Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Distribution of the Serine Protease Autotransporters of the Enterobacteriaceae among Extraintestinal Clinical Isolates of Escherichia coli

ABSTRACT Urinary tract infections continue to be among the most common extraintestinal diseases. Cystitis in women is by far the most common urinary tract infection; pyelonephritis in both sexes and prostatitis in men are more severe but less frequent complaints. Escherichia coli is by far the most common cause of urinary tract infection. It is believed that uropathogenic E. coli is adept at colonizing the urinary tract via the production of specific virulence factors. Recently, a novel virulence determinant, Vat, was described for the prototypical uropathogenic E. coli strain CFT073. Vat is a member of the SPATE (serine protease autotransporters of the Enterobacteriaceae) subfamily of the autotransporters. Previously, SPATEs have been described for all pathovars of E. coli, but until recently their presence had been noticeably absent in nonpathogenic E. coli. In this report we describe the prevalence and phylogenetic distribution of the SPATEs among uropathogenic E. coli and the ECOR collection, demonstrating an association between the presence of the SPATEs, including Vat, and uropathogenic E. coli phylogroups. In addition, we describe the distribution of SPATEs among nonpathogenic E. coli.
The Crystal Structure of the L1 Intermediate of Halorhodopsin at 1.9 Å Resolution †

The mutant T203V of the light driven chloride pump halorhodopsin from Halobacterium salinarum was crystallized and the X‐ray structure was solved at 1.6 Å resolution. The T203V structure turned out to be nearly identical to the wild type protein with a root mean square deviation of 0.43 Å for the carbon α atoms of the protein backbone. Two chloride binding (CB) sites were demonstrated by a substitution of chloride with bromide and an analysis of anomalous difference Fourier maps. The CB1 site was found at the same position as in the wild type structure. In addition, a second chloride binding site CB2 was identified around Q105 due to higher resolution in the mutant crystal. As T203V showed a 10 times slower decay of its photocycle intermediate L, this intermediate could be trapped with an occupancy of 60% upon illumination at room temperature and subsequent cooling to 120°K. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy clearly identified the crystal to be trapped in the L1 intermediate state and the X‐ray structure was solved to 1.9 Å resolution. In this intermediate, the chloride moved by 0.3 Å within binding site CB1 as indicated by peaks in difference Fourier density maps. The chloride in the second binding site CB2 remained unchanged. Thus, intraproteinous chloride translocation from the extracellular to the cytoplasmic part of the protein must occur in reaction steps following the L1 intermediate in the catalytic cycle of halorhodopsin.
Induction of a regulatory B cell population in experimental allergic encephalomyelitis by alteration of the gut commensal microflora

We have recently shown that alteration of the gut commensal microbiota with antibiotics can modify the susceptibility to autoimmune demyelinating processes of the central nervous system. Treatment of mice with a broad spectrum of antibiotics not only induced significant changes in the regulatory T cell populations of the gut associated lymphoid tissues (GALT) and peripheral lymphoid organs but reduced the susceptibility to EAE, the most widely used animal model for human multiple sclerosis. Here, we show further that oral antibiotic treatment of EAE mice induced a CD5+B cell subpopulation that conferred protection against the disease. Protection was associated with an enhanced frequency of CD5+B cells in distal lymphoid sites such as cervical LN. In vitro stimulation with LPS increased the production of IL-10 by splenic CD5+B cells. Adoptive transfer of CD5+B cells from antibiotic treated mice reduced significantly the severity of EAE by shifting the immune responses from Th1/Th17 towards anti-inflammatory Th2-type responses. Our results demonstrate that this specific B cell population appears to be involved in the immune regulation of autoimmunity, in particular this experimental demyelinating disease of the central nervous system by gut commensal microflora.
Managerial Attention and Worker Performance

