Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A reappraisal of adult abdominal surface anatomy

Descriptions of clinically important surface landmarks often vary between and within contemporary anatomical texts. The aim of this study was to investigate the surface anatomy of major abdominal vessels, kidneys, spleen, gastroesophageal junction, and duodenojejunal flexure in living adults using computed tomography (CT). After excluding patients with distorting space‐occupying lesions, scoliosis, abnormal lordosis, and obvious visceromegaly, 108 abdominal CT scans of supine adults (mean age 60 years, range 18–97 years; 64 female) at end tidal inspiration were available for analysis by dual consensus reporting. Intra‐observer agreement was assessed by repeat blind assessment of a random sample of scans. The vertebral level of the aortic bifurcation and almost all of its major branches, and the origin of the inferior vena cava were consistent with current descriptions. Important differences from contemporary descriptions of surface anatomy were as follows: the renal arteries were most commonly at the L1 vertebral level (left 55%, right 43%); the midpoint of the renal hila was most frequently at L2 (left 68%, right 40%); the 11th rib was a posterior relation of the left kidney in only 28% of scans; and the spleen was most frequently located between the 10th and 12th ribs (48%) with its long axis in line with the 11th rib (55%). Although the majority of vascular surface landmarks are consistent with standard descriptions, the surface anatomy of the kidneys, renal arteries, and spleen needs to be revised in accordance with observations using modern imaging techniques in vivo. Clin. Anat. 25:844–850, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Bioenergetic modulation overcomes glucocorticoid resistance in T‐lineage acute lymphoblastic leukaemia

Drug‐resistant forms of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) are a leading cause of death from disease in children. Up to 25% of patients with T‐cell ALL (T‐ALL) develop resistance to chemotherapeutic agents, particularly to glucocorticoids (GCs), a class of drug to which resistance is one of the strongest indicators of poor clinical outcome. Despite their clinical importance, the molecular mechanisms that underpin GC resistance and leukaemia relapse are not well understood. Recently, we demonstrated that GC‐resistance is associated with a proliferative metabolism involving the up‐regulation of glycolysis, oxidative phosphorylation and cholesterol biosynthesis. Here we confirm that resistance is directly associated with a glycolytic phenotype and show that GC‐resistant T‐ALL cells are able to shift between glucose bioenergetic pathways. We evaluated the potential for targeting these pathways in vitro using a glycolysis inhibitor, 2‐deoxyglucose (2DG), and the oxidative phosphorylation inhibitor oligomycin in combination with methylprednisolone (MPRED). We found that oligomycin synergized with MPRED to sensitize cells otherwise resistant to GCs. Similarly we observed synergy between MPRED and simvastatin, an inhibitor of cholesterol metabolism. Collectively, our findings suggest that dual targeting of bioenergetic pathways in combination with GCs may offer a promising therapeutic strategy to overcome drug resistance in ALL.
Evidence That Intramolecular Associations between Presenilin Domains Are Obligatory for Endoproteolytic Processing*

Mutations in genes encoding presenilins (PS1 and PS2) cosegregate with the majority of early onset cases of familial Alzheimer’s disease. PS1 and PS2 are polytopic membrane proteins that undergo endoproteolytic cleavage to generate stable NH2- and COOH-terminal derivatives (NTF and CTF, respectively). Several lines of evidence suggest that the endoproteolytic derivatives are likely the functional units of PSin vivo. In the present report, we examine the disposition of PS NTF and CTF assemblies in stable mouse N2a neuroblastoma cell lines expressing human PS polypeptides. We show that exogenous expression of PS1 NTFs neither assemble with endogenous CTF nor exhibit dominant negative inhibitory effects on the endogenous PS1 cleavage and the accumulation of derivatives. In cells co-expressing PS1 and PS2, PS1- and PS2-derived fragments do not form mixed assemblies. In contrast, cells expressing a chimeric PS1/PS2 polypeptide form stable PS1 NTF-PS2 CTF assemblies. Moreover, expression of chimeric PS1/PS2 polypeptides harboring a familial early onset AD-linked mutation (M146L) elevates the production of Aβ42 peptides. Our results provide evidence that assembly of structural domains contained within NH2- and COOH-terminal regions of PS occur prior to endoproteolytic cleavage.
Three Essays on the Well-Being of Vulnerable Populations

