Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Secondary Lymphoid Organ Homing Phenotype of Human Myeloid Dendritic Cells Disrupted by an Intracellular Oral Pathogen

ABSTRACT Several intracellular pathogens, including a key etiological agent of chronic periodontitis, Porphyromonas gingivalis, infect blood myeloid dendritic cells (mDCs). This infection results in pathogen dissemination to distant inflammatory sites (i.e., pathogen trafficking). The alteration in chemokine-chemokine receptor expression that contributes to this pathogen trafficking function, particularly toward sites of neovascularization in humans, is unclear. To investigate this, we utilized human monocyte-derived DCs (MoDCs) and primary endothelial cells in vitro, combined with ex vivo-isolated blood mDCs and serum from chronic periodontitis subjects and healthy controls. Our results, using conditional fimbria mutants of P. gingivalis, show that P. gingivalis infection of MoDCs induces an angiogenic migratory profile. This profile is enhanced by expression of DC-SIGN on MoDCs and minor mfa-1 fimbriae on P. gingivalis and is evidenced by robust upregulation of CXCR4, but not secondary lymphoid organ (SLO)-homing CCR7. This disruption of SLO-homing capacity in response to respective chemokines closely matches surface expression of CXCR4 and CCR7 and is consistent with directed MoDC migration through an endothelial monolayer. Ex vivo-isolated mDCs from the blood of chronic periodontitis subjects, but not healthy controls, expressed a similar migratory profile; moreover, sera from chronic periodontitis subjects expressed elevated levels of CXCL12. Overall, we conclude that P. gingivalis actively “commandeers” DCs by reprogramming the chemokine receptor profile, thus disrupting SLO homing, while driving migration toward inflammatory vascular sites.
Preparation, Imaging, and Quantification of Bacterial Surface Motility Assays

Bacterial surface motility, such as swarming, is commonly examined in the laboratory using plate assays that necessitate specific concentrations of agar and sometimes inclusion of specific nutrients in the growth medium. The preparation of such explicit media and surface growth conditions serves to provide the favorable conditions that allow not just bacterial growth but coordinated motility of bacteria over these surfaces within thin liquid films. Reproducibility of swarm plate and other surface motility plate assays can be a major challenge. Especially for more “temperate swarmers” that exhibit motility only within agar ranges of 0.4%-0.8% (wt/vol), minor changes in protocol or laboratory environment can greatly influence swarm assay results. “Wettability”, or water content at the liquid-solid-air interface of these plate assays, is often a key variable to be controlled. An additional challenge in assessing swarming is how to quantify observed differences between any two (or more) experiments. Here we detail a versatile two-phase protocol to prepare and image swarm assays. We include guidelines to circumvent the challenges commonly associated with swarm assay media preparation and quantification of data from these assays. We specifically demonstrate our method using bacteria that express fluorescent or bioluminescent genetic reporters like green fluorescent protein (GFP), luciferase (lux operon), or cellular stains to enable time-lapse optical imaging. We further demonstrate the ability of our method to track competing swarming species in the same experiment.
Children’s Mathematics and Verbal Self-concepts and Externalizing Behaviors: The Moderating Role of Peer Rejection at School

Previous research has found a strong correlation between children’s academic self-concept and their behavioral problems. The present study examined whether children’s peer rejection moderated the relationship between children’s math and verbal self-concepts and their behavioral problems at school. We expected that children’s social competence, as measured by peer rejection, moderated the negative effect of low self-concept on children’s externalizing behaviors. Participants were 173 children (males = 93, Mage = 10.31 years, SD = 1.43). The main findings showed that peer rejection moderated the effect of both low verbal and math self-concepts on children’s externalizing behavior. The results are discussed in terms of the protective factor played by children’s social competence reducing the impact of low self-concept on children’s externalizing behaviors.
Fatty acid composition of the anterior cingulate cortex indicates a high susceptibility to lipid peroxidation in Parkinson's disease.

