Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Regulation of Human Pregnane X Receptor and its Target Gene Cytochrome P450 3A by Praeruptorin A Isolated from the Herbal Medicine Peucedanum praeruptorum

Abstract Qianhu, the dried roots of Peucedanum praeruptorum, is a well-known traditional Chinese medicinal herb which was officially listed in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia. Praeruptorin A is the major active constituent of Qianhu. Our previous studies show that praeruptorin effectively transactivated the protein expression and catalytic activity of cytochrome P450 3A4 via the constitutive androstane receptor-mediated pathway. However, the effect of praeruptorin on the transactivation of cytochrome P450 3A4 through pregnane X receptor pathway is still unclear. To further elucidate the role of the pregnane X receptor pathway in the up-regulation of cytochrome P450 3A4 by praeruptorin, in this study, the effect of praeruptorin on the cytochrome P450 3A4 gene expression was investigated in mouse primary hepatocytes after knockdown of the pregnane X receptor by transient transfection of its siRNA; and the gene expression, protein expression, and catalytic activity of cytochrome P450 3A4 in the LS174T cells with pregnane X receptor overexpression were determined by real-time PCR, Western blot analysis, and LC-MS/MS-based cytochrome P450 3A4 substrate assay, respectively. We found that the level of cytochrome P450 3a11 gene expression in mouse primary hepatocytes was significantly increased by praeruptorin, but such an induction was suppressed after knockdown of pregnane X receptor by its siRNA. Praeruptorin significantly induced cytochrome P450 3A4 mRNA, protein expression, and functional activity through pregnane X receptor-mediated pathway in pregnane X receptor-overexpression LS174T cells; conversely, induction was not found in LS174T cells untransfected with pregnane X receptor plasmids. These findings suggest that praeruptorin can significantly up-regulate cytochrome P450 3A4 gene via the pregnane X receptor-mediated pathway, and this should be taken into consideration in potential herb-drug interactions.
Tuberculosis should not be considered an AIDS-defining illness in areas with a high tuberculosis prevalence.

OBJECTIVE To assess the prognosis of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) associated tuberculosis in a high tuberculosis prevalence setting. METHODS Survival and subsequent AIDS-defining illnesses (ADI) of patients with tuberculosis were compared with patients remaining tuberculosis-free in a prospective cohort study in two university-affiliated adult HIV clinics in Cape Town. RESULTS Tuberculosis without prior or simultaneous ADI was diagnosed in 141 patients. CD4+ T-lymphocyte count was >200 cells/microl in 67% of the incident tuberculosis cases. Survival in tuberculosis patients was comparable to that of patients with oral hairy leukoplakia and/or oral candidiasis (median = 23.6 vs. 27.8 months respectively; P = 0.59, adjusted hazard ratio [AHR] = 0.87; 95%CI 0.63-1.58), and better than in patients with AIDS (median = 11.5 months; P < 0.001, AHR = 2.37; 95% CI 1.93-4.66). Subsequent ADI were less frequent in tuberculosis than in AIDS patients (AHR = 0.36; 95%CI 0.23-0.58). Survival of patients with pulmonary or extra-pulmonary tuberculosis was similar (P = 0.32). CONCLUSION Tuberculosis in HIV-infected patients from areas endemic with tuberculosis occurs across a wide spectrum of immune suppression and has a considerably better prognosis than other ADI. Inclusion of tuberculosis in the clinical case definition of AIDS in such areas should be reconsidered.
Immunohistochemical investigation of hormone receptors and vascular endothelial growth factor concentration in vestibular schwannoma.

