Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Checkpoint kinase 1 is essential for meiotic cell cycle regulation in mouse oocytes

Checkpoint kinase 1 (Chk1) plays key roles in all currently defined cell cycle checkpoints, but its functions in mouse oocyte meiosis remain unclear. In this study, we report the expression, localization and functions of Chk1 in mouse oocyte meiosis. Chk1 was expressed from germinal vesicle (GV) to metaphase II (MII) stages and localized to the spindle from pro-metaphase I (pro-MI) to MII stages in mouse oocytes. Chk1 depletion facilitated the G2/M transition while Chk1 overexpression inhibited the G2/M transition as indicated by germinal vesicle breakdown (GVBD), through regulation of Cdh1 and Cyclin B1. Chk1 depletion did not affect meiotic cell cycle progression after GVBD, but its overexpression after GVBD activated the spindle assembly checkpoint and prevented homologous chromosome segregation, thus arresting oocytes at pro-MI or metaphase I (MI) stages. These results suggest that Chk1 is indispensable for prophase I arrest and functions in G2/M checkpoint regulation in meiotic oocytes. Moreover, Chk1 overexpression affects meiotic spindle assembly checkpoint regulation and thus chromosome segregation.
An Iterative Stochastic Method for Simulating Large Deviations and Rare Events

We describe an iterative method capable of determining large deviations responsible for rare events of interest in lightwave systems with additive noise. The method makes use of the singular value decomposition (SVD) to efficiently compute the most important directions in state space, and a stochastic optimization scheme known as the cross-entropy (CE) method to determine the most probable manner in which these large deviations arise. Information from the SVD and CE steps of the method provides a basis for performing importance sampling with Monte Carlo simulation, allowing one to determine the probabilities of the rare events associated with such large deviations. We apply the combined method to investigate some of the mechanisms affecting large amplitude fluctuations in optical systems.
Recombinant versus urinary follicle stimulating hormone for ovarian stimulation in assisted reproduction cycles.

BACKGROUND Until recently, the main source of exogenous follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) for therapeutic use in infertility had been the urine of postmenopausal women. New developments have resulted in the production of FSH in vitro by recombinant DNA technology. The extremely high purity and batch-to-batch consistency of recombinant FSH (rFSH) make it an attractive alternative to urinary FSH (uFSH). OBJECTIVES To conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized trials comparing the effectiveness of rFSH with uFSH in ovarian stimulation protocols in in vitro fertilization (IVF) or intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) treatment cycles. SEARCH STRATEGY Search strategies included on-line searching of the MEDLINE and EMBASE databases from 1985 to 1999, hand searching of bibliographies of relevant publications and reviews and abstracts of scientific meetings, peer consultation and contacting the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture the gonadotropins under consideration. SELECTION CRITERIA Randomized trials comparing rFSH with uFSH for ovarian stimulation in IVF or ICSI treatment for infertility. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS The main outcome measure was clinical pregnancy per cycle started. Also considered were clinical pregnancy per cycle reaching oocyte retrieval and per cycle reaching embryo transfer (ET), ongoing pregnancy per cycle started, spontaneous abortion, multiple pregnancy, ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), number of follicles and serum estradiol level on the day of human chorionic gonadotropin administration day, total dose of FSH, and number of oocytes retrieved. Common odds ratios (OR) and risk differences for rFSH relative to uFSH were calculated after testing for homogeneity of treatment effect across all trials. The fixed effects model was used, unless significant heterogeneity was present, in which case the random effects model was used. MAIN RESULTS The overall odds ratio for clinical pregnancy per cycle started was 1.21 (95% confidence limits (CL) 1.04,1.42) for rFSH compared to uFSH. The risk difference was a 3.7% (0.8,6.7) absolute increase in clinical pregnancy rate with rFSH. The OR for ongoing pregnancy per cycle started was 1.29 (1.08,1.54). There was no significant difference between rFSH and uFSH in the rates of spontaneous abortion, multiple pregnancy or OHSS. The total dose of FSH was lower by 406 (185,627) IU with rFSH, but there was no significant difference in the number of follicles or serum estradiol on hCG day or in the number of oocytes retrieved. REVIEWER'S CONCLUSIONS This review has demonstrated a statistically significant increase in clinical pregnancy rate with rFSH compared to uFSH, when used for ovarian stimulation in assisted reproduction. This benefit was observed only in standard IVF cycles and not in cycles in which ICSI was used.
Selective Suppression of Neutrophil Accumulation in Ongoing Pulmonary Inflammation by Systemic Inhibition of p38 Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase1

