDI). Two groups were formed from the participants who scored in the upper and lower quartiles of the PDI and compared on a probability judgment task and on the Need for Closure scale (NFC). The study investigated whether the “jump-to-conclusions” (JTC) reasoning bias, characteristic of deluded participants, could be found in delusion-prone individuals. NFC was investigated as a motivational factor that may correlate with this reasoning bias. Evidence for the existence of the data-gathering, but not the probability judgment, part of the JTC reasoning bias was found in the delusion-prone individuals. This group also scored significantly higher on the NFC scale. As the data-gathering reasoning bias was found in delusion-prone individuals this suggests that it may be involved in the formation, rather than merely the maintenance, of delusional beliefs.
Incidence, risk stratification, antibiogram of pathogens isolated and clinical outcome of ventilator associated pneumonia

Background: The initial empirical therapy of Ventilator Associated Pneumonia (VAP) modified based on the knowledge of local microbiological data is associated with decreased morbidity and mortality. The objective was to find the incidence and risk factors associated with VAP, the implicated pathogens and their susceptibility pattern as well as to assess the final clinical outcome in VAP. Materials and Methods: This was a prospective cohort study of 107 patients taken on ventilatory support for two or more days and those not suffering from pneumonia prior were to be taken on ventilator. The study was done over a period of one year. VAP was diagnosed using clinical pulmonary infection score of >6. The mortality, incidence of VAP, frequency of different pathogens isolated, their antibiotic sensitivity pattern, duration of mechanical ventilation and duration of hospital stay were assessed. Statistical Analysis: Univariate analysis, χ2 test and paired t-test. Results: The incidence of VAP was 28.04%. Mortality in VAP group was 46.67%, while in the non-VAP group was 27.28%. High APACHE II score was associated with a high mortality rate as well as increased incidence of VAP. The most common organisms isolated from endotracheal aspirate of patients who developed VAP were Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Klebsiella pneumoniae and Acinetobacter baumannii. Most strains of Pseudomonas (55.56%) were resistant to commonly used beta-lactam antibiotics known to be effective against Pseudomonas. All strains of Staphylococcus aureus were MRSA and most isolates of K. pneumoniae (85.71%) were extended-spectrum beta-lactamase producing. About 50% isolates of Acinetobacter were resistant to carbapenems. Mortality was highest for infections caused by A. baumannii (83.33%) and K. pneumoniae (71.42%). Conclusions: APACHE II score can be used to stratify the risk of development of VAP and overall risk of mortality. Drug-resistant strains of various organisms are an important cause of VAP in our setting.
Real-time event detection in massive streams

New event detection, also known as first story detection (FSD), has become very popular in recent years. The task consists of finding previously unseen events from a stream of documents. Despite the apparent simplicity, FSD is very challenging and has applications anywhere where timely access to fresh information is crucial: from journalism to stock market trading, homeland security, or emergency response. With the rise of user generated content and citizen journalism we have entered an era of big and noisy data, yet traditional approaches for solving FSD are not designed to deal with this new type of data. The amount of information that is being generated today exceeds by many orders of magnitude previously available datasets, making traditional approaches obsolete for modern event detection. In this thesis, we propose a modern approach to event detection that scales to unbounded streams of text, without sacrificing accuracy. This is a crucial property that enables us to detect events from large streams like Twitter, which none of the previous approaches were able to do. One of the major problems in detecting new events is vocabulary mismatch, also known as lexical variation. This problem is characterized by different authors using different words to describe the same event, and it is inherent to human language. We show how to mitigate this problem in FSD by using paraphrases. Our approach that uses paraphrases achieves state-of-the-art results on the FSD task, while still maintaining efficiency and being able to process unbounded streams. Another important property of user generated content is the high level of noise, and Twitter is no exception. This is another problem that traditional approaches were not designed to deal with, and here we investigate different methods of reducing the amount of noise. We show that by using information from Wikipedia, it is possible to significantly reduce the amount of spurious events detected in Twitter, while maintaining a very small latency in detection. A question is often raised as to whether Twitter is at all useful, especially if one has access to a high-quality stream such as the newswire, or if it should be considered as sort of a poor man’s newswire. In our comparison of these two streams we find that Twitter contains events not present in the newswire, and that it also breaks some events sooner, showing that it is useful for event detection, even in the presence of newswire.
Factors contributing to antiretroviral drug adherence among adults living with HIV or AIDS in a Kenyan rural community