This dissertation is composed of three essays that measure the impact of social programs and policies on the wellbeing of their target populations. The first essay entitled “The Wage Impact of Historically Black College and University Attendance” examines the impact of attending a Historically Black College or University on the wages of Blacks attending HBCUs versus other four year colleges or universities using a sample of Blacks from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979). The study finds no initial advantage to HBCU attendance for black men, but a 1.4 to 1.6 percentage point higher growth rate in subsequent wages is associated with the attendance of an HBCU as opposed to other four year colleges. This faster growth rate translates in a net discounted HBCU earnings gain of 8.9 to 9.6 percent over a 16 year period following college attendance. The study finds no advantage or disadvantage to HBCU attendance for Black females. The second essay entitled “Transient and Chronic Poverty in the US: The Role of the Food Stamp Program” examines the unique and common determinants of short-term intra-annual transient poverty and chronic poverty, as well as the differential response of each state of poverty to Food Stamp Program (FSP) use. The study employs dynamic expenditure-based poverty measures using quarterly data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (2001-2004). The major finding is that FSP use reduces transient poverty, but the study finds no significant impact of FSP use on chronic poverty. The common causes of both states of poverty are low human capital, minority status and involuntary unemployment of the household head. Changes in family composition during the year is only associated with higher transient poverty. The third essay entitled “Food Insecurity and the Food Stamp Program” examines the determinants of food insecurity in the US, as well as its response to Food Stamp Program use with data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1995-1999). The study finds that FSP use reduces household food insecurity, and that the program impact is greater for households that experience more severe insecurity. In addition the study finds that higher risk tolerance as well as a preference for smoking cigarettes increase household food insecurity.
The new dioxolane, (-)-2'-deoxy-3'-oxacytidine (BCH-4556, troxacitabine), has activity against pancreatic human tumor xenografts.

There is a great need for new therapeutic agents for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. The new dioxolane analogue troxacitabine was evaluated in two human pancreatic cancer xenograft models. The models used included the Panc-01 and MiaPaCa pancreatic cancer cell lines. Whereas there is certainly no absolute evidence that either of the in vivo models is predictive for clinical activity, there is at least some evidence that they may be helpful in selecting agents for clinical trials in patients with pancreatic cancer. Troxacitabine was administered i.v. to the animals at doses of 10 and 25 mg/kg on a daily x 5 regimen. Gemcitabine was used as a positive control. The end points for the study included tumor growth inhibition (TGI), final weight, and the number of partial and complete tumor responses in the animals. Troxacitabine was highly active against the Panc-01 model (n = 8), with TGI levels of 88.5% and 84.3% at the 10 and 25 mg/kg doses, respectively. The mean final tumor weights for animals given troxacitabine were also significantly smaller (P < 0.001) compared with vehicle controls. At the 10 mg/kg dose, there were three partial tumor shrinkages and one complete tumor shrinkage, whereas at the 25 mg/kg dose, there were three partial tumor shrinkages. Troxacitabine had less activity against the MiaPaCa model (n = 10) and, by traditional response criteria, would be considered inactive, with TGIs of 4% and 22.7% at the 10 and 25 mg/kg dose level, respectively. Of note is that in comparison with gemcitabine, troxacitabine was more efficacious against Panc-01 and was equally active against MiaPaCa. These in vivo results are encouraging and support the prospect of performing Phase II and perhaps Phase III trials with troxacitabine in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer.
A modified technique for scrotal fixation during orchiopexy.