The p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathway regulates a wide range of inflammatory responses in many different cells. Inhibition of p38 MAPK before exposing a cell to stress stimuli has profound anti-inflammatory effects, but little is known about the effects of p38 MAPK inhibition on ongoing inflammatory responses. LPS-induced activation of p38 MAPK in human neutrophils was inhibited by poststimulation exposure to a p38 MAPK inhibitor (M39). Release of TNF-α, macrophage-inflammatory protein (MIP)-2 (MIP-1β), and IL-8 by LPS-stimulated neutrophils was also reduced by poststimulation p38 MAPK inhibition. In contrast, release of monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 was found to be p38 MAPK independent. Ongoing chemotaxis toward IL-8 was eliminated by p38 MAPK inhibition, although the rate of nondirectional movement was not reduced. A murine model of acute LPS-induced lung inflammation was used to study the effect of p38 MAPK inhibition in ongoing pulmonary inflammation. Initial pulmonary cell responses occur within 4 h of stimulation in this model, so M39 was administered 4 h or 12 h after exposure of the animals to aerosolized LPS to avoid inhibition of cytokine release. Quantities of TNF-α, MIP-2, KC, or monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 recovered from bronchial alveolar lavage or serum were not changed. Recruitment of neutrophils, but not other leukocytes, to the airspaces was significantly reduced. Together, these data demonstrate the selective reduction of LPS-induced neutrophil recruitment to the airspaces, independent of suppression of other inflammatory responses. These findings support the feasibility of p38 MAPK inhibition as a selective intervention to reduce neutrophilic inflammation.
Reliability and Validity of the Turkish Version of the Situational Self-Efficacy Scale for Fruit and Vegetable Consumption in Adolescents

Purpose. The purpose of this research was to examine the psychometric properties of the Turkish version of the situational self-efficacy scale for vegetable and fruit consumption in adolescents. Design. This was a methodological study. Setting. The study was conducted in four public secondary schools in Istanbul, Turkey. Subjects. Subjects were 1586 adolescents. Measures. Content and construct validity were assessed to test the validity of the scale. The reliability was assessed in terms of internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Analysis. For confirmatory factor analysis, χ2 statistics plus other fit indices were used, including the goodness-of-fit index, the adjusted goodness-of-fit index, the nonnormed fit index, the comparative fit index, the standardized root mean residual, and the root mean square error of approximation. Pearson's correlation was used for test-retest reliability and item total correlation. The internal consistency was assessed by using Cronbach α. Results. Confirmatory factor analysis strongly supported the three-component structure representing positive social situations (α = .81), negative effect situations (α = .93), and difficult situations (α = .78). Psychometric analyses of the Turkish version of the situational self-efficacy scale indicate high reliability and good content and construct validity. Conclusion. Researchers and health professionals will find it useful to employ the Turkish situational self-efficacy scale in evaluating situational self-efficacy for fruit and vegetable consumption in Turkish adolescents.
Distribution and Succession Feature of Antibiotic Resistance Genes Along a Soil Development Chronosequence in Urumqi No.1 Glacier of China

