Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of Genomic G + C Content, Codon Usage, Initiator Codon Context and Translation Termination Sites In Tetrahymena Thermophila

ABSTRACT. In recent years, the amount of molecular sequencing data from Tetrahymena thermophila has dramatically increased. We analyzed G + C content, codon usage, initiator codon context and stop codon sites in the extremely A + T rich genome of this ciliate. Average G + C content was 38% for protein coding regions. 21% for 5′ non‐coding sequences, 19% for 3′ non‐coding sequences, 15% for introns, 19% for micronuclear limited sequences and 17% for macronuclear retained sequences flanking micronuclear specific regions. the 75 available T. thermophila protein coding sequences favored codons ending in T and, where possible, avoided those with G in the third position. Highly expressed genes were relatively G + C‐rich and exhibited an extremely biased pattern of codon usage while developmentally regulated genes were more A + T‐rich and showed less codon usage bias. Regions immediately preceding Tetrahymena translation initiator codons were generally A‐rich. For the 60 stop codons examined, the frequency of G in the end + 1 site was much higher than expected whereas C never occupied this position.
Quality of life for Thai women with diabetes.

Based on the data obtained from a larger exploratory descriptive study, life quality of 57 Thai women with diabetes was explored. Eighteen women from 57 original participants were interviewed regarding life characteristics that are important to their life quality. Thai women with diabetes perceived moderate satisfaction with their life at present. The age at onset of diabetes significantly correlated (r = -.30, p < .05) with life satisfaction scores of women. Life characteristics that were important to their life quality included five categories: family, living conditions, success in life, health, and personal faith. The findings add to the knowledge base about life quality of women with diabetes in Thailand and to the understanding of the cultural specificity of human experiences and the quality of life concept in general.
The role of gut microbiota in immune homeostasis and autoimmunity

Keeping a delicate balance in the immune system by eliminating invading pathogens, while still maintaining self-tolerance to avoid autoimmunity, is critical for the body’s health. The gut microbiota that resides in the gastrointestinal tract provides essential health benefits to its host, particularly by regulating immune homeostasis. Moreover, it has recently become obvious that alterations of these gut microbial communities can cause immune dysregulation, leading to autoimmune disorders. Here we review the advances in our understanding of how the gut microbiota regulates innate and adaptive immune homeostasis, which in turn can affect the development of not only intestinal but also systemic autoimmune diseases. Exploring the interaction of gut microbes and the host immune system will not only allow us to understand the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases but will also provide us new foundations for the design of novel immuno- or microbe-based therapies.
Defining volunteering in hospice and palliative care in Europe: an EAPC White Paper.

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PALLIATIVE CARE, 2016; 23(4) The hospice movement, which is akin to a civil rights movement, is partly based on volunteer work.1 Hospice and palliative care (HPC) volunteers are active in almost every country in Europe, and many services depend on their contributions to deliver the range and quality of care they provide.2 The numbers of volunteers, the tasks they perform and the development of their organisations vary greatly. In some European countries, volunteers have had a long involvement in the hospice movement, in some cases even starting it. In others, volunteering has only recently started and HPC pioneers are looking at other countries for inspiration and practical information to help develop volunteering in medically dominated care environments. Depending on the country, HPC volunteering can be well organised, with concepts and theoretical frameworks that clarify its meaning and value.3 In November 2013, a Taskforce on Volunteering in Hospice and Palliative Care was launched by the European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC); this followed on from the first symposium on HPC volunteering, which had taken place at the EAPC Congress in Prague in May/June 2013 and had attracted 110 delegates.4 A second symposium with over 160 participants from 12 European countries (volunteers, volunteer managers, researchers and other professionals) was held in April 2015 in Vienna; reports from a number of countries and early findings from a European study on volunteering5 were presented and the position of volunteering in Europe was discussed. Until recently, studies on volunteering have often investigated questions such as why volunteers do what they do,6 what common problems they face,7 why they choose to stay or go8 and the boundary issues they experience.9 However, insights emerging from the work of the Taskforce indicate that there is still much that we do not know about HPC volunteering in Europe. So far, there is no shared definition and a lack of clarity about the roles and tasks of volunteers. Basic information about numbers, roles, management and training is often missing or based only on estimates.4 This EAPC White Paper presents a consensual definition and typology of HPC volunteering, and clarifies its role, position, identity and value. It considers the unique position and identity of care-focused volunteering, in an attempt to address the ambiguities and tensions that exist in this EAPC update www.ejpc. eu.com
Dynamic role boundaries in intermediate care services