Background Antiretroviral (ARV) adherence of ≥ 95% is recommended for suppressing HIV. However, studies have shown that the ≥ 95% recommended level is rarely achieved. Objective This cross-sectional community-based study sought to assess factors contributing to ARV drug adherence among adults living with HIV or AIDS. Setting The study was conducted in a rural community in Machakos County, Kenya. Methods The questions used for the study were adapted from the Patient Medicine Adherence Questionnaire (PMAQ), a tool grounded in the Health Belief Model. Adherence to ARV was measured using self-reports and pill counts. The perception social support was measured with a 5-point Likert scale, whereas the type and the number of side effects experienced were recorded using ‘yes’ and ‘no’ questions. We used the chi-square test to test associations and binary logistic regression to assess factors explaining dose adherence to ARV. Results The levels of adherence of 86% using self-reports were significantly higher (p < 0.001) than the pill count of 58.6%. The immediate family was rated high in providing social support (3.7 ± 0.6) followed by social support groups (3.1 ± 0.8). A binary logistic regression analysis was conducted to predict ARV adherence (adherent, non-adherent) using social support, side effects and marital status as explanatory variables. The Wald criterion demonstrated that marital status (p = 0.019) and burden of side effects (p ≤ 0.001) made a significant contribution to the prediction of ARV adherence. Conclusion The burden of side effects and being a divorcee are primary predictors of ARV adherence.
Physiological influences on continuous finger and simultaneous intra-arterial blood pressure.

Because of the clinical and experimental utility of continuous finger blood pressure measurements and the need for accuracy, we tested the performance of a new hydraulic device in 22 consecutive hypertensive subjects during physiological and pharmacological interventions. Ipsilateral brachial intra-arterial pressure was monitored during rest, Valsalva's maneuver, static handgrip, and mental arithmetic and after sublingual glyceryl trinitrate. In excess of 40,000 blood pressure values were analyzed. Average bias (intra-arterial minus finger blood pressure) was 8.2 +/- 17.0 mm Hg (mean +/- SD, P = NS) for systolic and 2.8 +/- 10.4 mm Hg (P = NS) for diastolic pressure. Two-way ANOVA of biases with subject and task factors showed a subject effect (P < .001). Intersubject and intrasubject standard deviations of bias were 13.8 and 9.8 mm Hg systolic and 8.7 and 5.7 diastolic, respectively. Linear drift (millimeters of mercury per minute) of finger pressure was greater (P < .001) for systolic than diastolic pressure during static exercise and math and after glyceryl trinitrate. Coefficients of determination for blood pressure ranged from 0.4 +/- 0.3 to 0.8 +/- 0.3 during the tasks. We conclude that (1) noninvasive finger blood pressure faithfully follows intra-arterial changes but with clinically relevant offsets, (2) this technique is best suited for assessing pressure changes, (3) physiological and pharmacological interventions do not consistently affect finger pressure accuracy, (4) many reports of finger blood pressure measuring devices are based on direct readings obtained with inadequate system response characteristics, and (5) the tested instrument falls short of the standard requirements (bias < or = 5 +/- 8 mm Hg) for devices that measure intermittently.
Full-dose Adjuvant Postoperative Radiation Therapy for Retroperitoneal Sarcomas

ObjectivesTo categorize sites of recurrence of retroperitoneal sarcomas (RPS) and correlate to clinical treatment volumes of postoperative radiation therapy (PORT) with or without intraoperative radiation therapy (IORT). MethodsA retrospective review of patients with RPS who received PORT between 1990 and 2008 was done. Tumor recurrences were subdivided as local tumor bed, regional adjacent retroperitoneal fascial tissues, peritoneal diffuse seeding, and distant metastases. ResultsPORT was given to 33 patients, 20 of whom also received IORT. Local recurrences appeared in 4 (12%) cases. Regional recurrences appeared in 8 (26%) cases, including 5 with in-field recurrence and 3 with edge-of-field recurrence. Edge-of-field recurrences developed in 3 of 11 (27%) patients whose clinical presentation was local recurrence compared with none of 20 patients whose clinical presentation was a primary tumor (P=0.037). Late grades 3 to 4 gastrointestinal toxicities appeared in 1 of 10 (10%) patients who received intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) with a minimum 15-month follow-up compared with 4 of 15 (27%) patients who received standard RT. ConclusionsUse of techniques such as IORT and IMRT can deliver a dose of approximately 60 Gy to the tumor bed and 44 to 51 Gy to the surrounding retroperitoneal fascial planes. Acute and late gastrointestinal toxicities were less frequent with IMRT compared with conventional PORT with IORT. These results may provide the basis for comparison of various adjuvant therapy strategies for RPS. As radiation therapy is a loco-regional treatment, results should be reported by tumor recurrence subtypes of local, regional, peritoneal, and distant.
Daily experiences and well-being: Do memories of events matter?