BACKGROUND Undescended testes are a common problem, affecting up to 3% of newborn males. The goals of orchiopexy in humans are to provide adequate scrotal fixation, to prevent recurrent torsion of the testis and spermatic cord or ascent of the testis, and to achieve these goals with minimal trauma to the testis. The best method of achieving fixation remains controversial. PURPOSE The aim of our study is to evaluate our modified extra Dartos pouch technique in retaining testis in the scrotum. PATIENTS AND METHODS A prospective randomized study included 159 patients with 185 orchiopexies age ranging from 5 months to 14 years with the mean age of 49.5 ± 33.3 months (4.08 years). They were divided into two groups: Group I for whom the extra Dartos pouch technique was applied were compared to Group II for whom classic sub-Dartos pouch technique was done. RESULTS Testis was located in the superficial inguinal pouch in 102 cases (64.1%) and intra-canalicular in 57 cases (35.6%). Hernial sac was found in 153 cases (96.2%), postoperative wound infection occurred in 3 cases (1.9%) and hematoma formation in three cases (1.9%); one case reported ascent of the testis and another one had testicular atrophy in the follow-up period which extends now up to 3 years and we are still in follow-up with those cases. CONCLUSION Our modified technique for extra Dartos pouch fixation seems to be a fast reliable method for orchiopexy; however, comparative studies and long-term assessment is still needed to establish this method.
Compensatory increase in common carotid artery diameter. Relation to blood pressure and artery intima-media thickness in older adults. Cardiovascular Health Study.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Common carotid artery (CCA) diameter is thought to increase as a consequence of hypertension and may increase as the thickness of the arterial wall increases. The purpose of this study was to determine CCA dimensions and correlate them with clinical features. METHODS We performed a cross-sectional, community-based study of adults 65 years of age and older, measuring inner and outer diameter of the CCA in vivo with carotid sonography. Findings were correlated against risk factors for atherosclerosis, CCA intima-media thickness (IMT), and echocardiographically determined left ventricular (LV) mass. RESULTS Independent variables showing strong positive associations with outer and inner CCA diameter included age, male sex, height, weight, and systolic blood pressure. As an independent variable, LV mass (r = .40 and r = .37, respectively; P < .00001) had a strong positive relation to inner and outer CCA diameters. The relationship between diameter and IMT was different. In a model that controlled for age, sex, and estimated LV mass, an increase of 1 mm in CCA IMT corresponded to a 1.9 mm increase in the outer diameter of the artery (P < .00001) but was not significantly related to the inner diameter (slope = +0.07 mm; P = .26). CONCLUSIONS Increase in the outer diameter of the CCA is associated with subject size, sex, age, echocardiographically estimated LV mass, and CCA IMT. Increases in internal diameter of the CCA have similar relationships but are not related to IMT. This supports the hypothesis that the human CCA dilates as the thickness of the artery wall increases.
Hidden Markov model training with contaminated speech material for distant-talking speech recognition

A challenging scenario is addressed in which a distant-talking speech recognizer operates in a noisy office environment with model adaptation. The use of a single far microphone as well as that of a microphone array input are investigated.In addition to the benefits from the application of microphone array processing, system robustness is improved by training hidden Markov models (HMMs) with a contaminated version of a clean corpus. This artificial corpus is produced by exploiting information extracted from “real world" acoustic scenarios. The resulting models are then used as a starting point for unsupervised incremental adaptation.Experimental results show that improvements in recognition accuracy due to multiple microphones, HMM training on contaminated speech and incremental adaptation are additive on a connected digits task. Moreover, the results show that unsupervised incremental adaptation receives the benefits of starting from models trained using contaminated speech. A final contribution of the paper refers to the influence of accuracy of speech activity detection, which seems to be relevant when moving towards real applications.
Evaluation of toxicity and efficacy of 186Re-hydroxyethylidene diphosphonate in patients with painful bone metastases of prostate or breast cancer.