This paper examines the impact of intermediate care service delivery on the role boundaries of service providers. Two intermediate care teams were selected as case studies to explore the roles of workers in the context of an admission avoidance and assisted discharge service. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 26 intermediate care staff, including physiotherapists, occupational therapists, nurses, a social worker and support workers. The study found that therapists' roles were most closely aligned with each other, whilst nurses perceived their roles as being distinct from therapists, with a more medical emphasis. Therapists and nurses delegate a range of tasks to support workers, although the nature of task delegation differed across the two teams. A number of factors were associated with the role flexibility of staff including the setting, duration and nature of care, access to alternative care providers and the ability of staff to undertake joint visits. Contrary to previous research, the practitioners were not threatened by overlapping roles, and recognised that confidence in their own roles and an understanding of the roles of other workers was necessary to avoid feeling threatened. The study concludes that intermediate care can promote role overlap across a range of workers. Role overlap can enhance clinician confidence in their own area of expertise whilst optimising patient care. Role overlap has the potential to optimise limited staff resources in an interprofessional working environment. Interprofessional working can be enhanced in the workplace through joint visits and shared working practices.
Human CMV‐specific T‐cell responses in kidney transplantation; toward changing current risk‐stratification paradigm

Despite the great efficacy of current antiviral preventive strategies, hCMV infection is still a major complication after renal transplantation, significantly challenging patient and graft survival. This issue seems to be explained because of the rather poor immunologic monitoring of the antiviral immune response. An important body of evidence has shown that monitoring the hCMV‐specific T‐cell response, at different time points of the transplant setting, seems to add crucial information for predicting the risk of viral infection, thus potentially helping individualization of therapeutic decision‐making in clinical transplantation. While several immune‐cellular assays have shown its capability for accurately monitoring hCMV‐specific T‐cell responses, only few such as the IFN‐γ ELISPOT and the ELISA based technology assays might be reliable for its application in the clinic. Nonetheless, an important effort has to be made among the transplant community to standardize and validate such immune assays. Noteworthy, large‐scale prospective randomized trials are highly warranted to ultimately introduce them in current clinical practice as a part of the highly desired personalized medicine.
Ueber einige von Herrn E. Jacobson auf Java gesammelte Trichopteren

In meiner Zusammenstellung der „Trichopteren aus Java” 1) gab ich 11 Arten 2) an; seit dieser Zeit sind mir noch weitere 15 Arten aus Java bekannt geworden und jetzt fuge ich 11 Arten hinzu, so dass die Gesammtzahl 37 betragt; eine Zusammenstellung aller dieser Arten findet man am Schlusse. Herr Edward Jacobson (in Semarang, Java), dem das Museum zu Leiden schon manches Insekten-Material aus Ostindien verdankt, hatte die Freundlichkeit, mir die von ihm im Jahre 1908—1909 auf Java gesammelten Trichopteren zur Bearbeitung zu uberlassen; er gestattete mir, eine grossere Anzahl fur meine eigene Sammlung zuruckzubehalten; der Rest seiner Sammlung ist dem Museum zu Leiden uberwiesen worden.
The influence of dietary immunomodulatory factors on development of food allergy in children

In the last few years many studies have been conducted on the role of dietary and environmental factors in the prevention of allergic diseases among children. Many studies have shown that the diet of pregnant women and children in their early postnatal life, rich in antioxidants, vitamin D, and fatty acids is beneficial as it reduces the risk of allergy in their future life. Moreover, there are many reports about the main role of gut microbiota and probiotics in the allergy prevention, what can indicate new ways of procedures in allergic diseases.
Anorexia Nervosa in Patients of Afro-Caribbean Extraction