Retrospective subjective well-being (SWB) refers to self-reported satisfaction and emotional experience over the past few weeks or months. Two studies investigated the mechanisms linking daily experiences to retrospective SWB. Participants reported events each day for 21 days (Study 1) or twice a week for two months (Study 2). The emotional intensity of each event was rated: (1) when it had recently occurred (proximal intensity); and (2) at the end of the event-reporting period (distal intensity). Both sets of ratings were then aggregated across events and used to predict retrospective SWB at the end of the study. Path analyses showed that proximal intensity predicted retrospective SWB whereas distal intensity did not. The effect remained even after controlling for trait happiness and neuroticism. These results suggest that daily experiences influence retrospective SWB primarily through abstract representations of the past few weeks or months (as measured by aggregated proximal intensity ratings) rather than the explicit recollection of individual events during the same period (as measured by aggregated distal intensity ratings). Retrospective SWB, in turn, mediated the effect of daily experiences on global SWB (i.e., self-reported satisfaction and emotional experiences in general).
Peroral Endoscopic Myotomy for Esophageal Achalasia: Outcomes of the First 100 Patients With Short-term Follow-up.

OBJECTIVE Aim of this study is to report the mid-term outcomes of a large series of patients treated with peroral endoscopic myotomy (POEM) in a single European center. BACKGROUND POEM is a recently developed treatment of achalasia, which combines the efficacy of surgical myotomy, with the benefits of an endoscopic procedure. Previous studies, including few patients with a short-term follow-up, showed excellent results on dysphagia relief. METHODS The first 100 adult patients treated in a single tertiary referral center were retrospectively identified and included in this study (41 men, mean age 48.4 years). Patients were treated according to a standard technique. Follow-up data, including clinical evaluation, and results of esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD), manometry, and pH monitoring were collected and analyzed. RESULTS POEM was completed in 94% of patients. Mean operative time was 83 minutes (49-140 minutes). No complications occurred. Patients were fed after a median of 2 days (1-4 days). A mean follow-up of 11 months (3-24 months) was available for 92 patients. Clinical success was documented in 94.5% of patients. Twenty-four-hour pH monitoring documented Gastro-Esophageal Reflux Disease (GERD) in 53.4% of patients. However, only a minority of patients had heartburn (24.3%) or esophagitis (27.4%), and these patients were successfully treated with proton-pump inhibitors. CONCLUSIONS Our results confirm the efficacy of POEM in a large series of patients, with a mean follow-up of 11 months. Should our results be confirmed by long-term follow-up studies, POEM may become one of the first-line therapies of achalasia in the next future.
IRREDUCIBLE GALOIS REPRESENTATIONS ARISING FROM COMPONENT GROUPS OF JACOBIANS

Much has been written about component groups of Néron models of Jacobians of modular curves. In a variety of contexts, these groups have been shown to be “Eisenstein,” which implies that they can be neglected in the study of irreducible two-dimensional representations of Gal(Q/Q). The first theorem to this effect may be extracted from Mazur’s landmark article [11], which concerns the Jacobian J0(N) when N is a prime. In this article, Mazur studies the action of Hecke operators on the “cuspidal subgroup” of the Jacobian, and obtains information about the relevant component group as an application [11, p. 98]. More precisely, consider the fiber in characteristic N of the Néron model of J0(N). This commutative group scheme is an extension of a finite étale group scheme Φ by an algebraic torus; one is interested in the functorial action of Hecke operators on Φ. Mazur proves for all prime numbers p 6= N that the pth Hecke operator Tp acts on Φ by multiplication by 1 + p, and also that TN is the identity on Φ. The “Eisenstein” terminology arises from the fact that 1 + p is the pth coefficient of the standard Eisenstein series of weight two on Γ0(N). In his first article on Serre’s conjectures [13], the author generalized Mazur’s result to the Jacobian J0(N) where N is the product of a positive integer M and a prime number q prime to M . According to Theorem 3.12 of [13], one again has the identity Tp = 1 + p for all prime numbers p prime to N on the group of connected components of the Néron reduction J0(N)/Fq . (A slightly more refined statement appears as Theorem 3.22 of [13]; for the proof, see [14].) Subsequently, B. Edixhoven showed in [6] that an analogous result holds for every reduction J0(N)/Fq with q > 3; here, the new element is that N is allowed to be divisible by an arbitrary power of q. In another article on Serre’s conjectures [15], the author discusses the component group Φ attached to the mod q reduction of the Jacobian of the modular curve derived from Γ1(N) ∩ Γ0(q); here N is a positive integer and q is a prime number not dividing N . The analysis of [15], pp. 672–673 proves the identity Tp = 1+p on Φ for all prime numbers p | / qN and establishes at the same time that the “diamond bracket” operators 〈d〉 act as the identity on Φ.
Yoga Therapy as a Complement to Astronaut Health and Emotional Fitness Stress Reduction and Countermeasure Effectiveness Before, During, and in Post-Flight Rehabilitation: a Hypothesis

