Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Individual and combined effects of genistein and hesperidin supplementation on meat quality in meat-type broiler chickens.

BACKGROUND There is growing interest in improving the production and meat quality of farm animals through dietary supplementation with phytochemical (e.g. flavonoids)-rich plants and/or their extracts. This study was conducted to analyse the supplemental effects of two purified flavonoids (genistein and hesperidin) individually and in combination on the oxidative status, sensory score and quality of breast meat in meat-type broiler chickens. RESULTS A significant increase (P < 0.05) in meat colour (L* score) and pH was observed for the group supplemented with 20 mg kg(-1) genistein and hesperidin. Water-holding capacity was also improved significantly (P < 0.01) for all genistein- and hesperidin-treated groups, while the sensory quality of breast meat remained unaffected. Lipid oxidation of breast meat was reduced significantly (P < 0.01) at 0 and 15 days of refrigeration in a dose-dependent manner for all supplemented groups. Meanwhile, some treated groups showed improved (P < 0.05) body weight, feed/gain ratio and hot carcass weight. CONCLUSION Genistein and hesperidin supplementation to broilers improved meat quality in a dose-dependent fashion, with pronounced effects of combined treatment. The results indicated that purified flavonoids such as genistein and hesperidin could potentially be used as feed additives in broiler production to promote meat quality.
High osmolarity is a signal for enhanced algD transcription in mucoid and nonmucoid Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains

Chronic lung infection with mucoid, alginate-producing strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a major cause of mortality in cystic fibrosis (CF) patients. Transcriptional activation of the P. aeruginosa algD gene, which encodes GDPmannose dehydrogenase, is essential for alginate synthesis. Activation of algD is dependent on the product of the algR gene. Sequence homology between the P. aeruginosa algR gene and the Escherichia coli ompR gene, which regulates the cellular response to changes in osmolarity of the growth medium, together with the abnormally high levels of Na+ and Cl- in respiratory tract fluid in CF patients suggested that high osmolarity in the lung of the CF patient might be a signal contributing to the induction of alginate synthesis (mucoidy) in infecting P. aeruginosa. In both mucoid and nonmucoid P. aeruginosa strains (containing a functional algR gene), transcriptional activation of algD increased as the osmolarity of the culture medium increased. The increased activation of algD at high osmolarity was not in itself sufficient to induce alginate synthesis in nonmucoid strains, however, suggesting that other environmental factors are involved in full activation of the alginate genes. The targets of AlgR and OmpR, the algD promoter and the ompC and ompF promoters, respectively, were found to have appreciable sequence homology in the -60 to -110 regions. In E. coli, OmpR was capable of activating the algD promoter nearly as well as AlgR, but in both cases, activation occurred only under conditions of high osmolarity.
Regulation of Ribosomal Protein Synthesis in Vibrio cholerae

ABSTRACT We have investigated the regulation of the S10 and spc ribosomal protein (r-protein) operons in Vibrio cholerae. Both operons are under autogenous control; they are mediated by r-proteins L4 and S8, respectively. Our results suggest that Escherichia coli-like strategies for regulating r-protein synthesis extend beyond the enteric members of the gamma subdivision of proteobacteria.
Childhood-onset osteoarthritis, tall stature, and sensorineural hearing loss associated with Arg75-Cys mutation in procollagen type II gene (COL2A1).

OBJECTIVE To define the clinical, radiologic, and molecular genetic characteristics of a family with early progressive osteoarthritis mimicking childhood rheumatoid arthritis, Scheuermann-like changes of the spine, tall stature, short 3 and 4 metatarsals, and moderate sensorineural hearing loss. METHODS We describe a 22-year-old woman and her 54-year-old mother with early progressive osteoarthritis mimicking childhood rheumatoid arthritis. The index case, her mother, and 3 other family members underwent a physical examination, anthropometric measurements, and radiologic studies. Their DNA was sequenced for the procollagen type II (COL2A1) gene. RESULTS Mild scoliosis was noticed in the proband at the age of 6 years, and at the age of 7 years large Schmorl's nodes were found in the vertebrae L1-2. At the age of 11 years, changes resembling Scheuermann's disease were seen, mostly in the thoracic vertebrae. At the same age, she began to have arthralgia in the weight-bearing joints and osteoarthritis progressed fast, necessitating a hip prosthesis at the age of 18 years. The proband and her mother had bilateral sensorineural hearing loss of moderate degree. Both mother and daughter had an Arg75-Cys mutation in the COL2A1 gene. CONCLUSION This family is the fourth example of the Arg75-Cys mutation in the COL2A1 gene, which appears to lead to a clearly recognizable phenotype. The finding suggests that sensorineural hearing loss may be a part of this syndrome.
Do Drug-Dependent Patients Attending Alcoholics Anonymous Rather than Narcotics Anonymous Do As Well? A Prospective, Lagged, Matching Analysis.

