Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tyrosine phosphorylation of Mdm2 by c‐Abl: implications for p53 regulation

The p53 tumor suppressor is inhibited and destabilized by Mdm2. However, under stress conditions, this downregulation is relieved, allowing the accumulation of biologically active p53. Recently we showed that c‐Abl is important for p53 activation under stress conditions. In response to DNA damage, c‐Abl protects p53 by neutralizing the inhibitory effects of Mdm2. In this study we ask whether this neutralization involves a direct interplay between c‐Abl and Mdm2, and what is the contribution of the c‐Abl kinase activity? We demonstrate that the kinase activity of c‐Abl is required for maintaining the basal levels of p53 expression and for achieving maximal accumulation of p53 in response to DNA damage. Importantly, c‐Abl binds and phosphorylates Mdm2 in vivo and in vitro. We characterize Hdm2 (human Mdm2) phosphorylation at Tyr394. Substitution of Tyr394 by Phe394 enhances the ability of Mdm2 to promote p53 degradation and to inhibit its transcriptional and apoptotic activities. Our results suggest that phosphorylation of Mdm2 by c‐Abl impairs the inhibition of p53 by Mdm2, hence defining a novel mechanism by which c‐Abl activates p53.
Gender in Development

‘Gender’ is increasingly occupying space in development literature and practice. ‘Gender and Development’ has become a unique field of study since 1970s, having been inspired by the path breaking Boserup’s thesis: ‘Women’s Role in Economic Development’, where Ester Boserup used for the first time ‘gender’ as an important variable in a study on economic development. Currently, many Universities have academic programmes on Gender and Development Studies at Under Graduate and Masters Levels. For students of gender and development studies, knowledge of Gender Analysis, Gender Planning, and measuring gender-related development are considered very essential. But, the fact is that for someone who looks for various frameworks on ‘Gender Analysis’ or methods of measuring gender-related development for example, it is not easy to find them all in one place. Secondly, after reading the basic concepts of gender, if one wanted to read cross-cutting themes on gender one has to go searching. That’s the gap this book fills. From this work, it is easy for a student to get at most of the methods of gender analysis and measurement, and go through essays on cross-cutting themes.
Parkinsonism and Epilepsy: Case Report and Reappraisal of an Old Question

Since Yakovlev's contribution in 1928, very few cases with parkinsonism and epilepsy have been reported in the literature. While antagonism has been claimed between the two conditions, little is hypothesized about the pathophysiological mechanisms involved. We report the case of a patient with both temporal lobe epilepsy and Parkinson's disease, who presented with a dramatic decrease in seizure frequency when the parkinsonian signs developed and disappearance of motor fluctuations following recurrence of seizures. On the basis of recent knowledge regarding both pathologies we propose new insights into this old question.
Macroeconomics Determinants of the Correlation Between Stocks and Bonds

We analyze the correlation between the stock and bond markets in Germany and the US. We use a standard no-arbitrage affine model to decompose the correlation between these two assets into its main drivers. The correlation between bond yields and stock returns is a key determinant of asset allocation. Our results show that the correlation is primarily influenced by the uncertainty about inflation and real interest rates as well as by co-movement between inflation, real interest rates and dividend growth. Shocks to inflation, real interest rates and dividend growth can explain the correlation’s temporary deviation from its long-term dynamics.
A novel adaptive multi-mode search algorithm for fast block-matching motion estimation

Motion estimation is the main bottleneck in real-time video coding applications, and the search for fast and effective motion estimation algorithms has been a challenging problem recently. This paper describes a new block-matching algorithm that exploits the spatial correlations, and proposes an adaptive multi-mode search algorithm (AMMS) based on the analysis of the neighboring area surrounding the predicted motion vectors. Compared with the well-known diamond search (DS) and hexagon-based search (HEXBS) algorithms recently proposed, our algorithm is robust and achieves similar performance with significantly reduced number of search points.
Changes in heart rate variability indexes due to drowsiness in professional drivers measured in a real environment

The study aims to assess the changes in Heart Rate Variability (HRV) indexes in healthy subjects while driving in a real environment in order to detect drowsiness. The ECG of ten professional drivers was acquired while driving on routes familiar to the subjects. RR time series were quantified using a sliding window of 300 beats. Mean (mRR), standard deviation (SDNN), standard deviation of the differentiated time series (rmsDD), power of the low (PLF) and high (PHF) frequency bands as well as the ratio LF/HF were computed. In addition, the median frequency of the power spectrum (MEDF), the bandwidth that contains the 50% of the power (BW50) and a measure of the asymmetry of the spectrum (AFS) were obtained. Moreover, the Hurst exponent estimated by fractional differintegration (HFDI) and the short scaling exponent obtained by detrended fluctuation analysis (α1) were computed. Two observers classified the state of the drivers minute by minute by inspection of video recordings as alert or drowsy driver. Five subjects were alert for the whole recording while the others presented one or more periods of drowsiness in seven recordings between resting stops. There are not significant differences between groups for all indexes but BW50 (p<;0.05). Nevertheless paired tests comparing drowsy and alert periods show significant differences (p<;0.05) for SDNN, HFDI, mRR, BW50, AFS, α1, LF/HF and MEDF.
A population-based follow-up study on mortality from cancer or cardiovascular disease and serum carotenoids, retinol and tocopherols in Japanese inhabitants.

