Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Network of Interactions Among Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus Non-structural Proteins

The RNA synthesis of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV), a positive-strand RNA virus, is compartmentalized in virus-induced double-membrane vesicles where viral proteins and some cellular proteins assemble into replication and transcription complexes (RTCs). The viral replicase proteins are the major components of the RTCs but the physical associations among these non-structural proteins (nsps) remain elusive. In this study, we investigated the potential interactions between PRRSV nsps by yeast two-hybrid (Y2H), bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFC) and pull-down assays. Our analyses revealed a complex network of interactions involving most of PRRSV nsps. Among them, nsp9 and nsp12 were identified as the hubs of the nsp interactome; transmembrane proteins nsp2 and nsp5 both interacted with nsp3, indicating that the three membrane-bound proteins might bind together to form the scaffold to support the association of RTCs with the intracellular membrane. The PRRSV nsp interactions identified in this study may provide valuable clues for future researches on the RTC formation and function.
Promoter methylation and expression of RASSF 1 A genes as predictors of disease progression in colorectal cancer

Aberrant DNA methylation of RAS-association domain family (RASSF) is believed to be involved in gene inactivation process in various types of cancers.Therefore, this study tried to investigate the possible involved mechanisms along with clinical effects of RASSF gene methylation on patients with colorectal cancer. Promoter methylation status in four reported CRC related RASSF family genes, such as RASSF1A, RASSF2, RASSF4, RASSF5 were identified with methylation-specific polymerase chain reaction and validated with sequencing in 97 CRC patients and adjacent normal tissues. Then mRNA and protein expressionwas further examined. Afterwards, survival analysis was performed over a median follow-up of 60 months. Lastly, human CRC cell lines were treated with demethylating agent 5-azacytidine in vitro. Aberrant methylation of RASSF1A, RASSF2 was found to be associated with TNM stage and tumor differentiation (P<0.01). Methylated RASSF1A and RASSF2 were associated with significant suppression of expression in tumors (P<0.05). Hypermethylation status of RASSFIA was also associated with significantly worse overall survival (P<0.05). Reduced DNA methylation and increased expression of RASSF1A genes in vitro was observed. Lastly, increased cell apoptosis as well as G1-S arrest was further confirmed following 5-azacytidine treatment. Promoter hypermethylation significantly suppressed RASSF1A gene expression in patients’ tissue samplesand therefore may represent aprospective therapeutic candidate for CRC therapy.
Adolescents and HIV in sub-Saharan Africa: a timely issue and missed opportunity.

The article by Ferrand and colleagues (referenced later in this edition of InfoNet) extends their concerns about adolescents access to different levels of health care services (primary health care in this instance) and the frequency detection and management of unrecognized and hidden diseases among them. In a previous article they found that undiagnosed perinatally transmitted HIV infection was the most common cause of hospitalization for acute onset diseases and in-hospital mortality among adolescents in the same city (Harare Zimbabwe). Although their studies focus on Zimbabwe the issue of health care for adolescents with HIV infection is generalizable and has resonance in many developing countries.
On the determinants of life insurance development in Sub-Saharan Africa: the role of the institutions quality in the effect of economic development

This paper analyzes the determinants of life insurance development on a panel of 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa over the period 1996-2011. It also highlights the role of the institutions quality on the effect of economic development on the life insurance. Controlling for the presence of a possible endogeneity bias using the instrumental variable technique, we find evidence that increased of per capita income leads to an increase in life insurance premiums. We show that the life insurance is a luxury good in SSA. The demographic variables such as life expectancy and the young dependency ratio influence negatively the life insurance development while the old dependency ratio has a positive effect. We also find that the protection of property rights and the government stability are positively associated to life insurance. The results are robust to the introduction of more variables. Furthermore, the marginal impact of the income per capita on the life insurance varies according to the quality of the legal and political environment. Finally, the marginal effect of the economic development on life insurance is less for french legal system countries compared to non-french legal system countries.
Recent Developments in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Ocular Toxoplasmosis

Ocular toxoplasmosis, a chorioretinal infection with Toxoplasma gondii, is the most common etiology of posterior uveitis in many countries. Accurate diagnosis depends heavily on the characteristic clinical features of this disease, but atypical presentations, especially in immunocompromised patients, may create diagnostic challenges and lead to misdiagnosis and inappropriate treatment. Molecular biology techniques to diagnose ocular toxoplasmosis have been available for many years and are now accessible as standard laboratory tests in many countries. Aqueous humor or vitreous evaluation to detect parasite DNA by polymerase chain reaction or specific antibody may provide definitive evidence for rapid diagnosis. Oral pyrimethamine and sulfadiazine plus systemic corticosteroids are an effective therapy for ocular toxoplasmosis. Recent data supports the use of other treatment approaches, including intravitreal antibiotics. The aim of the present review is to discuss briefly the new diagnostic tools and treatment options for ocular toxoplasmosis.
Comparison of propofol and ketofol in minor gynecologic interventions