OBJECTIVES To determine if a relationship exists between the presence of estrogen receptors (ER), progesterone receptors (PR), or vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and the size, growth rate, and behavior of vestibular schwannoma tumors. DESIGN Nine tumor samples from young female patients with large vestibular schwannoma tumors were preselected because they were presumed to be faster growing, more aggressive tumors. Immunohistochemical staining was performed using monoclonal mouse antibodies to ER, PR, and VEGF. RESULTS The mean age of the study sample was 32.3 years, mean tumor size was 3.2 cm, and the average growth rate was 0.4 cm per 2 months. The results of immunohistochemical staining for ER and PR in all nine samples were unequivocally negative. Eight of nine tumor samples stained positive for VEGF, with five demonstrating low intensity and three demonstrating moderate intensity staining. CONCLUSIONS There is histopathological evidence for the expression of VEGF in vestibular schwannomas but not for ER and PR. Further studies are necessary to determine the role of VEGF and other molecular pathways in the growth of vestibular schwannomas and the application of anti-VEGF therapy as a potential treatment option in the future.
Exploiting reviewers’ comment histories for sentiment analysis

Sentiment analysis is used to extract people’s opinion from their online comments in order to help automated systems provide more precise recommendations. Existing sentiment analysis methods often assume that the comments of any single reviewer are independent of each other and so they do not take advantage of significant information that may be extracted from reviewers’ comment histories. Using psychological findings and the theory of negativity bias, we propose a method for exploiting reviewers’ comment histories to improve sentiment analysis. Furthermore, to use more fine-grained information about the content of a review, our method predicts the overall ratings by aggregating sentence-level scores. In the proposed system, the Dempster–Shafer theory of evidence is utilized for score aggregation. The results from four large and diverse social Web datasets establish the superiority of our approach in comparison with the state-of-the-art machine learning techniques. In addition, the results show that the suggested method is robust to the size of training dataset.
Reviewing the ketamine model for schizophrenia

The observation that antagonists of the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR), such as phencyclidine (PCP) and ketamine, transiently induce symptoms of acute schizophrenia had led to a paradigm shift from dopaminergic to glutamatergic dysfunction in pharmacological models of schizophrenia. The glutamate hypothesis can explain negative and cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia better than the dopamine hypothesis, and has the potential to explain dopamine dysfunction itself. The pharmacological and psychomimetic effects of ketamine, which is safer for human subjects than phencyclidine, are herein reviewed. Ketamine binds to a variety of receptors, but principally acts at the NMDAR, and convergent genetic and molecular evidence point to NMDAR hypofunction in schizophrenia. Furthermore, NMDAR hypofunction can explain connectional and oscillatory abnormalities in schizophrenia in terms of both weakened excitation of inhibitory γ-aminobutyric acidergic (GABAergic) interneurons that synchronize cortical networks and disinhibition of principal cells. Individuals with prenatal NMDAR aberrations might experience the onset of schizophrenia towards the completion of synaptic pruning in adolescence, when network connectivity drops below a critical value. We conclude that ketamine challenge is useful for studying the positive, negative, and cognitive symptoms, dopaminergic and GABAergic dysfunction, age of onset, functional dysconnectivity, and abnormal cortical oscillations observed in acute schizophrenia.
Concepts Of Fitness And Wellness A Comprehensive Lifestyle Approach

Thank you for downloading concepts of fitness and wellness a comprehensive lifestyle approach. Maybe you have knowledge that, people have look numerous times for their chosen novels like this concepts of fitness and wellness a comprehensive lifestyle approach, but end up in malicious downloads. Rather than enjoying a good book with a cup of coffee in the afternoon, instead they juggled with some infectious virus inside their desktop computer.
Facial expression recognition using salient facial patches

This paper proposes a novel facial expression recognition method composed of two main steps: offline step and online step. The offline step selects the most salient facial patches using mutual information technique. The online step relies on the already selected patches to identify the facial expression using an SVM classifier. In both steps, the LBP operator was used to extract facial expressions features. Through an extensive experiments on the JAFFE and KANADE databases, we have shown that our method, thanks to the salient selected patches, has the advantage of being much faster with a significant gain in recognition performance.
Human sexual inadequacy.