BACKGROUND Oxidative stress contributes to Parkinson's disease (PD) etiology. Although previous studies have focused on sources of free radical formation in brain regions affected by PD, less is known regarding changes in lipid composition and the implications for susceptibility to peroxidation. OBJECTIVE To assess fatty acid profiles from control and PD tissues that are susceptible to PD pathology but devoid of severe destruction. METHODS We used gas chromatography methods to assess fatty acid profiles from control (n = 10) and PD (n = 9) postmortem tissues. We focused on the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a region that accumulates alpha-synuclein, but does not undergo severe destruction, and compared this to the occipital cortex, a region that is pathologically spared. RESULTS Our data indicate a significant 33% increase in the proportion of polyunsaturated fatty acids (mol%) present in the PD ACC as compared to control ACC. Increases in highly unsaturated 22:5n-6 and 22:6n-3 fatty acids were particularly pronounced (109% and 73%, respectively). Calculation of a peroxidation index (accounting for total fatty acyl double bounds) indicated a 44% increase in susceptibility of the PD ACC to lipid peroxidation compared to control ACC. Such differences were not detected in the occipital cortex from the same donors. Assessment of F2-isprostane levels confirmed that PD tissue lipids were more oxidized than controls. CONCLUSIONS The global composition of fatty acids in the PD ACC is altered in a way that increases susceptibility to peroxidation in a region-specific manner. This has important implications for PD, supporting the oxidative stress hypothesis of PD pathogenesis.
Prevention of secondary cases of meningococcal disease in Denmark

Close contacts of cases of meningococcal disease are at increased risk of disease themselves. We identified household-like contacts of index cases, to investigate whether relevant target groups are informed, receive and follow recommended chemoprophylaxis and vaccination, and to ascertain the time delay for implementation of these measures. A telephone interview of 172 households of index cases and a questionnaire survey among 634 parents of contacts of cases in institutions were carried out. Results were compared with reports from Medical Officers of Health. In 21% of the cases, Medical Officers reported fewer household-like contacts than were identified in this study. Written information was effective. However, 59% of households, and 36% of parents of contacts in institutions felt a lack of information about how the disease is acquired, the risk and signs of illness. For household-like contacts the coverage rate for chemoprophylaxis with an appropriate drug was 90% and for vaccination 59%. No secondary cases occurred among those treated with chemoprophylaxis, but among those not treated, there were two secondary cases. The study design provided a useful audit methodology to evaluate the completeness of implementation and the success of prophylactic measures for meningococcal disease.
Altered Levels of Aroma and Volatiles by Metabolic Engineering of Shikimate Pathway Genes in Tomato Fruits

The tomato ( Solanum lycopersicum ) fruit is an excellent source of antioxidants, dietary fibers, minerals and vitamins and therefore has been referred to as a “functional food”. Ripe tomato fruits produce a large number of specialized metabolites including volatile organic compounds. These volatiles serve as key components of the tomato fruit flavor, participate in plant pathogen and herbivore defense, and are used to attract seed dispersers. A major class of specialized metabolites is derived from the shikimate pathway followed by aromatic amino acid biosynthesis of phenylalanine, tyrosine and tryptophan. We attempted to modify tomato fruit flavor by overexpressing key regulatory genes in the shikimate pathway. Bacterial genes encoding feedback-insensitive variants of 3-Deoxy-D-Arabino-Heptulosonate 7-Phosphate Synthase (DAHPS; AroG 209-9 ) and bi-functional Chorismate Mutase/Prephenate Dehydratase (CM/PDT; PheA 12 ) were expressed under the control of a fruit-specific promoter. We crossed these transgenes to generate tomato plants expressing both the AroG 209 and PheA 12 genes. Overexpression of the AroG 209-9 gene had a dramatic effect on the overall metabolic profile of the fruit, including enhanced levels of multiple volatile and non-volatile metabolites. In contrast, the PheA 12 overexpression line exhibited minor metabolic effects compared to the wild type fruit. Co-expression of both the AroG 209-9 and PheA 12 genes in tomato resulted overall in a similar metabolic effect to that of expressing only the AroG 209-9 gene. However, the aroma ranking attributes of the tomato fruits from PheA 12 //AroG 209-9 were unique and different from those of the lines expressing a single gene, suggesting a contribution of the PheA 12 gene to the overall metabolic profile. We suggest that expression of bacterial genes encoding feedback-insensitive enzymes of the shikimate pathway in tomato fruits provides a useful metabolic engineering tool for the modification of fruits aroma and the generation of new combinations of tomato flavors.
Comparison of dopamine kinetics in the larval Drosophila ventral nerve cord and protocerebrum with improved optogenetic stimulation