Objective: Outpatient anesthesia requires a safe anesthetic method and an anesthetic agent that provides a rapid anesthesia depth and hemodynamic stability. To provide an uneventfully recovery, the anesthetic must also be rapidly metabolized, and its metabolites should not accumulate in the body. This study compared sedo-analgesia effects, recovery times, postoperative complications, Modified Aldrete Scale, Visual Analog Scores, and patient and surgeon satisfaction between propofol and ketofol, administered as anesthetics during the probe curettage procedure. Methods: A total of 60 female patients included in the study. Group P was administered 2 mg/kg of propofol and a 1 μg/kg intravenous bolus of fentanyl for induction and 100 μg/kg/min of propofol for maintenance. Group K was administered a 600 µg/kg IV bolus of ketofol for induction and 100 µg/kg/min of ketofol for maintenance. Additional fentanyl (50 µg) was administered to Group P, and 25 µg/kg/min of ketofol was administered to Group K according to autonomic and hemodynamic responses. Results: Demographic data of the 2 groups were similar. A significant decrease in hemodynamic values was detected in patients in Group P after induction. No change in these values was detected during or after induction in Group K. The additional analgesia requirement was 66.6% in Group P. Nausea was detected in 2 patients in Group K. Additionally, hallucination was detected in 2 patients in Group K. Patient and surgeon satisfaction were complete in both groups. Conclusion: According to our findings, ketofol anesthesia may be a good option in uterine curettage, patients recover quickly and comfortably, and ketofol both provides sufficient analgesia for the minor surgical intervention and reduces complications. J Clin Exp Invest 2015; 6 (3): 244-250 Key words: Ketofol, propofol, sedo-analgesia, uterine curettage
Emerging Evidence of Thresholds for Beneficial Effects from Vitamin D Supplementation

Publications from clinical trials of vitamin D supplementation have increased substantially over the last 15 years. Yet, despite the growing number of randomized controlled trials, meta-analyses of these studies have drawn inconsistent conclusions. Many meta-analyses assume that vitamin D is a pharmacological agent, and give scant consideration of it being a nutrient. This limits their potential to detect beneficial effects in participants with vitamin D deficiency. An increasing body of evidence from both observational studies and clinical trials supports the presence of thresholds in vitamin D status below which disease risk increases and vitamin supplementation has beneficial effects. Future supplementation trials which seek to replicate these findings should recruit sufficient numbers of participants with low vitamin D levels, and not give low-dose vitamin D to the placebo group. If the presence of vitamin D thresholds for beneficial effects is confirmed, this would strengthen the need for vitamin D fortification of foods.
A La Carte Embedding: Cheap but Effective Induction of Semantic Feature Vectors

Motivations like domain adaptation, transfer learning, and feature learning have fueled interest in inducing embeddings for rare or unseen words, n-grams, synsets, and other textual features. This paper introduces a la carte embedding, a simple and general alternative to the usual word2vec-based approaches for building such representations that is based upon recent theoretical results for GloVe-like embeddings. Our method relies mainly on a linear transformation that is efficiently learnable using pretrained word vectors and linear regression. This transform is applicable on the fly in the future when a new text feature or rare word is encountered, even if only a single usage example is available. We introduce a new dataset showing how the a la carte method requires fewer examples of words in context to learn high-quality embeddings and we obtain state-of-the-art results on a nonce task and some unsupervised document classification tasks.
Screening Currents Within the EuCARD HTS Dipole

The EuCARD high temperature superconductor (HTS) insert is a dipole magnet generating a self-field of 5.4 T and designed to operate at 18 T within the FRESCA2 test facility; it has just been successfully tested in stand-alone configuration up to 4.5 T (see M. Durante et al.). To operate in such a large field, its winding is made of a 12 mm HTS REBCO insulated conductor; each conductor is composed of four tapes in parallel to achieve a large current of 2.8 kA. The drawbacks of using parallel HTS tapes are numerous: first, they are very sensitive to orthogonal field inducing screening currents loops within the tapes. Second, the use of tapes in parallel imposes to transpose the conductor to avoid current loops between tapes, induced from the parallel field. The screening currents in return generate a magnetic field (screening current induced field), opposed to the main one and consequently lowering it and degrading the homogeneity. We have developed a finite difference code in order to simulate the induced currents within a conductor made of parallel tapes; we have calculated the screening current induced field and showed that the order of magnitude is non negligible compared to the main field. These computations have been benchmarked against measurement of the magnetic field performed during the stand-alone configuration tests.
Chromosomal instability in amniocytes from fetuses of mothers who smoke.