UNLABELLED Twenty-eight patients (12 men with prostate cancer, 16 women with breast cancer) were included in a phase II trial to evaluate the efficacy of 186Re-hydroxyethylidene diphosphonate (HEDP) on pain from bone metastasis and the toxicity of this agent. METHODS After intravenous administration of 1295 MBq 186Re-HEDP, the efficacy was evaluated by means of a daily log. RESULTS We observed an objective response in 67% of prostate cancer patients and in 36% of breast cancer patients. The mean duration of response was 45 d for prostate cancer patients and 24 d for breast cancer patients. No major adverse effects were observed. Marrow toxicity did not exceed grade 2 for white blood cells and grade 3 for platelets using National Cancer Institute criteria. CONCLUSION 186Re-HEDP provides safe symptomatic relief of pain in prostate cancer patients. The benefit of this treatment is less clear in breast cancer patients. Further studies should be conducted to evaluate treatment by 186Re-HEDP at an earlier stage of the disease.
The 2b protein of cucumoviruses has a role in promoting the cell-to-cell movement of pseudorecombinant viruses.

Pseudorecombinant viruses (i.e., those containing a reassorted genome of closely related multipartite viruses) are often not as competitive as the parental viruses. The role of the 2b gene in hypervirulence and maintenance of a progressive infection was assessed in a pseudorecombinant virus formed between RNAs 1 plus 2 of Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) and RNA 3 of Tomato aspermy virus (TAV). The presence of RNA 3 of TAV was found to affect the level of RNA accumulation but not the level of virulence. By contrast, the 2b genes of both TAV and a hypervirulent strain of CMV (WAII-CMV) were found to affect the virulence of the pseudorecombinant viruses but not the levels of viral RNA accumulation. The 2b gene rather than the overlapping open reading frame encoding the C-terminal 41 amino acids of 2a protein of the corresponding virus was found to be essential for promoting infection of the pseudorecombinant viruses in planta. However, the 2b gene was not essential for replication of pseudorecombinant viruses containing CMV RNAs 1 plus 2 and TAV RNA 3. These results indicate that the 2b protein is involved in promoting the cell-to-cell movement of the pseudorecombinant viruses. These data also suggest the existence of specific interaction between the TAV 2b protein and either RNA 3 or its encoded proteins, which may be critical for promoting or maintaining infection or both.
Clustered Adenine/Thymine Stretches Are Essential for Function of a Fission Yeast Replication Origin

ABSTRACT We have determined functional elements required for autonomous replication of the Schizosaccharomyces pombe ars2004 that acts as an intrinsic chromosomal replication origin. Internal deletion analysis of a 940-bp fragment (ars2004M) showed three regions, I to III, to be required for autonomously replicating sequence (ARS) activity. Eight-base-pair substitutions in the 40-bp region I, composed of arrays of adenines on a DNA strand, resulted in a great reduction of ARS activity. Substitutions of region I with synthetic sequences showed that no specific sequence but rather repeats of three or more consecutive adenines or thymines, without interruption by guanine or cytosine, are required for the ARS activity. The 65-bp region III contains 11 repeats of the AAAAT sequence, while the 165-bp region II has short adenine or thymine stretches and a guanine- and cytosine-rich region which enhances ARS activity. All three regions inars2004M can be replaced with 40-bp poly(dA/dT) fragments without reduction of ARS activity. Although spacer regions in thears2004M enhance ARS activity, all could be deleted when an 40-bp poly(dA/dT) fragment was added in place of region I. Our results suggest that the origin activity of fission yeast replicators depends on the number of adenine/thymine stretches, the extent of their clustering, and presence of certain replication-enhancing elements.
Experimental Work Organization for Preparing Master's Degree Students for Research Activities