OBJECTIVE Observational epidemiologic studies have shown that a high intake of dietary and high serum levels of carotenoids are associated with a reduced risk of mortality from cancer and cardiovascular disease. To investigate whether high serum levels of carotenoids can reduce mortality rates, a population-based follow-up study was conducted among Japanese inhabitants. MATERIALS AND METHODS Three thousand two hundred and fifty-four subjects (1,260 males and 1,994 females) aged from 39 to 85 years who had attended health check-up programs from 1989 to 1995 were recruited from the Japanese population. Serum levels of carotenoids, retinol and tocopherols were separately determined by high-performance liquid chromatography. Hazard ratios for serum values of carotenoids, retinol and tocopherols were estimated by Cox's proportional hazard model after adjusting for sex, age, and other confounding factors. RESULTS During the 11.7-year follow-up period, 140 deaths (86 males and 54 females) from cancer of all sites were identified among the cohort subjects, including 41 from lung , 17 from stomach , 16 from colorectal and 12 from liver cancer, as well as 89 deaths from cardiovascular disease, including 45 from heart disease and 37 from stroke. High serum values of carotenoids including xanthophylls were apparently associated with low hazard ratios for mortality rates of cancer of all sites or of cardiovascular disease. High serum values of beta-carotene, total carotene, provitamin A and total carotenoid for colorectal cancer or stroke also appeared to be related to low hazard ratios. Those of retinol and tocopherols were not associated with any reduction in risk of mortality from cancer or cardiovascular disease. CONCLUSIONS Our follow-up study demonstrated that a typical Japanese diet related to elevating serum levels of carotenoids with provitamin A activity may significantly reduce risk of mortality from cancer of certain sites or cardiovascular disease, especially colorectal cancer or stroke, while high serum levels of some xanthophylls, retinol and tocopherols do not.
Angiogenesis for the Treatment of Inoperable Coronary Disease: The Future

Improved treatment options and better management of cardiovascular risk factors have resulted in improved outcomes for patients suffering from severe coronary artery disease. However, coronary artery disease may be of such a diffuse and severe manner that repeated attempts at catheter-based interventions and coronary artery bypass grafting may be unsuccessful at restoring normal myocardial blood flow. It is the goal of therapeutic angiogenesis to restore perfusion to chronically ischemic myocardium using protein growth factors, gene therapy, or, more recently, cell-based therapy, without intervening on the epicardial coronary arteries. However, angiogenesis has not yet provided significant clinical benefit and is still reserved as an experimental treatment for patients who have failed conventional therapies. Once potential endogenous inhibitors of vascular development can be modified, angiogenesis may become more useful for therapeutic purposes. It is hoped that angiogenesis for therapeutic purposes will one day effectively re-create the potent natural processes of vascularization that every human being undergoes during growth and development and become a major modality for the treatment of coronary artery disease.
Ocular Dominance and the Interocular Suppression of Blur in Monovision

ABSTRACT Presbyopic contact lens patients with monocular corrections (monovision) see clearly at all distances by virtue of an interocular suppression of anisometropic blur that occurs regionally between corresponding retinal areas. This suppression fails to occur with small highcontrast targets viewed under low luminance conditions. The effect of target size and contrast upon interocular suppression of blur was quantified by reducing contrast of a bright test spot, viewed binocularly while wearing various plus lenses monocularly, until the out‐of‐focus image was suppressed. The strength of interocular suppression was equivalent when the plus lens was before either eye. However, after subjects wore a plus lens over their nonsighting eye for one day, interocular suppression of blur became enhanced when the nonsighting eye was blurred, and it became reduced when the sighting eye was blurred. Succcessful monovision subjects suppressed blur at higher contrast levels than did unsuccessful subjects. These results suggest a possible clinical test for quantifying adaptation to monovision.
Organ-specific function of adhesion G protein-coupled receptor GPR126 is domain-dependent