If written concisely and unrepetitively, this book would occupy about one-third the space, be considerably clearer, and correspondingly less impressive. Part of its impressiveness is its style: not a personal pronoun anywhere; only the Foundation. The language is somewhat simpler than its earlier companion piece, Human Sexual Response , but it is still virtually unreadable. Sample: "Women entering therapy in a state of non-orgasmic return reflected complete failure of any effective alignment of their biophysical and psychosocial systems of influence. " Meaning? The convoluted phraseology, contradictions, and reifications strike a familiar note. Like the Madison Avenue ad men who gave us "midriff bulge" and "tattletale grey," Dr. Masters offers an assortment, representative of which are "sensate focus," "endpoint release," and "coital opportunity"—joining earlier creations like "orgasmic platform. " The book contains a 56-page bibliography, but the text does not show that the listed material has been utilized within the book, in the usual
Vision in relation to lower extremity deficit in older women: cross-sectional and longitudinal study

Background and aims: Vision problems are common experiences within the older population. This study aimed to examine the association between vision and lower extremity impairment. Methods: 434 women aged 63–75 participated in visual acuity (VA) measurements at baseline and 313 persons at three-year follow-up. Measurements of lower extremity function included maximal isometric knee extension strength, leg extension power, maximal walking speed and standing balance. Results: At baseline, knee extension strength was lower among participants with visual impairment (VI) (273.2±6.4 N) compared to those with good vision (306.5±5.9 N, p<0.001) as well as leg extension power (95.2±2.7 W vs 104.2±2.6 W, p=0.009) and maximal walking speed (1.6±0.02 m/s vs 1.8±0.03 m/s, p<0.001). Higher velocity moment among persons with VI (53.5±2.7 mm2/s vs 42.7±1.4 mm2/s, p<0.001) indicated that persons with VI had poorer balance compared to persons with good vision. Decreased isometric knee extension strength (OR 1.26, 95% CI 1.09–1.45), poorer standing balance (OR 1.16, 95% CI 1.00–1.35) as well as lower maximal walking speed (OR 1.34, 95% CI 1.13–1.59) were associated with VI in the logistic regression models. Additionally, the association between poorer leg extension power and VI (OR 1.14, 95% CI 0.99–1.31) was of borderline statistical significance. In longitudinal analyses, VI did not predict decline in lower extremity function. Conclusions: Lower extremity impairment was associated with VI among relatively healthy older women. However, change in lower extremity function was quite similar between the vision groups. It is possible that decreased VA may be a marker of underlying systemic factors or the aging process, which lead to poorer functional capacity, or there may be shared background factors, which lead to decreased vision and lower extremity impairment.
Financial benefits of range management practices in the Chihuahan desert.

Over the last 50 years various management practices to improve cattle production efficiency in the Chihuahuan desert of southern New Mexico have been evaluated at the College Experimental Ranch operated by the Department of Animal and Range Sciences of New Mexico State University, and at the adjacent Jornada Experimental Range operated by the Agricultural Research ServiceUnited States Department of Agriculture. These management practices have been both active (high monetary inputs) and passive (low monetary inputs). Research on active management practices has involved primarily brush control and grazing systems while passive management research has been oriented toward stocking rates, cattle breeding improvement, supplemental feeding, watering point spacing, and replacement heifer management. The management strategy that has proven most effective based on these various studies is to use a conservative stocking rate (30 to 35% use of forage), a continuous grazing system, a maximum watering point spacing of 2 to 3 miles apart, an intensive replacement heifer management program, an intensive breeding program, almost no supplemental feed inputs other than a salt/mineral mix on the mature cow herd, and partial confinement of the herd during periods of severe drought. Performance measures comparing the average 1978 to 1984 Chihuahuan desert ranch, the average 1986 to 1991 Chihuahuan desert ranch, and the NMSU College Ranch with full application of the available technology are given in Table 1.
The Biochemical Development of Surface Activity in Mammalian Lung: I. The Surface-Active Phospholipids; the Separation and Distribution of Surface-Active Lecithin in the Lung of the Developing Rabbit Fetus