Summary Recently there has been an increase in the number of reports of anorexia nervosa in non-Caucasian subjects. This paper describes three patients of Afro-Caribbean extraction with anorexia nervosa and/or bulimia nervosa seen at a specialist eating disorders clinic at the Maudsley Hospital between 1981 and 1983. No cases had been seen prior to this. The key clinical features were found to be, in the main, typical.
Ligation of TAPA‐1 (CD81) or major histocompatibility complex class II in co‐cultures of human B and T lymphocytes enhances interleukin‐4 synthesis by antigen‐specific CD4+ T cells

We have previously shown that CD4+ T cells from allergic individuals are predisposed to producing interleukin (IL)‐4 in response to allergens. IL‐4 production could be modulated by antigen concentration as well as by the type of antigen‐presenting cells (APC), with B lymphocytes inducing greater quantities of IL‐4 than monocytes. Using this system we examined IL‐4 synthesis after culture of CD4+ T cells with B cells, monocytes, or both, as APC in the presence of allergen and a monoclonal antibody against CD81 (TAPA‐1), a member of the TM4 superfamily of proteins that regulates activation, proliferation and trafficking of B cells. Addition of anti‐CD81 mAb during culture enhanced IL‐4 synthesis by 2‐ to 70‐fold over that using an isotype‐matched control mAb. Furthermore, anti‐CD81 mAb enhanced IL‐4 synthesis in CD4+ T cells only when CD4+ T cells were cultured with B cells but not monocytes as APC, indicating that anti‐CD81 mAb affected IL‐4 synthesis in T cells via interactions with B cells. However, pretreatment of either population separately with anti‐CD81 mAb prior to culture had no effect on subsequent IL‐4 synthesis, suggesting a requirement for temporal or cooperative interactions between T and B lymphocytes. In addition, anti‐CD81 mAb enhanced IL‐4 production but reduced CD4+ T cell antigen‐specific proliferation, demonstrating that IL‐4 production and proliferation by CD4+ T cells were inversely related. Finally, mAb to major histocompatibility complex class II but not to anti‐CD19 also enhanced IL‐4 synthesis when B lymphocytes were used as APC. In all instances, enhancement of CD4+ IL‐4 synthesis correlated with the presence of large cell aggregates in T‐B lymphocyte cocultures. These results indicate that the capacity of B cells to induce IL‐4 can be significantly enhanced by ligation of particular molecules on their surface and should aid in the design of treatments for diseases in which modulation of the cytokine profile would be beneficial.
Two-stage Algorithm for Fairness-aware Machine Learning

Algorithmic decision making process now affects many aspects of our lives. Standard tools for machine learning, such as classification and regression, are subject to the bias in data, and thus direct application of such off-the-shelf tools could lead to a specific group being unfairly discriminated. Removing sensitive attributes of data does not solve this problem because a \textit{disparate impact} can arise when non-sensitive attributes and sensitive attributes are correlated. Here, we study a fair machine learning algorithm that avoids such a disparate impact when making a decision. Inspired by the two-stage least squares method that is widely used in the field of economics, we propose a two-stage algorithm that removes bias in the training data. The proposed algorithm is conceptually simple. Unlike most of existing fair algorithms that are designed for classification tasks, the proposed method is able to (i) deal with regression tasks, (ii) combine explanatory attributes to remove reverse discrimination, and (iii) deal with numerical sensitive attributes. The performance and fairness of the proposed algorithm are evaluated in simulations with synthetic and real-world datasets.
Immunity and protection of mice against Neisseria meningitidis group B by vaccination, using polysaccharide complexed with outer membrane proteins: a comparison with purified B polysaccharide