AIMS Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is the most prevalent 12-step mutual-help organization (MHO), yet debate has persisted clinically regarding whether patients whose primary substance is not alcohol should be referred to AA. Narcotics Anonymous (NA) was created as a more specific fit to enhance recovery from drug addiction; however, compared with AA, NA meetings are not as ubiquitous. Little is known about the effects of a mismatch between individuals' primary substance and MHOs, and whether any incongruence might result in a lower likelihood of continuation and benefit. More research would inform clinical recommendations. METHOD Young adults (N = 279, M age 20.4, SD 1.6, 27% female; 95% White) in a treatment effectiveness study completed assessments at intake, and 3, 6, and 12 months post-treatment. A matching variable was created for 'primary drug' patients (i.e. those reporting cannabis, opiates or stimulants as primary substance; n = 198/279), reflecting the proportion of total 12-step meetings attended that were AA. Hierarchical linear models (HLMs) tested this variable's effects on future 12-step participation and percent days abstinent (PDA). RESULTS The majority of meetings attended by both alcohol and drug patients was AA. Drug patients attending proportionately more AA than NA meetings (i.e. mismatched) were no different than those who were better matched to NA with respect to future 12-step participation or PDA. CONCLUSION Drug patients may be at no greater risk of discontinuation or diminished recovery benefit from participation in AA relative to NA. Findings may boost clinical confidence in making AA referrals for drug patients when NA is less available.
Differences in the Amino Acid Composition of the Breast Muscle of Wild and Farmed Pheasants

Brudnicki A. , Kulakowska A. , Pietruszynska D. , Łozyca-Kaplon M. , Wach J. (2012): Differences in the amino acid composition of the breast muscle of wild and farmed pheasants. Czech J. Food Sci., 30: 309–313. Numerous studies show the slaughter yield and also basic chemical composition of pheasant meat. The results reveal a higher biological value of the meat of pheasants which were fed naturally, in comparison to the meat of pheasants fed with commercial mixtures. In many countries, the pheasant is selected with the aim of producing high quality meat with very desirable nutritional values. There are only few publications on amino acid composition of pheasant meat. The knowledge of amino acid composition of pheasant meat can be used to determine its potential nutritional value. The amino acid compositions were compared of the meats of wild and farm pheasants. In the study, the follow ing amino acids were determined: Asp, Thr, Ser, Glu, Pro, Gly, Ala, Val, Ile, Leu, Tyr, Phe, His, Lys, Arg. An improved amino acid profile was found in the breast muscle of pheasants kept at the farm in comparison with that of wild pheasants.
Monitoring of voriconazole plasma concentrations in immunocompromised paediatric patients.