We present a novel theory of the employment relationship. A manager can invest in attention technology to recognize good worker performance. The technology may break and is costly to replace. We show that as time passes without recognition, the worker's belief about the manager's technology worsens and his effort declines. The manager responds by investing, but this investment is insufficient to stop the decline in effort and eventually becomes decreasing. The relationship therefore continues deteriorating, and a return to high performance becomes increasingly unlikely. These deteriorating dynamics do not arise when recognition is of bad performance or independent of effort.
Generating Discriminative Object Proposals via Submodular Ranking Yangmuzi

A multi-scale greedy-based object proposal generation approach is presented. Based on the multi-scale nature of objects in images, our approach is built on top of a hierarchical segmentation. We first identify the representative and diverse exemplar clusters within each scale by using a diversity ranking algorithm. Object proposals are obtained by selecting a subset from the multi-scale segment pool via maximizing a submodular objective function, which consists of a weighted coverage term, a single-scale diversity term and a multi-scale reward term. The weighted coverage term forces the selected set of object proposals to be representative and compact; the single-scale diversity term encourages choosing segments from different exemplar clusters so that they will cover as many object patterns as possible; the multi-scale reward term encourages the selected proposals to be discriminative and selected from multiple layers generated by the hierarchical image segmentation. The experimental results on the Berkeley Segmentation Dataset and PASCAL VOC2012 segmentation dataset demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of our object proposal model. Additionally, we validate our object proposals in simultaneous segmentation and detection and outperform the state-of-art performance.
Behavioural and emotional problems in children and adolescents with congenital heart disease

Synopsis Behavioural/emotional problems were assessed at least nine years after surgical correction for congenital heart disease (ConHD) in childhood. Parents of 144 10–15-year-old ConHD-children completed the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and 179, 11–17-year-old, ConHD-adolescents completed the Youth Self-Report (YSR). On the CBCL and YSR ConHD-children and adolescents obtained significantly higher problem scores than same-aged peers from normative reference groups. No significant differences were found between problem scores for different cardiac diagnostic groups. A negative correlation was found between CBCL total problem scores and IQ-scores of ConHD-children; for YSR total problem scores no such relationship was found.
Salient Value Similarity, Social Trust, and Risk/Benefit Perception

It was postulated that shared values determine social trust in institutions and persons related to a technology: One has trust in people holding similar salient values. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that social trust has a positive influence on perceived benefits and a negative impact on perceived risks. Results of a survey of University of Zürich students indicated that the proposed causal model explained perception of pesticides, nuclear power, and artificial sweetener very well. When social trust was controlled, the relation between risks and benefits perceived diminished. Results indicate that social trust is a key predictive factor of the perceived risks and benefits of a technology, and provide support for the salient values similarity theory of social trust.
Use of Drosophila mutants to distinguish among volatile general anesthetics.

The way general anesthetics cause their clinically useful effects on the nervous system is not known. Since the principal determinant of the potency of these agents is their solubility in oil, the role of chemical structure in affecting anesthetic targets has been obscured. In this work, we use an intense beam of light (Tinklenberg, J. A., Segal, I. S., Tianzhi, G. & Maze, M. (1991) Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 625, 532-539) to assess the effect of general anesthetics on the capacity of fruit flies to sense a noxious stimulus and respond to it. By examining the effect of halothane-resistant (har) mutations on the potency of various volatile anesthetics in this assay, we establish similarities and differences between these agents that highlight the was chemical structure influences anesthetic action. In general, the potencies of anesthetics with different chemical structure are affected to different extents by one or more har mutations. However, three anesthetics of related structure (enflurane, isoflurane, and desflurane) show quantitatively indistinguishable alterations in potency in each of four genetic tests. These results not only identify important structural features of anesthetics but also place limits on the classical view that all anesthetics act at a common target.
Diffusion tensor imaging of acute mild traumatic brain injury in adolescents