A methodology for preparing outer membrane proteins (type specific) complexed to group B polysaccharide of Neisseria meningitidis is described. These complexes, low in nucleic acid and lipopolysaccharide content, were immunogenic in mice with induction of humoral antigroup B and antiprotein responses. Immunized mice were also protected against challenge with N. meningitidis group B strains of the same or a different type from that used for vaccination. Both immunity and protection were enhanced when the mice received a secondary immunization with the protein-polysaccharide complex. Additional data have shown the capacity of purified B polysaccharide to induce immunological memory, even though it is incapable of inducing a humoral response when given alone.
Escape from extreme specialization: passionflowers, bats and the sword-billed hummingbird

A striking example of plant/pollinator trait matching is found between Andean species of Passiflora with 6–14-cm-long nectar tubes and the sword-billed hummingbird, Ensifera ensifera, with up to 11-cm-long bills. Because of the position of their anthers and stigmas, and self-incompatibility, these passionflower species depend on E. ensifera for pollination. Field observations show that the bird and plant distribution match completely and that scarcity of Ensifera results in reduced passionflower seed set. We here use nuclear and plastid DNA sequences to investigate how often and when these mutualisms evolved and under which conditions, if ever, they were lost. The phylogeny includes 26 (70%) of the 37 extremely long-tubed species, 13 (68%) of the 19 species with tubes too short for Ensifera and four of the seven bat-pollinated species for a total of 43 (69%) of all species in Passiflora supersection Tacsonia (plus 11 outgroups). We time-calibrated the phylogeny to infer the speed of any pollinator switching. Results show that Tacsonia is monophyletic and that its stem group dates to 10.7 Ma, matching the divergence at 11.6 Ma of E. ensifera from its short-billed sister species. Whether pollination by short-billed hummingbirds or by Ensifera is the ancestral condition cannot be securely inferred, but extremely long-tubed flowers exclusively pollinated by Ensifera evolved early during the radiation of the Tacsonia clade. There is also evidence of several losses of Ensifera dependence, involving shifts to bat pollination and shorter billed birds. Besides being extremely asymmetric—a single bird species coevolving with a speciose plant clade—the Ensifera/Passiflora system is a prime example of a specialized pollinator not driving plant speciation, but instead being the precondition for the maintenance of isolated populations (through reliable seed set) that then underwent allopatric speciation.
Abnormal Immunoexpression of Cell Adhesion Molecules (CAMs) in Cervical Cancer

The purpose of this study was to examine the immunoexpression of cell adhesion molecules (CAMs) E-cadherin, CD44s, and CD44v3 in cervical cancer and compare it with that in benign exo-endocervical tissue. In all, 81 cervical cancer biopsy specimens and 22 benign controls were included. Primary monoclonal antibodies NHC-38, F10-44-2, and 3G5 for E-cadherin, CD44s, and CD44v3 were used, respectively. Statistical significance was evaluated by the χ2 test. Antigen expression was significantly different in cervical cancer specimens compared with controls, showing marked decrease in membrane expression: E-cadherin, 6.5% and 77.3% (P < .000); CD44s, 3.9% and 81.8% (P < .000); and CD44v3, 0% and 81.8% (P < .000), respectively. The immunoexpression was significantly heterogeneous in carcinomas (P < .034) and adenocarcinomas (P < .000) for E-cadherin and CD44s. For CD44v3, no case of cancer showed immunostaining in membranes. These findings reaffirm that cell adhesion is markedly altered in cervical cancer. The authors suggest that these proteins could serve as markers for invasive cervical neoplasia.
Muslim Separatism: The Moros of Southern Philippines and the Malays of Southern Thailand