OBJECTIVES Voriconazole is approved for management of invasive fungal diseases (IFDs) in paediatric patients. We analysed plasma trough concentrations and explored their association with endpoints of antifungal therapy. PATIENTS AND METHODS The cohort included 74 immunocompromised patients (0.2-18 years of age) who received 101 courses of voriconazole for possible (7) and probable/proven (13) IFDs, as prophylaxis (79) or empirical therapy (2). Voriconazole was given intravenously (4), intravenously and orally (15) and orally (82) at recommended dosages until intolerance or maximum efficacy. IFDs and outcomes were assessed by EORTC/MSG consensus criteria. RESULTS Voriconazole was administered at a median maintenance dosage of 4.8 mg/kg twice daily (range 2.2-17.4) for a median of 40 days (range 6-1002). Trough plasma concentrations at steady state (251 samples; 3.4 ± 4.3/patient) ranged from <0.2 to 14.9 mg/L with high intra- and inter-individual variability and no apparent relationship to dose (P = 0.074, ANOVA). Of the samples 22%, 42% and 58% had voriconazole concentrations <0.2, ≤0.5 and ≤1.0 mg/L, respectively. Adverse events (AEs) occurred in 77/101 (76.2%) courses and were mostly grade I or II. Ten courses (9.9%) were discontinued due to AEs. Treatment success was observed in 8/20 patients (40%) with IFDs, and in 67/81 courses (82.7%) of empirical therapy/prophylaxis. There were no consistent correlations between dose, trough concentrations and laboratory/clinical AEs or treatment response, and proposed threshold values were not discriminative. CONCLUSIONS Voriconazole had acceptable safety and useful efficacy in the management of paediatric IFDs. Pharmacokinetic variability was high and no predictable dose-concentration-effect relationships were observed.
Alcohol abuse and carbohydrate-deficient transferrin analysis: are screening and confirmatory analysis required?

Carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (CDT; asialo- plus monosialo- plus disialo-Fe2-transferrin) is currently the most specific laboratory marker of chronic alcohol abuse (1)(2). Because of the high prevalence of chronic alcohol abuse in many countries, CDT plays an important role in the areas of employment, traffic safety, and forensic medicine. The potentially strong social impact of an increased CDT value justifies the need for maximally reliable preanalysis, analysis, and interpretation of CDT. There is a highly developed quality-assurance system in toxicologic and forensic drug analysis, including standards and calibration materials, internal quality-control materials, external quality-control programs, and a system of screening and confirmatory analyses (3)(4)(5). Although CDT quality-control materials and surveys have become available in recent years and have greatly contributed to the improvement of CDT analysis, an international CDT standard is still lacking. Furthermore, a system for CDT analysis comprising screening and confirmatory analysis, analogous to forensic analysis of cannabinoids, heroin, and cocaine, has not been established. This is surprising because the dependency potential (addictiveness) of ethanol is reported to be comparable to that of cocaine and heroin (6)(7) and much higher than that of cannabis (6)(7). Many state laws regulate medico-legal diagnosis of “acute alcohol abuse”, demanding ethanol analysis by two independent analysis methods: an enzymatic NADH method and headspace gas chromatography (8). In contrast to this, the forensic laboratory diagnosis of “chronic alcohol abuse” by measurement of CDT is essentially not regulated and is usually based on only one (immunologic) analytical method. Here we summarize some arguments in favor of confirmatory methods for CDT. CDT shows an overall diagnostic specificity that is distinctly higher when compared with other markers of chronic alcohol abuse, e.g., γ-glutamyl transferase and mean corpuscular volume of erythrocytes (1)(2). In their systematic …
On the Equivalence of Two Formulations for Noise Correlation in Arrays Made of Imperfect Conductors

For the case of high-conductivity antennas, an expression is provided for the real part of the array impedance matrix. That expression is exploited to link two different expressions available in the literature for the noise correlation due to the lossy antennas. The array is assumed reciprocal and placed in a lossless near-field environment at antenna temperature.
Repeated performance in problem-solving tasks attenuates human cortical responses

A ubiquitous characteristic of human cortical networks is their tendency to rapidly change their response properties upon repetition. While this phenomenon has been amply documented using simple sensory-motor tasks, it is still unclear to what extent brain activations change on a short time scale when we are engaged in high level, complex tasks. Here, we examined this question using three types of high-level visual problems. We analyzed data from intracranial recordings performed in eight patients, focusing on the location and type of changes and on their relationship to overt behavior. Our results show significant repetition effects, manifested as signal decrease with repetition, in three different groups of electrodes: Visual sites, which increased their activity during stimuli presentation; Processing Positive sites, which demonstrated increased activity throughout the experimental trial; and Processing Negative sites, which demonstrated suppression of activity during the trial as compared to baseline. Interestingly, despite these significant repetition effects, response time remained unchanged with repetition. These findings bear directly upon our ability to interpret results aggregated across multiple repetitions of the same complex task.
Mutated in colorectal cancer (Mcc), a candidate tumor suppressor, is dynamically expressed during mouse embryogenesis