The paper describes the peculiarities of the experimental work organization to prepare master's degree students for research activities, and suggests a set of pedagogical conditions for this preparation under the conditions of the master program's educational process. To confirm the validity of the scientific theoretical assumptions, a plan is suggested with input and final diagnostics, intermediate tests, and several control and experimental groups. Master's degree students' preparedness for research activities was assessed by the following indicators: motivational-values attitude to the research, a set of research knowledge and skills and professionally significant personal qualities of the lecturer-researcher. Based on these indicators, three levels of master's degree students' preparedness for research activities were determined: reproductive, reproductive-creative and creative. The research determined that the master's degree students' reproductive level of preparedness for research activities is caused by insufficient attention, paid to this issue in the master's degree programs. The main solution to this problem is the implementation of the pedagogical conditions set to prepare master's degree students for research activities. The study showed the importance of the research results for the educational process of the master's degree course.
Estimation of genetic parameters for milk yield traits at different herd production levels in cows milked once- or twice-daily in New Zealand

The objective of this study was to estimate genetic parameters for lactation yields of milk (MY), fat (FY) and protein (PY) for cows milked either once(OAD) or twice-a-day (TAD) at different production levels (PL), calculated as average milk solids yield (FY + PY) for dairy cattle in New Zealand. Lactation records of 124,620 and 194,631 cows from 298 and 350 herds milked OAD and TAD, respectively were used. Heritiabilities (h2) were lower in low PL herds milked OAD compared to low PL herds milked TAD (0.11-0.18 vs. 0.22-0.37). Across PL, h2 for MY at medium and high PL were greater than 0.30 at both MF, while for FY and PY, those values were less than 0.30. Genetic correlations (rG) between MY and PY were greater (>0.70) compared to rG between FY and any of the other traits (<0.65). The lowest rG was observed between MY and FY at low PL (0.09±0.087). In conclusion, lower h2 at low PL from cows milked OAD reveal unequal genetic expression of milk traits genes compared to higher PL. Ignoring the heterogeneity of variance in the genetic evaluation could result in systematic inaccuracies and biases in the estimation of breeding values for cows milked OAD.
Retirement and Cognitive Decline: Evidence from Global Aging Data

This study analyzes the effect of retirement on cognitive function. According to the human capital theory, we can hypothesize that workers invest in their cognitive ability more than retirees because cognitive investment increases a worker’s wage. As a result, it is possible that the cognitive ability decreases after retirement, a hypothesis analyzed in this study. In health economics, this hypothesis has been examined especially after 2000. First, we show that an analysis method used in some related studies is not valid for estimating this effect. Furthermore, we analyze this effect by using our method. Our estimates indicate that the workers’ mathematical scores decrease after retirement in a wide range of analyzed countries and heterogeneous groups. However, retirement has a weak effect on cognitive ability. Additionally, we investigate the heterogeneity of this effect. For example, we find that the elderly with higher body mass indexs and fat intake experience a negative effect of retirement on cognitive function.
Cardiovascular responses to psychological and physiological stressors during the menstrual cycle.

&NA; Psychological and physical stress reactivity was studied in 15 females in two phases of the menstrual cycle (cycle days 5–7 and 24–26) and in 15 males. Each female was matched for age and time between sessions with a male. There was a significant phase‐related difference in cardiovascular reactivity among the females. Females in the luteal phase reacted significantly more to the cold pressor but not to the mental arithmetic test. There were significant sex differences in systolic blood pressure, the males displaying higher levels during provocation, as well as during control conditions. The females were more reactive in heart rate to the mental stressor when changes from control conditions to stress were calculated. When the data were analyzed separately for smokers and non‐smokers, there was a significant interaction between menstrual cycle phase and smoking. In the luteal phase, the female smokers were more reactive in systolic blood pressure than the non‐smokers. The male smokers were more reactive than the non‐smokers in diastolic blood pressure response to mental arithmetic, but not to the cold pressor test. Significantly higher levels of cortisol and aldosterone were found in the luteal phase as compared with the follicular phase. The cortisol levels were higher in the males than in the females in the follicular phase, whereas the female aldosterone concentrations in the luteal phase were higher than those of the males.