Primary succession of plant and microbial communities in the glacier retreating foreland has been extensively studied, but shifts of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) with the glacier retreating due to global warming remain elusive. Unraveling the diversity and succession features of ARGs in pristine soil during glacier retreating could contribute to a mechanistic understanding of the evolution and development of soil resistome. In this study, we quantified the abundance and diversity of ARGs along a 50-year soil development chronosequence by using a high-throughput quantitative PCR (HT-qPCR) technique. A total of 24 ARGs and two mobile genetic elements (MGEs) were detected from all the glacier samples, and the numbers of detected ARGs showed a unimodal pattern with an increasing trend at the early stage (0∼8 years) but no significant change at later stages (17∼50 years). The oprJ and mexF genes encoding multidrug resistance were the only two ARGs that were detected across all the succession ages, and the mexF gene showed an increasing trend along the succession time. Structural equation models indicated the predominant role of the intI1 gene encoding the Class 1 integron-integrase in shaping the variation of ARG profiles. These findings suggested the presence of ARGs in pristine soils devoid of anthropogenic impacts, and horizontal gene transfer mediated by MGEs may contribute to the succession patterns of ARGs during the initial soil formation stage along the chronosequence.
Exploring the Effects of a Social Robot's Speech Entrainment and Backstory on Young Children's Emotion, Rapport, Relationship, and Learning

In positive human-human relationships, people frequently mirror or mimic each other's behavior. This mimicry, also called entrainment, is associated with rapport and smoother social interaction. Because rapport in learning scenarios has been shown to lead to improved learning outcomes, we examined whether enabling a social robotic learning companion to perform rapport-building behaviors could improve children's learning and engagement during a storytelling activity. We enabled the social robot to perform two specific rapport and relationship-building behaviors: speech entrainment and self-disclosure (shared personal information in the form of a backstory about the robot's poor speech and hearing abilities). We recruited 86 children aged 3–8 years to interact with the robot in a 2 × 2 between-subjects experimental study testing the effects of robot entrainment Entrainment vs. No entrainment and backstory about abilities Backstory vs. No Backstory. The robot engaged the children one-on-one in conversation, told a story embedded with key vocabulary words, and asked children to retell the story. We measured children's recall of the key words and their emotions during the interaction, examined their story retellings, and asked children questions about their relationship with the robot. We found that the robot's entrainment led children to show more positive emotions and fewer negative emotions. Children who heard the robot's backstory were more likely to accept the robot's poor hearing abilities. Entrainment paired with backstory led children to use more of the key words and match more of the robot's phrases in their story retells. Furthermore, these children were more likely to consider the robot more human-like and were more likely to comply with one of the robot's requests. These results suggest that the robot's speech entrainment and backstory increased children's engagement and enjoyment in the interaction, improved their perception of the relationship, and contributed to children's success at retelling the story.
Strong Uniform Value in Gambling Houses and Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes

In several standard models of dynamic programming (gambling houses, MDPs, POMDPs), we prove the existence of a robust notion of value for the infinitely repeated problem, namely the strong uniform value. This solves two open problems. First, this shows that for any > 0, the decision-maker has a pure strategy σ which is-optimal in any n-stage problem, provided that n is big enough (this result was only known for behavior strategies, that is, strategies which use randomization). Second, for any > 0, the decision-maker can guarantee the limit of the n-stage value minus in the infinite problem where the payoff is the expectation of the inferior limit of the time average payoff.
Analysis of 2-carbon-11-thymidine blood metabolites in PET imaging.