Dopamine release and uptake have been studied in the Drosophila larval ventral nerve cord (VNC) using optogenetics to stimulate endogenous release. However, other areas of the central nervous system remain uncharacterized. Here, we compare dopamine release in the VNC and protocerebrum of larval Drosophila. Stimulations were performed with CsChrimson, a new, improved, red light‐activated channelrhodopsin. In both regions, dopamine release was observed after only a single, 4 ms duration light pulse. Michaelis‐Menten modeling was used to understand release and uptake parameters for dopamine. The amount of dopamine released ([DA]p) on the first stimulation pulse is higher than the average [DA]p released from subsequent pulses. The initial and average amount of dopamine released per stimulation pulse is smaller in the protocerebrum than in the VNC. The average Vmax of 0.08 μM/s in the protocerebrum was significantly higher than the Vmax of 0.05 μM/s in the VNC. The average Km of 0.11 μM in the protocerebrum was not significantly different from the Km of 0.10 μM in the VNC. When the competitive dopamine transporter (DAT) inhibitor nisoxetine was applied, the Km increased significantly in both regions while Vmax stayed the same. This work demonstrates regional differences in dopamine release and uptake kinetics, indicating important variation in the amount of dopamine available for neurotransmission and neuromodulation.
Investigating the Effects of Self-Presentation at Online Social Network Sites and Brand Pages on Offline Purchase Behavior

The emergence and rapid growth of social media platforms, and particularly social-media based brand communities have spurred significant popular interest in recent times. However, despite the growing economic importance of brand presence on social media, little is understood about whether and how user engagement with these brand communities benefits product sales in brick-and-mortar stores - the online-to-offline (O2O) conversion problem. In this study, we combine two large real-world datasets from a popular social network site (SNS) and the loyalty card dataset from a brick-and-mortar Asian fashion retailer to study the offline purchase behavior of the SNS brand page members. We present evidence that individuals upon joining the brand page reduce their offline purchase expenditure on average. However, using a combination of text mining and statistical approaches, we show that this reduction is significantly attenuated for some individuals who self-present more than others on the SNS. The findings from our study not only illuminate our understanding of the offline economic impacts of online self-presentation, but also present newer ways of performing behavioral targeting of online users.
Sequence Imitation and Reaching Measures of Executive Control: A Longitudinal Examination in the Second Year of Life

Despite increasing interest in the early development of executive control, few assessment tools are available for use in the second year of life. At 15 and 20 months, children completed a task battery that included reaching and sequence imitation tasks expected to require executive control. With age, children showed reduced perseveration and increased ability to resist interference across trials and from distractors. At each age, A-not-B with invisible displacement was correlated with one of the sequence imitation tasks modified to increase executive control demands. Correlations between child performance on individual tasks at 15 and 20 months were generally low.
Toward Encrypted Cloud Media Center With Secure Deduplication