Background: Despite normal CT imaging and neurologic functioning, many individuals report postconcussion symptoms following mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI). This dissociation has been enigmatic for clinicians and investigators. Methods: Diffusion tensor imaging tractography of the corpus callosum was performed in 10 adolescents (14 to 19 years of age) with MTBI 1 to 6 days postinjury with Glasgow Coma Scale score of 15 and negative CT, and 10 age- and gender-equivalent uninjured controls. Subjects were administered the Rivermead Post Concussion Symptoms Questionnaire and the Brief Symptom Inventory to assess self-reported cognitive, affective, and somatic symptoms. Results: The MTBI group demonstrated increased fractional anisotropy and decreased apparent diffusion coefficient and radial diffusivity, and more intense postconcussion symptoms and emotional distress compared to the control group. Increased fractional anisotropy and decreased radial diffusivity were correlated with severity of postconcussion symptoms in the MTBI group, but not in the control group. Conclusions: In adolescents with mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) with Glasgow Coma Scale score of 15 and negative CT, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) performed within 6 days postinjury showed increased fractional anisotropy and decreased diffusivity suggestive of cytotoxic edema. Advanced MRI-based DTI methods may enhance our understanding of the neuropathology of TBI, including MTBI. Additionally, DTI may prove more sensitive than conventional imaging methods in detecting subtle, but clinically meaningful, changes following MTBI and may be critical in refining MTBI diagnosis, prognosis, and management.
PEPE II--a multicenter study with an end-point heparin-bonded expanded polytetrafluoroethylene vascular graft for above and below knee bypass surgery: determinants of patency.

AIM The Propaten European Product Evaluation (PEPE II) study was a product evaluation intended to characterize the performance of the GORE PROPATEN vascular graft in above-knee (AK) and below-knee bypass (BK) surgery. METHODS This prospective multicenter trial enrolled 142 patients with peripheral arterial disease. In 87 patients AK and in 52 patients BK bypasses (including 15 femorocrural) were implanted (67.6% males, 32.4% females). RESULTS The one-year overall primary and secondary patency rates were 80% and 84.7%, respectively. Overall limb salvage rate at 12-months was 96.2%. The primary patency rate for AK bypasses was 82.7%, for BK femoro-popliteal bypasses 74.2% and for BK tibial-peroneal bypasses 79.4%. Secondary patency rates were 87.3%, 78.8% and 85.1%, respectively. Primary patency rates decreased depending on the number of patent run-off vessels (three 84.3%, two 80.8%, one 73.3%). Subgroup analysis showed that female patients had a significantly higher primary patency rate for BK bypasses (95.5% vs. 67.8%, P=0.037 ) compared to male patients. Subgroup analysis comparing patients younger and older than 70 years did not show a statistically significant difference in patency rates. Twenty-one patients underwent 42 reinterventions after bypass surgery. CONCLUSIONS Present data show that the end-point heparin-bonded polytetrafluoroethylene graft yields patency rates comparable to those obtained with other graft material in above-knee locations. The encouraging results for BK bypasses suggests that this graft is an excellent option for small diameter vascular reconstructions when autologous vein is unavailable.
Prospective and randomized comparison of combined androgen blockade versus combination with oral UFT as an initial treatment for prostate cancer.

OBJECTIVE This prospective and randomized clinical study was initiated to compare the efficacy and safety of combined androgen blockade with combination with UFT in patients with untreated prostate cancer. METHODS A total of 142 patients were entered in this study between April 1990 and December 1992. All patients received bilateral orchiectomy and 200 mg/day of diethylstilbestrol diphosphate. Of these patients, 70 patients were administered an additional 400 mg/day of UFT after randomization. Either treatment was continued for at least 1 year or until objective progression occurred if the initial response was equal to or better than no change. The endpoints of this study were progression-free survival, cancer-specific survival and change of QOL scores. RESULTS A total of 136 patients were evaluable and 131 patients (96.3%) could be followed up with a median follow-up period of 1469 days. Both groups showed similar initial treatment response at 12 weeks, adverse effect and change of quality of life score during the first year after initiation of the treatment. There was a significantly longer progression-free survival and better but not significant cancer-specific survival in the endocrine chemotherapy group. The patients with earlier stage and initial serum prostate-specific antigen values <40 ng/ml showed a good indication for this endocrine chemotherapy. CONCLUSION This endocrine chemotherapy was confirmed to be tolerable and significantly effective in the delay of disease progression, which leads to longer survival in patients with prostate cancer.
Quantifying the Equity of Bikeshare Access in U.S. Cities