Extract: A simple technique, precipitation with acetone, was described to separate the surface-active lecithin fraction from the nonsurface-active fraction. Surface activity in lung phospholipids was found in the acetone-precipitated fractions of lecithin, sphingomyelin, phosphatidyl dimethylethanolamine and phosphatidyl inositol. Normal surface activity of saline extract of pooled fetal rabbit lung was observed from 28 days of gestation. It was possible to isolate surface-active lecithin from lung parenchyma long before the 29th day of gestation when surface-active lecithin first is found in the alveolar wash. During the nonbreathing fetal state, even at term, only 11% of lecithin from alveolar wash is surface-active increasing after one hour's breathing to approximately 50% of the total lecithin. The rabbits delivered prematurely after 28 full days of gestation clinically had respiratory distress and their percentage of surface-active lecithin in alveolar wash increased at a slow rate compared to full-term animals. Good temporal correlation was seen between intracellular storage of surface-active lecithin during the fetal state and the findings with electron microscopy of increasing numbers of osmiophilic inclusion bodies as gestation progresses.Speculation: Surface activity is shared by several phospholipids in lung but is related principally to lecithin. During fetal development there is production of intracellular surface-active lecithin with storage possibly in osmiophilic lamellar inclusion bodies until near term when some (11%) begins to appear in alveolar wash. After breathing, a great release of surface-active lecithin into alveolar wash occurs, with 50% of alveolar lecithin being surface active throughout the life of the animal. Prematurely delivered rabbits take much longer to increase their surface-active alveolar lecithin.
Technological Competition and Corporate Disclosure Policies

In recent decades, the United States has become predominantly a knowledge-based economy, where investments in research and development intensify competition among firms in the knowledge space as well as in the product market space. While the implications of product market competition on corporate policies have been widely studied in the literature, we focus on the under-explored implications of technological competition on corporate disclosure policies. We find that firms facing more intense technological competition are more likely to redact material information from their 10-K filings. In addition, their annual reports are less readable, have a more negative tone, and contain more uncertain words. Our results suggest that firms provide less transparent disclosures when they face greater technological competition, presumably due to greater proprietary cost concerns. We also show that the corporate information environment is worse as evidenced by larger absolute analyst forecast errors, higher analyst forecast dispersion, greater stock illiquidity, greater stock turnover, and greater bid-ask spread when firms face more intensive technological competition. These results are more pronounced for more profitable firms where proprietary costs of disclosure are likely higher. We obtain all the results after controlling for a variety of product market competition measures, suggesting that the implications of technological competition on corporate disclosures and information environment are distinct from and incremental to those of product market competition. Our results are robust to using two natural experiments and using an instrumental variable approach to address the endogeneity concern of technological competition.
The Bright Side of Stock Repurchases

Motivated by concerns that stock buybacks slow down the economic recovery in the United States, I analyze the bright side of open market repurchases. I examine the effect of price-support motivated repurchases on Capital Expenditures, Research & Development, and Corporate Acquisitions. I exploit the fact that distressed mutual funds tend to decrease existing positions to meet redemptions, and that these sales are uncorrelated with the firms' prospects. I show that price-support motivated repurchases increase corporate investment, specially in Capital Expenditures. Firms that trade their own stock to support price reduce the cost of capital, easing financial constraints, what ultimately leads to an increase in investment. Contrary to the widespread belief that repurchases trade off investment, these results suggest that some repurchases have positive real effects.
Field Method Comparison between Passive Air Samplers and Continuous Monitors for VOCs and NO2 in El Paso, Texas