CONTEXT Tobacco increases the risk of systemic diseases, and it has adverse effects on pregnancy. However, only indirect data have been published on a possible genotoxic effect on pregnancy in humans. OBJECTIVES To determine whether maternal smoking has a genotoxic effect on amniotic cells, expressed as an increased chromosomal instability, and to analyze whether any chromosomal regions are especially affected by exposure to tobacco. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PATIENTS In this prospective study, amniocytes were obtained by routine amniocentesis for prenatal diagnosis from 25 controls and 25 women who smoke (> or =10 cigarettes/d for > or =10 years), who were asked to fill out a smoking questionnaire concerning their smoking habits. Chromosomal instability was analyzed in blinded fashion by 2 independent observers in routine chromosome spreads. Breakpoints implicated in chromosomal abnormalities were identified by G-banding. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Association between maternal smoking and increased chromosomal instability in amniotic fluid cells, expressed as chromosomal lesions (gaps and breaks) and structural chromosomal abnormalities. RESULTS Comparison of cytogenetic data between smokers and nonsmokers (controls) showed important differences for the proportion of structural chromosomal abnormalities (smokers: 12.1% [96/793]; controls: 3.5% [26/752]; P = .002) and to a lesser degree for the proportion of metaphases with chromosomal instability (smokers: 10.5% [262/2492]; controls: 8.0% [210/2637]; P = .04), and for the proportion of chromosomal lesions (smokers: 15.7% [391/2492]; controls: 10.1% [267/2637]; P = .045). Statistical analysis of the 689 breakpoints detected showed that band 11q23, which is a band commonly implicated in hematopoietic malignancies, was the chromosomal region most affected by tobacco. CONCLUSIONS Our findings show that smoking 10 or more cigarettes per day for at least 10 years and during pregnancy is associated with increased chromosomal instability in amniocytes. Band 11q23, known to be involved in leukemogenesis, seems especially sensitive to genotoxic compounds contained in tobacco.
Value of the Routine Assessment of Patient Index Data 3 in Patients With Psoriatic Arthritis: Results From a Tight‐Control Clinical Trial and an Observational Cohort

To analyze the Routine Assessment of Patient Index Data 3 (RAPID3), a patient‐reported, composite index, designed initially for feasibility in clinical care. RAPID3 was developed in rheumatoid arthritis, but has been found useful in many rheumatic diseases. We analyzed RAPID3 in patients with psoriatic arthritis (PsA).
Economic Integration and Mass Politics: Market Liberalization and Public Attitudes in the European Union

Theory: Theories of how domestic politics influence international economic policy differ fundamentally in their treatment of the mass public. A central issue in this controversy is whether members of the mass public form attitudes about international economics that reflect their economic interests. This article examines this assumption using international economic theory to identify variation in economic interests regarding international economic policy. Hypotheses: Citizens of the European Union (EU) form attitudes toward EU membership-an international economic policy-that are consistent with their occupation-based economic interests. Methods: Individual-level heteroskedastic ordered probit analysis of Eurobarometer survey data and OECD economic statistics from 1975 to 1992. Results: While controlling for a variety of potentially confounding factors, the likelihood of positive evaluations of EU membership is positively related to intraoccupational differences in economic benefits from EU membership.
Fundamental Quantum Limits to Waveform Detection

Ever since the inception of gravitational-wave detectors, limits imposed by quantum mechanics to the detection of time-varying signals have been a subject of intense research and debate. Drawing insights from quantum information theory, quantum detection theory, and quantum measurement theory, here we prove lower error bounds for waveform detection via a quantum system, settling the long-standing problem. In the case of optomechanical force detection, we derive analytic expressions for the bounds in some cases of interest and discuss how the limits can be approached using quantum control techniques.
Modification with Melamine Formaldehyde and Melamine-Urea Formaldehyde Resin to Improve the Physical and Mechanical Properties of Wood

Scots pine and white poplar were modified with melamine formaldehyde (MF) and melamine-urea formaldehyde (MUF) resins to improve their physical and mechanical properties. Impregnation was conducted at 4 bar pressure for 30 or 60 min, and the samples were cured at a temperature of 150 °C for 40 min in an oven. The density, equilibrium moisture content, weight percent gain, bulking effect, water uptake, volumetric swelling, anti-swelling efficiency, modulus of rupture, modulus of elasticity, compression strength parallel to the grain, and Brinell hardness of the modified wood were determined. The anti-swelling efficiencies were 57% and 74% in Scots pine and white poplar, respectively, using the melamine formaldehyde resin. Modification of white poplar with melamine-urea formaldehyde increased the modulus of elasticity, compression strength, and Brinell hardness considerably. Both resins were successful at improving the physical and mechanical properties of Scots pine and white poplar woods.
Long-Term Growth Effects of Natural Disasters - Empirical Evidence for Droughts