Despite the assumptions of both the 'modernization school' and Marxist theorists that ethnicity was a transitory phenomenon along the path to political development, the past few decades have seen a resurgence of ethnic nationalism. In recent years a number of explanations has been offered for the persistence and resurgence of ethnicity. Within this context, this thesis looks at ethnic separatist politics among the Muslim mir~ority populations in Mindanao, the Philippines and in Patani, Thailand. It addresses several questions: having regard to the alternative explanations offered for the persistence and resurgence of ethnic nationalism, how does one account for the survival of Moro and Malay identity over centuries in the face of repeated attempts to inte~rate these ethnic communities into the larger political entities of the Philippines and Thailand? More specifically, what immediate factors triggered the recent emergence of armed separatist movements in the two areas? Chapters 2 and 3 describe the historical, economic and social background of the Moro and the Malay communities. They discuss how these two distinct ethnic communities evolved and examine the socio-economic conditions of the communities as minorities under the domination of Filipino-Christian and Thai-Buddhist majorities. They depict also the history of the Moro and the Malay resistance movements in the 20th century, which culminated in the emergence of full-fledged organized separatist fronts. The particular role of Islam in creating a sense of ummah (community) that distinguished Muslim from non-Muslim communities, and in shaping and legitimating the separatist movements both within the Moro and Malay societies and in the context of the larger Islamic world community is explored. Beyond these broader questions, the study scrutinizes the form which the separatist struggles have taken over time and examines in detail the structure, leader-
Activation of Caspase Pathways during Iron Chelator-mediated Apoptosis*

Iron chelators have traditionally been used in the treatment of iron overload. Recently, chelators have also been explored for their ability to limit oxidant damage in cardiovascular, neurologic, and inflammatory disease as well as to serve as anti-cancer agents. To determine the mechanism of cell death induced by iron chelators, we assessed the time course and pathways of caspase activation during apoptosis induced by iron chelators. We report that the chelator tachpyridine sequentially activates caspases 9, 3, and 8. These caspases were also activated by the structurally unrelated chelators dipyridyl and desferrioxamine. The critical role of caspase activation in cell death was supported by microinjection experiments demonstrating that p35, a broad spectrum caspase inhibitor, protected HeLa cells from chelator-induced cell death. Apoptosis mediated by tachpyridine was not prevented by blocking the CD95 death receptor pathway with a Fas-associated death domain protein (FADD) dominant-negative mutant. In contrast, chelator-mediated cell death was blocked in cells microinjected with Bcl-XL and completely inhibited in cells microinjected with a dominant-negative caspase 9 expression vector. Caspase activation was not observed in cells treated with N-methyl tachpyridine, anN-alkylated derivative of tachpyridine which lacks an ability to react with iron. These results suggest that activation of a mitochondrial caspase pathway is an important mechanism by which iron chelators induce cell death.
Extending the liaison psychiatry service in a large hospital in the UK: a before and after evaluation of the economic impact and patient care following ED attendances for self-harm

Objectives To evaluate the impact of an expansion of liaison psychiatry services (LPS) on patient management, outcomes and treatment costs for emergency department (ED) attendances for self-harm. Design Retrospective before and after cohort study using routinely collected Self-Harm Surveillance Register data. Setting A large hospital in South West England. Subjects Patients attending the ED for self-harm. Interventions Extension of the LPS’ working hours from 9:00 to 17:00, Monday to Friday to 8:00 to 22:00, 7 days a week, following a £250 000 annual investment Main outcome measures Number and characteristics of ED attendances for self-harm. The before and after cohorts were compared in terms of key process measures, including proportion of patients receiving a psychosocial assessment, average length of hospital stay, waiting times for assessment, proportion of patients who self-discharged without an assessment, levels of repeat self-harm attendances and mean cost per patient attendance. Results 298 patients attended ED for self-harm on 373 occasions between January and March 2014, and 318 patients attended on 381 occasions between January and March 2015. The proportion of ED attendances where patients received a psychosocial assessment increased from 57% to 68% (p=0.003), median waiting time decreased by 3 hours and 14 min (p=0.017), and the proportion of episodes where patients self-discharged without a psychosocial assessment decreased from 20% to 13% (p=0.022). The mean cost per patient attendance was marginally lower after the intervention (−£84; 95% CI −£254 to £77). Conclusions The extended LPS seems to have had a favourable effect on the management and outcomes of self-harm patients. The cost of extending the LPS’ working hours might be partially offset by more efficient assessment and discharge. The impact of the extended LPS on the care of hospitalised patients with mental health problems other than self-harm requires further evaluation.