Significance Adhesion G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are expressed in many developing organs, immune cells, and cancer cells, suggesting that they might play an important role in physiological and pathological functions. Compared with their potential importance, their function and signaling mechanisms are poorly understood. Disruption of the G protein-coupled receptor 126 (Gpr126) gene in mice leads to lack of myelination in the peripheral nervous system (PNS) and heart abnormalities. Similarly, the zebrafish mutant line gpr126st49 exhibits PNS abnormalities but, in contrast, no heart phenotype. Here we provide an explanation for these discrepancies. The presented data suggest that in the heart, the N-terminal fragment of Gpr126 can act independently as a ligand or coreceptor. Taken together, our data provide evidence of tissue- and domain-specific adhesion GPCR function. Despite their abundance and multiple functions in a variety of organ systems, the function and signaling mechanisms of adhesion G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are poorly understood. Adhesion GPCRs possess large N termini containing various functional domains. In addition, many of them are autoproteolytically cleaved at their GPS sites into an N-terminal fragment (NTF) and C-terminal fragment. Here we demonstrate that Gpr126 is expressed in the endocardium during early mouse heart development. Gpr126 knockout in mice and knockdown in zebrafish caused hypotrabeculation and affected mitochondrial function. Ectopic expression of Gpr126-NTF that lacks the GPS motif (NTFΔGPS) in zebrafish rescued the trabeculation but not the previously described myelination phenotype in the peripheral nervous system. These data support a model in which the NTF of Gpr126, in contrast to the C-terminal fragment, plays an important role in heart development. Collectively, our analysis provides a unique example of the versatile function and signaling properties of adhesion GPCRs in vertebrates.
Leveraging Citizen Science and Information Technology for Population Physical Activity Promotion

ABSTRACT Although technology is a major driver of many of society's comforts, conveniences, and advances, it has been responsible, in a significant way, for engineering regular physical activity and a number of other positive health behaviors out of people's daily lives. A key question concerns how to harness information and communication technologies to bring about positive changes in the health promotion field. One such approach involves community-engaged “citizen science,” in which local residents leverage the potential of information and communication technologies to foster data-driven consensus-building and mobilization efforts that advance physical activity at the individual, social, built environment, and policy levels. The history of citizen science in the research arena is briefly described, and an evidence-based method that embeds citizen science in a multilevel, multisectoral community-based participatory research framework for physical activity promotion is presented. Several examples of this citizen science-driven community engagement framework for promoting active lifestyles, called “Our Voice,” are discussed, including pilot projects from diverse communities in the United States as well as internationally. The opportunities and challenges involved in leveraging citizen science activities as part of a broader population approach to promoting regular physical activity are explored. The strategic engagement of citizen scientists from sociodemographically diverse communities across the globe as both assessment as well as change agents provides a promising, potentially low-cost, and scalable strategy for creating more active, healthful, and equitable neighborhoods and communities worldwide.
Statistical Applications in Genetics and Molecular Biology

Methods for multivariate meta-analysis of genetic association studies are reviewed, summarized and presented in a unified framework. Modifications of standard models are described in detail in order to be applied in genetic association studies. The model based on summary data is uniformly defined for both discrete and continuous outcomes and analytical expressions for the covariance of the two jointly modeled outcomes are derived for both cases. The models based on the binary nature of the data are fitted using both prospective and retrospective likelihood. Furthermore, formal tests for assessing the genetic model of inheritance are developed based on standard normal theory. The general model is compared to the recently proposed genetic model-free bivariate approach (either using summary or binary data), and it is clearly shown that the estimates provided by this approach are nearly identical to the estimates derived by the general bivariate model using the aforementioned tests for the genetic model. The methods developed here as well as the tests, are easily implemented in all major statistical packages, escaping the need of self written software. The methods are applied in several already published meta-analyses of genetic association studies (with both discrete and continuous outcomes) and the results are compared against the widely used univariate approach as well as against the genetic model free approaches. Illustrative examples of code in Stata are given in the appendix. It is anticipated that the methods developed in this work will be widely applied in the meta-analysis of genetic association studies.
Clinical efficacy of low-temperature radiofrequency ablation of pharyngolaryngeal cyst in 84 Chinese infants

Abstract The aim of the study is to investigate the advantages and disadvantages of low-temperature radiofrequency ablation of pharyngolaryngeal cyst. The study population was composed of 84 children diagnosed with pharyngolaryngeal cyst who underwent surgical treatment at the Department of Otolaryngology, Wuhan Children's Hospital, Wuhan, China, between January 1984 and December 2013. All patients were operated using a self-retaining laryngoscope and were divided into 3 groups: traditional cystectomy group (N = 9), dynamic cutting system group (N = 18), and low-temperature radiofrequency ablation group (N = 57). Clinical outcomes were analyzed to assess the efficacy of low-temperature radiofrequency ablation in treatment of pharyngolaryngeal cyst. Compared with traditional cystectomy group or dynamic cutting system group, operation time was shorter, bleeding was less and one-year recurrence rate was much lower in low-temperature radiofrequency ablation group. However, operation time and bleeding was not statistically different between traditional cystectomy and dynamic cutting system group. Low-temperature radiofrequency ablation may be an effective substitute for treating pharyngolaryngeal cyst.
Changes in the expression of oestrogen receptors and E‐cadherin as molecular markers of progression from normal epithelium to invasive cancer in elderly patients with vulvar squamous cell carcinoma