The explosive growth of multimedia contents, especially videos, is pushing forward the paradigm of cloud-based media hosting today. However, the wide attacking surface of the public cloud and the growing security awareness from the society are both calling for data encryption before outsourcing to cloud. Under the circumstance of encrypted videos, how to still preserve all the service benefits of cloud media center remains to be fully explored. In this paper, we present a secure system architecture design as our initial effort toward this direction, which bridges together the advancements of video coding techniques and secure deduplication. Our design enables the cloud with the crucial deduplication functionality to completely eliminate the extra storage and bandwidth cost, which would have been incurred by hosting encrypted videos from different entities. The design is also carefully tailored to the scalable video coding (SVC) techniques to support heterogeneous networks and devices for high-quality adaptive video dissemination. We show fully functional system implementations with structure-aware encryption design and structure-aware deduplication strategies that are both completely compliant with the video format in SVC. Extensive security analysis and experiments via our prototype deployed on Azure cloud platform show the practicality of the design. Our work can also be easily extended to support other media applications that employ media files with scalable structures.
Impact of Marketing on Tourism Industry

Tourism marketing is as to identify and anticipate the needs of tourists and providing facilities to meet their needs and to inform and motivation of visit in tourists. This will provide tourist satisfaction and achieving organizational goals. The aim of tourists traveling around the world is benefit from the attraction that hidden in tourism destinations. Due to the specific characteristics of the tourism product, the role of marketing in this industry to other industries has particular importance and effective use of marketing tools for tourism is essential for a country or region, because with marketing can provide information about specific region to potential tourists and encourage them to visit it.
Financial Performance And Enterprise Resource Planning Implementation: A Study Of Manufacturers In Taiwan

AbstractEven though Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are increasingly implemented in today's business environment, results of ERP investments remain debatable. This study would like to investigate the financial impacts of ERP systems for the manufacturing sector in Taiwan. Findings demonstrate that most of performance indexes show no significant differences after ERP installation. Only two indexes such as “Inventory Turnover” and “Average Number Days Inventory in Stock” show significant improvement after 2 or 3 year ERP implementation. Other indexes such as “Return on Equity” and “Return on Assets” even have worse performance than before. This outcome implies that ERP systems have not shown significant benefits with respect to financial performance under our short-term observations. It may take longer period to see real financial advantages like the ERP vendors claimed.
The Use of Alternatives to Patents and Limits to Incentives

One of the most puzzling findings in the empirical analysis of firms’ patenting behaviour is the low proportion of patenting firms in the population of registered companies. Also, there is evidence suggesting that firms may not patent all patentable inventions and that this behaviour differs across firms within industries and across industries as well. Our study takes a closer look at the use of patents and alternative Intellectual Property (IP) mechanisms by UK firms, and the impact of such use on firm performance. We review the economic literature on the choice of IP protection, and then use a new and comprehensive dataset consisting of UK firms during the 1997-2006 period to examine the determinants and outcomes of the use of various IP protection mechanisms. The study is divided into four parts: a literature review, a descriptive analysis, a study of the strategic use of patents, and a multi-equation study of the relationship between IP choice, innovation and total factor productivity.
Rapid Upregulation of Sodium-Glucose Transporter SGLT1 in Response to Intestinal Sweet Taste Stimulation

Objective:We set out to examine the short-term regulation of the intestinal sodium/glucose cotransporter SGLT1 by its substrate glucose and sweet taste analogs. Summary Background Data:Intestinal SGLT1 is a putative target for antidiabetic therapy; however, its physiological regulation is incompletely understood, limiting its application as a pharmacological target. While it is clearly regulated by dietary composition over a period of days, its short-term regulation by nutrients is unknown. Methods:Sprague-Dawley rats were anesthetized, and the duodenum cannulated. d-glucose, d-fructose, saccharin, d-mannitol, and water were infused for 3 hours, before harvest of proximal jejunum for SGLT1 analysis with Western blotting and quantitative polymerase chain reaction. In further experiments, the receptor region was identified by d-glucose infusion of isolated regions. Lastly, the vagus was de-afferented with capsaicin, and 5HT3-receptor activation of vagal afferents inhibited using ondansetron, before repeating experiments using water or d-glucose infusion. Results:Infusion of d-glucose led to 2.9-fold up-regulation in SGLT1 compared with water or iso-osmotic d-mannitol; this effect was replicated by d-fructose or saccharin. This response was strongest following isolated infusions of duodenum and proximal jejunum, with a blunted effect distally; topography matched the expression profile of sweet taste receptor T1R2/T1R3. The reflex was abolished by capsaicin pretreatment, and blunted by ondansetron. Conclusions:The agonist response implicates the luminal-based sweet-taste receptor T1R2/T1R3, with the reflex apparently involving vagal afferents. The proximal nature of the sensor coincides with the excluded biliopancreatic limb in Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, and this may provide a novel explanation for the antidiabetic effect of this procedure.
Factors Predicting Requirement of High-dose Transdermal Fentanyl in Opioid Switching From Oral Morphine or Oxycodone in Patients With Cancer Pain