UNLABELLED Carbon-11-thymidine labeled in the ring-2 position was used with PET to image tumor and tissue proliferation. Since thymidine is rapidly degraded in the body, one must consider the generation of metabolites to fully interpret the PET data. METHODS We have measured the blood time-activity curves of thymidine and its metabolites in arterial blood samples. Blood was processed to obtain three input curves, including the total activity, the activity with CO2 removed and the fraction of CO2-free activity in intact thymidine (% Tdr). RESULTS We found that CO2 reached a plateau of 65% (+/- 12%) of total blood activity by 11 min after injection. When a 1-min infusion of labeled thymidine is used, the time to 50% degradation to thymine and metabolites other than CO2 (measured in acidified samples by HPLC) was 2.9 +/- 0.6 min. We fit the results of the blood metabolism with a compartmental model. We found that we could accurately determine the % Tdr curve with as few as three measured points with an root mean square (RMS) error of 2% in the integrated curve, compared to the curve using all blood samples (mean of seven samples per patient). The integral of thymidine blood activity serves as the input to thymidine models, so similar errors could be expected in calculations of DNA synthetic rates. We found that the determination of CO2 could be accomplished with as few as five samples, with an RMS error of 4% in plateau %CO2 value. CONCLUSION While it is essential to take metabolites into account when interpreting results obtained with 11C-thymidine, the reproducibility of these degradation curves may allow the use of a limited number of samples to measure the catabolic products of thymidine. These data from the blood, along with tissue kinetic models, are needed to calculate DNA synthetic rates.
Learning to Look at the Bright Side of Life: Attention Bias Modification Training Enhances Optimism Bias

Identifying neurocognitive mechanisms underlying optimism bias is essential to understand its benefits for well-being and mental health. The combined cognitive biases hypothesis suggests that biases (e.g., in expectancies and attention) interact and mutually enforce each other. Whereas, in line with this hypothesis, optimistic expectancies have been shown to guide attention to positive information, reverse causal effects have not been investigated yet. Revealing such bidirectional optimism-attention interactions both on a behavioral and neural level could explain how cognitive biases contribute to a self-sustaining upward spiral of positivity. In this behavioral study, we hypothesized that extensive training to direct attention to positive information enhances optimism bias. To test this hypothesis, for 2 weeks, 149 participants underwent either daily online 80-trial attention bias modification training (ABMT) toward accepting faces and away from rejecting faces or neutral control training. Participants in the ABMT group were instructed to click as quickly as possible on the accepting face among 15 rejecting faces randomly displayed on a 4-by-4 matrix; participants in the control group were instructed to click on the five-petaled flower depicted among 15 seven-petaled flowers. Comparative optimism bias and state optimism were measured via questionnaires before training, after one training week, and after two training weeks. ABMT enhanced comparative optimism bias, whereas control training did not. Our findings reveal that ABMT toward positive social information causally influences comparative optimism bias and may, thereby trigger the biases’ benefits for well-being and mental health. These results can (a) stimulate future neurophysiological research in the area of positive psychology; and (b) reveal an innovative low-cost and easy-to-access intervention that may support psychotherapy in times of rising numbers of patients with psychological disorders.
Low‐generation asymmetric dendrimers exhibit minimal toxicity and effectively complex DNA

Conventional dendrimers are spherical symmetrically branched polymers ending with active surface functional groups. Polyamidoamine (PAMAM) dendrimers have been widely studied as gene delivery vectors and have proven effective at delivering DNA to cells in vitro. However, higher‐generation (G4‐G8) PAMAM dendrimers exhibit toxicity due to their high cationic charge density and this has limited their application in vitro and in vivo. Another limitation arises when attempts are made to functionalize spherical dendrimers as targeting moieties cannot be site‐specifically attached. Therefore, we propose that lower‐generation asymmetric dendrimers, which are likely devoid of toxicity and to which site‐specific attachment of targeting ligands can be achieved, would be a viable alternative to currently available dendrimers. We synthesized and characterized a series of peptide‐based asymmetric dendrimers and compared their toxicity profile and ability to condense DNA to spherical PAMAM G1 dendrimers. We show that asymmetric dendrimers are minimally toxic and condense DNA into stable toroids which have been reported necessary for efficient cell transfection. This paves the way for these systems to be conjugated with targeting ligands for gene delivery in vitro and in vivo. Copyright © 2011 European Peptide Society and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Cardiovascular response to passive cycle exercise.