Bikesharing programs are an increasingly popular potential solution to many of the transportation sustainability challenges that cities face. The environmental and economic aspects of sustainability for bikesharing has been discussed extensively. While critical to overall success, the social equity aspect of bikeshare sustainability has been considered but not quantitatively assessed. This study finds that there is an inequitable distribution of bikeshare access among the population groups in US cities. This spatial analysis compares social and economic characteristics of US Census Bureau block groups based on the American Community Survey for areas within and outside of bikeshare service areas in seven cities. The locations of bikeshare stations were used to define the bikeshare service areas by creating a 500 meter buffer around each station in ArcGIS. Using a Student’s t-test to compare the means of socioeconomic characteristics inside and outside of the bikeshare service areas, significant differences in access based on race and income variables were found in Boston, Chicago, Denver, Seattle, and New York City. Moreover, in Chicago, New York City, Denver, and Seattle, there was also a difference in the education level variables. The inequity in bikeshare access should be addressed by planning agencies and local governments. Corrective actions include public subsidies for stations in low income neighborhoods and educational resources.
CD146 coordinates brain endothelial cell–pericyte communication for blood–brain barrier development

Significance Development of the blood–brain barrier (BBB) requires spatiotemporal coordination of cerebrovascular endothelial cells (ECs) and pericytes. Until now, the molecular mechanism(s) coordinating the pericyte–EC behaviors during this process have been incompletely understood. In this study, combining the analysis of EC-/pericyte-specific Cd146-KO mice and in vitro BBB models, we report CD146 as a dynamic coordinator regulating the communication between ECs and pericytes within the neurovascular unit during BBB development. Our study demonstrates that a single cell-adhesion receptor, CD146, acts as an essential regulator to coordinate pericyte–EC communication and BBB formation during embryogenesis. Furthermore, it identifies CD146 as a potential key therapeutic target for neurological diseases related to cerebrovascular disorders. The blood–brain barrier (BBB) establishes a protective interface between the central neuronal system and peripheral blood circulation and is crucial for homeostasis of the CNS. BBB formation starts when the endothelial cells (ECs) invade the CNS and pericytes are recruited to the nascent vessels during embryogenesis. Despite the essential function of pericyte–EC interaction during BBB development, the molecular mechanisms coordinating the pericyte–EC behavior and communication remain incompletely understood. Here, we report a single cell receptor, CD146, that presents dynamic expression patterns in the cerebrovasculature at the stages of BBB induction and maturation, coordinates the interplay of ECs and pericytes, and orchestrates BBB development spatiotemporally. In mouse brain, CD146 is first expressed in the cerebrovascular ECs of immature capillaries without pericyte coverage; with increased coverage of pericytes, CD146 could only be detected in pericytes, but not in cerebrovascular ECs. Specific deletion of Cd146 in mice ECs resulted in reduced brain endothelial claudin-5 expression and BBB breakdown. By analyzing mice with specific deletion of Cd146 in pericytes, which have defects in pericyte coverage and BBB integrity, we demonstrate that CD146 functions as a coreceptor of PDGF receptor-β to mediate pericyte recruitment to cerebrovascular ECs. Moreover, we found that the attached pericytes in turn down-regulate endothelial CD146 by secreting TGF-β1 to promote further BBB maturation. These results reveal that the dynamic expression of CD146 controls the behavior of ECs and pericytes, thereby coordinating the formation of a mature and stable BBB.
Comparison of sleep quality and clinical and psychologic characteristics in patients with temporomandibular disorders.