ObjectivesTo identify predictive factors requiring high-dose transdermal fentanyl in opioid switching from oral morphine or oxycodone to transdermal fentanyl in patients with cancer pain. MethodsThe participants were 76 hospitalized terminal cancer patients who underwent opioid switching from oxycodone or morphine sustained-release tablet to transdermal fentanyl at our hospital between January 2009 and June 2010. The conversion dose was calculated as transdermal fentanyl (25 &mgr;g/h)/oral morphine (60 mg) or oxycodone (40 mg)=1. The response evaluated was the dose conversion ratio [transdermal fentanyl/oral morphine or oxycodone (conversion dose to fentanyl)]=Y and was taken to be 0 for Y⩽1, 1 for 1<Y⩽2, 2 for 2<Y⩽3, and 3 for 3<Y. Predictors evaluated were factors potentially impacting pain. Ordered logistic regression analysis was carried out to identify the predictive factors requiring high-dose transdermal fentanyl in opioid switching. ResultsBreast cancer [odds ratio (OR)=8.218; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.219-55.407; P=0.0305], total protein level (OR=0.630; 95% CI, 0.408-0.974; P=0.0377), alanine aminotransferase level (OR=1.017; 95% CI, 1.001-1.033; P=0.0390), advanced age (OR=3.700; 95% CI, 1.360-10.063; P=0.0104), and male sex (OR=3.702; 95% CI, 1.355-10.115; P=0.0107) were found to be significant predictive factors requiring high-dose transdermal fentanyl in opioid switching. DiscussionOur study indicates that breast cancer, total protein, alanine aminotransferase, advanced age, and male sex are significant predictors of a need for higher dose transdermal fentanyl in opioid switching. Our results are considered likely to contribute to the establishment of evidence-based medicine in pain relief and palliative care.
Pengaruh profitabilitas, leverage, growth, dan free cash flow terhadap dividend payout ratio perusahaan dengan mempertimbangkan corporate governance sebagai variabel intervening

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis profitability, leverage, growth, dan free cash flow terhadap dividen payout ratio perusahaan dengan mempertimbangkan corporate governance sebagai variabel intervening. Subjek penelitian ini adalah perusahaan yang dirangking oleh Indonesian Institute for Corporate Governance (IICG) tahun 2006-2011 yang mempublikasikan laporan keuangan di 31 Desember. Sampel penelitian ini adalah 81 perusahaan yang dipilih dengan purposive sampling method. Alat analisis adalah simple regression dan path analysis. Penelitian ini menemukan hanya tiga hipotesis yang diterima, hipotesis lainnya ditolak. Penelitian ini menyimpulkan bahwa profitability tidak berpengaruh terhadap dividend payout ratio, leverage berpengaruh negatif terhadap dividen payout ratio, growth berpengaruh negatif terhadap dividend payment ratio, free cash flow berpengaruh positif terhadap dividend payout ratio, tidak ada pengaruh positif probitability terhadap corporate governance, leverage positif mempengaruhi corporate governance, growth tidak berpengaruh positif terhadap corporate governance, free cash flow tidak berpengaruh terhadap corporate governance, corporate governance tidak berpengaruh terhadap dividend payout ratio, dan corporate governance diterima untuk ditambahkan dalam model sebagai variabel intervening. Kata kunci: dividend payout ratio (DPR), profitability (ROA), leverage (DER), growth (GROWTH), free cash flow (FCF), Corporate Governance (CG)