Long duration spaceflight and exploration missions require increasing the effectiveness of countermeasures to the abnormal physiology that manifests itself in healthy astronauts living in space. The basic hypothesis proposed posits that yoga practices – breathing maneuvers, relaxation, meditation, and specific muscular movement – may serve this purpose by addressing as a whole, both the effects of microgravity and those of non-gravitational stressful conditions, before, during, and in post-flight rehabilitation. By providing self-directed stress relief tools the reduction in stress-related cortisol and catecholamine spikes observed throughout the space program may be expected to ameliorate microgravity-induced changes such as immuno-deficiency and regional loss in bone architecture, as well as accelerate re-adaptation of balance and coordination, bone, muscle, and cardiovascular systems to Earth’s gravity on return. Several hypotheses are presented based on the review of evidence from the scientific literature that defines physiological responses and relationships associated specifically with the practice of yoga as relevant to mission-related stress relief as well as post-flight orthostatic intolerance secondary to the central hypovolemia caused by microgravity. This hypothesis has far-reaching implications for the integration of yoga-based practices in complementing the effectiveness of current countermeasure approaches and provides direction for future research that might bridge the knowledge gap in the use of Yoga practices in the practice of space medicine.
Single cell analysis of cytokine expression kinetics by human CD4+ T‐cell clones during activation or tolerance induction

Exposure to optimal peptide antigen concentrations induces human CD4+ T-cell clones to proliferate and secrete various cytokines. Higher (> 10-fold optimal) antigen concentrations cause long-term proliferative unresponsiveness, which can be reversed by exogenous interleukin-2 (IL-2). We call this condition 'tolerance'. We used intracellular cytokine staining and flow cytometric analysis to investigate the kinetics of interferon-gamma, tumour necrosis factor-alpha, IL-4 and IL-5 production during the initial phase of tolerance induction. Single cell analysis of interferon-gamma and IL-4 or IL-5 coexpression showed functional heterogeneity of cloned human CD4+ T cells. Superstimulation with phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate and ionomycin (PI) revealed enhanced responsiveness shortly after tolerizing treatment, followed by reduced responsiveness. Both tolerized and activated T cells had similarly reduced cytokine responses when further stimulated with antigen during the following 48 hr, with limited enhancement following additional stimulation with PI. We conclude that cytokine induction is normally followed by a refractory phase, but that the expression of cytokines is enhanced in the initial phase of tolerance induction.
Bioenergetic cost of cryptobiosis in fish: rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss infected with Cryptobia salmositica and with an attenuated live vaccine

Food consumption, dry weight and energy gain, energy concentration and gross conversion efficiency were measured in 4 groups of juvenile rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss over a 14 wk study period. The infected group, each fish inoculated with 2000 pathogenic Cryptobia salmodtica, showed significant reduction of all of these factors and were anemic during acute cryptobiosis when compared to the control group. A third group fed an amount of food equivalent to that fed to the infected group (pair-fed) displayed energetic relationships similar to those of the control group except for gross conversion efficiency, which was slightly higher. Each fish in the last group was inoculated with 20000 attenuated live C, salmosjtjca and the group was not significantly different from the control group throughout the 14 wk period. These vaccinated fish had very low parasitemia and were resistant to the disease when challenged with the pathogen. Fish that recover from cryptobiosis are immune but at considerable bioenergetic cost whereas vaccination serves as an effective control with little bioenergetic cost to the host.