Zannoni G F, Prisco M G, Vellone V G, De Stefano I, Scambia G & Gallo D (2011) Histopathology58, 265–275 Changes in the expression of oestrogen receptors and E‐cadherin as molecular markers of progression from normal epithelium to invasive cancer in elderly patients with vulvar squamous cell carcinoma
Determinants of Voluntary Greenhouse Gas Emission Disclosure: An Empirical Investigation on Turkish Firms

Firms worldwide have been facing an increasing pressure to disclose their Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions since GHG emissions are seen as the main source of global warming which is one of the most challenging problems that the world is faced with. For this reason, voluntary GHG disclosure represents a growing area of research interest. However, the existing research generally focuses on developed countries. In this sense, the present paper aims to contribute to the existing GHG disclosure literature by analyzing the determinants of voluntary disclosure of firms operating in a developing country, Turkey. The effects of both financial characteristics and board structures of firms on voluntary disclosure decisions are analyzed as the possible determinants of GHG disclosures of Turkish firms. We use two proxies for assessing the firms’ GHG disclosures. The first proxy, “sensitiveness tendency”, indicates the response behavior of firms to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) survey. The second proxy, namely, “transparence tendency”, represents the disclosure behavior of firms. Using logistic regression models with a sample of 84 listed Turkish companies which were included in the Carbon Disclosure Project survey in 2014, 2015 and 2016, we find that firm size, institutional ownership and market value are positively related to the sensitivity of sampled firms, while board size is negatively related. On the other hand, our results indicate that firm size, profitability and institutional ownership have positive impacts on the transparency of Turkish listed firms.
Public Perception of Stroke in Spain

Background and Purpose: Stroke is one of the leading causes of death and disability in western countries. Improving attention to stroke demands better public information about the illness. The aim of the present study was to determine the current knowledge of stroke among the Spanish population. Methods: We conducted a population-based telephone interview in Spain. A total of 3,000 respondents were selected at random following a systematic procedure aimed at filling the sex/age community quotas. Results: A total of 16,016 telephone calls were made. Three thousand respondents were eligible and 2,884 completed the telephone interview. Only 4.5% of respondents knew the term stroke, 1,719 (59.6%) participants were able to mention at least one stroke risk factor, and only 940 (32.6%) could mention at least one stroke sign without prompting. Most respondents considered stroke to be a severe and dangerous illness that can be treated, but less than half of the respondents went immediately to a hospital when faced with a stroke event. Suitable stroke knowledge was only achieved by 302 (10.5%) respondents. Those who had home-based occupations and no previous stroke experience were less likely to have suitable stroke knowledge. Conclusions: This study confirms that our community is still unfamiliar with stroke. Wide population-based educational programs are needed to increase public knowledge of stroke. Our results indicate that people with home-based occupations should be the main target of our education campaigns.
CT of primary cystic pancreatic neoplasms: can CT be used for patient triage and treatment?

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to determine whether CT can be used to distinguish serous cystadenomas from mucinous cystadenomas or cystadenocarcinomas of the pancreas and play an enhanced role in patient triage and treatment. MATERIALS AND METHODS A blinded retrospective analysis of CT scans from 50 patients with pathologically proven primary cystic pancreatic neoplasms was performed independently by three radiologists. Using classic CT criteria as reported in the literature, each tumor was categorized as definitely serous, mucinous, or indeterminate. Tumor location, size, presence of calcification, and size of largest cyst were recorded. Data for each reviewer were analyzed independently. Consensus data were then subjected to multivariate logistic regression analysis. RESULTS The ability of our reviewers to diagnose serous neoplasms ranged from 23% to 41%. Eight mucinous neoplasms were mistaken for serous tumors by two of the three reviewers. When consensus between at least two of the three reviewers was used for diagnosis, 27% of serous neoplasms were correctly diagnosed and all of the mucinous tumors were correctly identified as uncertain or mucinous, yielding the same clinical end point. For multivariate logistic regression analysis, a cyst smaller than 2 cm had a statistically significant association (p = 0.005) with serous tumors, and the presence of peripheral tumoral calcification had a statistically significant association (p = 0.01) with mucinous tumors. CONCLUSION There is significant variability in the CT appearance of serous and mucinous neoplasms of the pancreas, making CT an insensitive tool for differentiating these tumors. All tumors with peripheral calcifications were identified as mucinous neoplasms.