AIMS To explore the relationships between sleep quality, perceived pain, and psychologic distress among patients with temporomandibular disorders (TMD). METHODS A total of 137 consecutive patients who sought care at the University of Kentucky Orofacial Pain Center for the management of TMD participated in this study and completed a battery of standardized, self-report questionnaires at their first clinic visit. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and the Multidimensional Pain Inventory (MPI) were used to measure patients' sleep quality and multiple dimensions of pain and suffering, respectively. The Revised Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-90R) was used to evaluate psychologic symptoms. A median cutoff (PSQI total score: 10) divided the patients into 2 groups, i.e., 67 poor sleepers and 70 good sleepers. RESULTS There were no statistically significant differences in gender and age distributions between the 2 groups. Poor sleepers reported significantly higher scores than good sleepers on each of the 14 scales of the SCL-90R (P < .003) and on 7 of the 13 scales of the MPI (P < .05). Stepwise multiple regression analyses demonstrated that poorer sleep quality was predicted by higher pain severity (P < .001), greater psychologic distress (P < .05), and less perceived life control (P < .05). CONCLUSION This study supports the frequent comorbidity of reported sleep disturbance, perceived pain severity, and psychologic distress in patients with TMD.
A Short Core Promoter Drives Expression of the ALF Transcription Factor in Reproductive Tissues of Male and Female Mice1

Abstract The control of gene expression in reproductive tissues involves a number of unique germ cell-specific transcription factors. One such factor, ALF (TFIIAτ), encodes a protein similar to the large subunit of general transcription factor TFIIA. To understand how this factor is regulated, we characterized transgenic mice that contain the ALF promoter linked to either β-galactosidase or green fluorescent protein (GFP) reporters. The results show that as little as 133 base pairs are sufficient to drive developmentally accurate and cell-specific expression. Transgene DNA was methylated and inactive in liver, but could be reactivated in vivo by system administration of 5-aza, 2′-deoxycytidine. Fluorescence-activated cell sorting allowed the identification of male germ cells that express the GFP transgene and provides a potential method to collect cells that might be under the control of a nonsomatic transcription system. Finally, we found that transcripts from the endogenous ALF gene and derived transgenes can also be detected in whole ovary and in germinal vesicle-stage oocytes of female mice. The ALF sequence falls into a class of germ cell promoters whose features include small size, high GC content, numerous CpG dinucleotides, and an apparent TATA-like element. Overall, the results define a unique core promoter that is active in both male and female reproductive tissues, and suggest mouse ALF may have a regulatory role in male and female gametogenic gene expression programs.
Household education expenditure of families at primary school level

The aim of this research is to present the amount of families’ primary school level household education expenditure and to find out whether this amount of expenditure differs according to variables related to school and socio-economic status factors. Research data was collected from 6 public and 2 private primary schools in Kastamonu in the 2011-2012 academic year. 789 families participated in this research. Research data was gathered from “Families’ Primary School Level Household Education Expenditure Detection Survey” developed by the researchers. Data analysis, descriptive statistics, Kruskal Wallis H test, Mann Whitney U test, t test, and ANOVA were used in this research. In the research it was observed that the primary school level household education expenditure of families in the 2011-2012 academic year is 11,971.34 TL (Turkish Lira) total for one student. This amount is approximately 1,920.15 TL for the families whose children are in public schools and 10,051.19 TL for the families whose children are in private schools. The primary school level household education expenditure of families differs according to school related factors of school type (public/private), education type (full time/ part time) and transportation type (walking/service/car). The primary school level household education expenditure of families differs according to some of the socio-economic status related factors such as with whom the child lives, the education level of the parents, the vocational status of the parents, the family income level, the number of family members, and the class level of the student, but it doesn’t differ according to the number of students in primary education.