PURPOSE Cardiovascular response of trained males (N = 20) and fit but untrained controls (N = 10) were examined during rest and passive cycle exercise (PCE). METHODS Heart rate (HR), stroke volume (SV), cardiac output (CO), total peripheral resistance (TPR), and mean arterial pressure (MAP) were measured during PCE for 6 min at intensities of 30 and 60 rpm. Also vagal influence on the heart was assessed through time series analysis of heart period variability (HPVts) at high and medium frequencies. Electromyography (EMG) was used to monitor muscle activity during PCE. RESULTS During PCE no differences in cardiovascular response were found between the trained and untrained groups; thus groups were combined for the remainder of the analysis. Results indicated that during light and medium PCE all subjects combined showed a significant increase in HR, CO, and MAP and a significant decrease in HPVts (P < 0.001). CONCLUSION The increase in HR during passive exercise may be a result of the stimulation of mechanoreceptors. The small and similar SV response during PCE of both groups suggests that the muscle pumps may not be effective during this form of passive exercise.
The glomic arteries.

Serial sections of the glomic arteries from two young women showed them to originate from the external carotid arteries or from branches of them thought to be the superior thyroid arteries. The glomic arteries have a complex histological structure unlike that of the typical systemic muscular artery. The most characteristic feature of the terminal portions of arteries supplying glomic tissue is a highly elastic media which may have a baroreceptor function. More proximally, the arteries show a thick intimal layer of large globular cells reminiscent of glomic chief cells. In view of the changes in size and histological structure that occur in the carotid body in cardiopulmonary disease and the close connexion between the carotid body and its arteries, the authors consider that further detailed studies of the glomic arteries by electron microscopy are indicated to elucidate their structure and function.
Consumption in Retirement: Recent Developments

This chapter summarizes five facts that have emerged from the recent literature on consumption behavior during retirement. Primarily, the literature has shown that there is substantial heterogeneity in spending changes at retirement across consumption categories. The declines in spending during retirement are limited to the categories of food and work related expenses. Even though food spending declines during retirement, actual food intake remains constant. Furthermore, the literature shows that there is substantial heterogeneity across households in the change in expenditure associated with retirement. Much of this heterogeneity, however, can be explained by households involuntarily retiring. Overall, the literature shows that the standard model of lifecycle consumption augmented with home production and uncertain health shocks does well in explaining the consumption patterns of most households as they transition into retirement.
Autonomic cardiovascular regulation in quiescent ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease

Background In inflammatory bowel diseases, changes in autonomic enteric regulation may also affect neural cardiovascular control. However, while cardiac autonomic modulation has been shown to be impaired in active ulcerative colitis, the occurrence of cardiovascular autonomic alterations, also in the quiescent phase of inflammatory bowel diseases, is still a matter of debate. The aim of our study was thus to explore the features of cardiovascular autonomic regulation in ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease during their remission phase.
Increase of total alkalinity due to shoaling of aragonite saturation horizon in the Pacific and Indian Oceans: Influence of anthropogenic carbon inputs

Aragonite saturation horizon (ASH) shallowed significantly by 25 to 155 m and 16 to 124 m in the Pacific and Indian Ocean respectively in two decades. Apparent oxygen utilization (AOU) increased by 3 to 34 and 0.5 to 31.5 μmol kg−1 in the Pacific and Indian Ocean respectively at the depth of ASH during this period. DIC increased by 12.5 to 36.8 and 5.5 to 32 μmol kg−1 in the vicinity of ASH in the Pacific and Indian Ocean respectively due to combined effect of increased anthropogenic CO2 and change in AOU. TA increased significantly by 5 to 10 and 4 to 9.2 μmol kg−1 in the Pacific and Indian Oceans respectively at the ASH most likely as a result of aragonite dissolution. The upward migration of ASH solely due to anthropogenic CO2 amounted to 6 to 58 m in the Pacific and 4 to 44 m in the Indian Ocean.