The ongoing process of climate change goes along with a higher frequency and/or severity of droughts. While the short-term growth consequences of droughts are comparatively well examined, little research has yet been devoted to the question whether and how droughts affect medium and long-term growth. However, knowledge on the growth dynamics triggered by natural disasters is an influential input factor for integrated assessment models which are used to evaluate climate policy measures. In this paper we deliver empirical support for the hypothesis of the existence of long-run growth effects of droughts. Based on a panel of 153 countries over the period of 1960 to 2002 and employing a truly exogenous drought indicator derived from rainfall data we find significantly negative long-term growth effects of droughts in both highly and less developed countries. We also deliver first empirical evidence on the channels through which droughts affect economic growth.
A Trajectory-Driven Opportunistic Routing Protocol for VCPS

By exploring sensing, computing, and communication capabilities on vehicles, vehicular cyber-physical systems (VCPS) are promising solutions to provide road safety and traffic efficiency in intelligent transportation systems. Due to high mobility and sparse network density, VCPS could be severely affected by intermittent connectivity. In this paper, we propose a trajectory-driven opportunistic routing (TDOR) protocol, which is primarily applied for sparse networks, e.g., delay/disruption tolerant networks (DTNs). With geographic routing protocol designed in DTNs, existing works primarily consider the proximity to destination as a criterion for next-hop selections. Differently, by utilizing GPS information of on-board vehicle navigation system to help with data transmission, TDOR selects the relay node based on the proximity to trajectory. This aims to provide reliable and efficient message delivery, i.e., high delivery ratio and low-transmission overhead. TDOR is more immune to disruptions, due to unfavorable mobility of intermediate nodes. Performance evaluation results show TDOR outperforms well-known opportunistic geographic routing protocols, and achieves much lower routing overhead for comparable delivery ratio.
Energy metabolism in cancer and human immunodeficiency virus infection

Cancer and HIV infection are often considered to be synonymous with the profound weight loss which is characterized as cachexia. Undoubtedly many patients do experience periods of weight loss, but by generalizing we may lose some of the important heterogeneity which exists in both diseases. The paper of Warren (193 1) has been extensively cited as showing that the most common cause of death in patients with cancer (accounting for 114 of 500 cases) was cachexia. However, Warren (193 1) also remarked on the ‘startling’ number of cases in which ‘excellent nutrition and not infrequently obesity are maintained to the end’. Studies of the prevalence of weight deficits at diagnosis have also been widely used to support the notion that patients lose weight, but these give no indication of the weight change associated with disease progression (Dewys et al. 1980). By focusing on weight loss alone, perhaps in association with intermittent periods of treatment, it is easy to disregard important periods of weight gain between treatment cycles in which nutritional status may be restored. There are undoubtedly differences in patterns of weight change associated with cancer at different sites and not surprisingly gastrointestinal cancers are associated with some of the most marked weight loss. There may also be a secular effect on the weight change experienced by patients with cancer, linked to recent improvements in symptom control and the introduction of less-toxic treatment regimens for some cancers. Unfortunately, too few clinics keep detailed records of weight change to allow a comprehensive analysis of these factors to be possible. A retrospective analysis of weight change in patients with lung cancer showed that virtually all patients lost weight as their disease progressed (Costa et al. 1980), whereas a recent prospective study of sixty patients with lung cancer showed great variability in the pattern of weight change measured at five 6-week intervals following a diagnosis of advanced disease (Sarna et al. 1994). Self-reported changes in weight at diagnosis, compared with ‘healthy’ weight, ranged from 3 1 % to + 32 %, and the range of weight change over the following 6 months was -24 to +28 %. On average there was no significant weight change across the group at any time, but this conceals the substantial inter-individual variability; 46.9% of patients lost weight, 15.6% had no change and 37.5 % gained weight. Only 6 % of patients had chronic unremitting weight loss, with a
Microsatellite instability in hepatocellular carcinoma in non‐cirrhotic liver in patients older than 60 years

Aim: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in otherwise normal liver is rare, its pathogenesis remains obscure and the literature on the subject is scarce. We investigated microsatellite instability (MSI) in eight elderly patients (median age 70.7, range 63–76 years) without a clinical history of liver disease and who underwent liver resection for HCC in otherwise normal background liver between 2001 and 2005 at King's College Hospital, London.
Pay by Design: Teacher Performance Pay Design and the Distribution of Student Achievement

We present results of a randomized trial testing alternative approaches of mapping student achievement into rewards for teachers. Teachers in 216 schools in western China were assigned to performance pay schemes where teacher performance was assessed by one of three different methods. We find that teachers offered “pay-for-percentile” incentives outperform teachers offered simpler schemes based on class-average achievement or average gains over a school year. Moreover, pay-for-percentile incentives produced broad-based gains across students within classes. That teachers respond to relatively intricate features of incentive schemes highlights the importance of paying close attention to performance pay design.