Abstract This study evaluates the performance of Model 3300 Ogawa Passive Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) Samplers and 3M 3520 Organic Vapor Monitors (OVMs) by comparing integrated passive sampling concentrations to averaged hourly NO2 and volatile organic compound (VOC) measurements at two sites in El Paso, TX. Sampling periods were three time intervals (3-day weekend, 4-day weekday, and 7-day weekly) for three consecutive weeks. OVM concentrations were corrected for ambient pressure to account for higher elevation. Precise results (<5% relative standard deviation, RSD) were found for NO2 measurements from collocated Ogawa samplers. Reproducibility was lower from duplicate OVMs for BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene isomers) VOCs (≥7% RSD for 2-day samples) with better precision for longer sampling periods. Comparison of Ogawa NO2 samplers with chemiluminescence measurements averaged over the same time period suggested potential calibration problems with the chemiluminescence analyzer. For BTEX species, generally good agreement was obtained between OVMs and automated-gas chromatograph (auto-GC) measurements. The OVMs successfully tracked increasing levels of VOCs recorded by the auto-GCs.
Instructions for use Title Roles of NO Signaling in Long-Term Memory Formation in Visual Learning in an Insect Author ( s )

Many insects exhibit excellent capability of visual learning, but the molecular and neural mechanisms are poorly understood. This is in contrast to accumulation of information on molecular and neural mechanisms of olfactory learning in insects. In olfactory learning in insects, it has been shown that cyclic AMP (cAMP) signaling critically participates in the formation of protein synthesis-dependent long-term memory (LTM) and, in some insects, nitric oxide (NO)-cyclic GMP (cGMP) signaling also plays roles in LTM formation. In this study, we examined the possible contribution of NO-cGMP signaling and cAMP signaling to LTM formation in visual pattern learning in crickets. Crickets that had been subjected to 8-trial conditioning to associate a visual pattern with water reward exhibited memory retention 1 day after conditioning, whereas those subjected to 4-trial conditioning exhibited 30-min memory retention but not 1-day retention. Injection of cycloheximide, a protein synthesis inhibitor, into the hemolymph prior to 8-trial conditioning blocked formation of 1-day memory, whereas it had no effect on 30-min memory formation, indicating that 1-day memory can be characterized as protein synthesis-dependent long-term memory (LTM). Injection of an inhibitor of the enzyme producing an NO or cAMP prior to 8-trial visual conditioning blocked LTM formation, whereas it had no effect on 30-min memory formation. Moreover, injection of an NO donor, cGMP analogue or cAMP analogue prior to 4-trial conditioning induced LTM. Induction of LTM by an NO donor was blocked by DDA, an inhibitor of adenylyl cyclase, an enzyme producing cAMP, but LTM induction by a cAMP analogue was not impaired by L-NAME, an inhibitor of NO synthase. The results indicate that cAMP signaling is downstream of NO signaling for visual LTM formation. We conclude that visual learning and olfactory learning share common biochemical cascades for LTM formation. Citation: Matsumoto Y, Hirashima D, Terao K, Mizunami M (2013) Roles of NO Signaling in Long-Term Memory Formation in Visual Learning in an Insect. PLoS ONE 8(7): e68538. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0068538 Editor: Gregg Roman, University of Houston, United States of America Received April 04, 2013; Accepted June 05, 2013; Published July 24, 2013 Copyright: © 2013 Matsumoto et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This study was supported by grants from the the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture, Sports and Technology of Japan. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: mizunami@sci.hokudai. ac.jp
Influence of acute viral hepatitis on disposition and pharmacologic effect of warfarin

Five patients received a small oral dose of warfarin during and after recovery from acute viral hepatitis. Mean (± SD) clearance, volume of distribution, and half‐life of the drug were 6.1 ± 0.9 mllhrlkg, 0.09 ± 0.04 L/kg, and 23 ± 5 hr, respectively, during the acute period. After apparent recovery, observed values were 6.1 ± 0.7 ml/hr/kg, 0.21 ± 0.02 L/kg, and 25 ± 3 hr. These differences were not significant. Pattern of renal elimination of warfarin metabolites and drug protein binding did not change between the two phases. During the acute period of illness, prothrombin time increased in 2 of the 5 subjects, but remained within normal limits in all participants during the recovery period. This study shows that warfarin disposition may not change as a consequence of mild or moderate hepatic impairment.