Mutated in Colorectal Cancer (MCC) encodes a multiple PSD‐95/Dlg/ZO‐1 (PDZ) domain‐containing protein implicated, as its name suggests, in the pathogenesis of human colon cancer. To date, however, what role, if any, MCC plays in normal tissue homeostasis and development remains unclear. In an effort to expand our understanding of MCC function and distribution, we examined the expression of the evolutionarily conserved mouse Mcc homolog between embryonic days (E) 6.5 and 12.5 using conventional whole‐mount in situ hybridization and two independent Mcc reporter alleles. Mcc is expressed in the posterior primitive streak during gastrulation and in diverse tissues of both mesodermal and endodermal origin. In addition, Mcc transcripts localize to the posterior neural tube and identify discrete neuronal subtypes and ganglia within the developing central nervous system. Genetically, however, Mcc is entirely dispensable, as mice homozygous for the MccGt(D062B07) gene trap allele, which generates a loss‐of‐function mutation, are viable and fertile, with no ostensible phenotype. Developmental Dynamics 240:2166–2174, 2011. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Speech Rate and Fluency in Children and Adolescents

Reduced speech fluency is frequent in clinical paediatric populations, an unexplained finding. To investigate age related effects on speech fluency variables, we analysed samples of narrative speech (picture description) of 308 healthy children, aged 5 to 17 years, and studied its relation with verbal fluency tasks. All studied measures showed significant developmental effects. Speech rate and verbal fluency scores increased, while pauses, repetitions and locution time declined with age. Speech rate correlated with semantic fluency tasks suggesting that it also depends upon the efficacy of lexical retrieval. These results indicate that the interpretation of disorders of speech fluency in childhood must incorporate age appropriate norms.
Insulin down-regulates angiotensinogen gene expression and angiotensinogen secretion in cultured adipose cells.

Adipose tissue is an important source of angiotensinogen (AT) after liver. Since an association exists between body mass index, hypertension, and insulin-resistance, the role of insulin on the regulation of AT gene expression and AT secretion was examined in cultured Ob1771 and 3T3-F442A adipose cells. Within a physiological range of concentrations (1-17 nM), insulin exerted a negative effect on the abundance of AT mRNA and the secretion of AT. Alterations of insulin-resistance by treatment of adipose cells with TNF-alpha or the thiazolidinedione BRL49653 led respectively to a decrease or an increase in the potency of insulin to down-regulate AT gene expression, whereas maximal inhibition by insulin increased from 30% in TNFalpha-treated cells to 60% in BRL49653-treated cells. These results suggest that a potential link between insulin resistance and high blood pressure may exist by means of increased AT secretion from adipose tissue, especially in obese subjects.
Toluene-induced hearing loss among rotogravure printing workers.

OBJECTIVES This study explored the effects of occupational exposure to solvents and noise on the hearing of rotogravure printing workers from São Paulo, Brazil. METHODS The study group comprised 124 workers exposed to various levels of noise and an organic solvent mixture of toluene, ethyl acetate, and ethanol. Data on work history, psychosocial aspects of the job, medical history, present health, stress, occupational and nonoccupational exposures to noise or chemicals, and life-style factors were collected through an interview. The participants underwent pure-tone audiometry and immittance audiometry testing. Their exposures to noise and solvents were assessed. RESULTS Forty-nine percent of the workers had hearing loss. From the numerous variables that were analyzed for their contribution to the development of hearing loss (age, tenure, noise dose, solvent concentrations in air, biological marker for toluene, job category, work and medical history items, smoking, alcohol consumption, work perception scores, nonoccupational exposures), age and hippuric acid (the biologic marker for toluene in urine) were the only variables that met the significance level criterion in the final multiple logistic regression model. The odds ratio estimates for hearing loss were 1.07 times greater for each increment of 1 year of age [95% confidence interval (95% CI) 1.03-1.11] and 1.76 times greater for each gram of hippuric acid per gram of creatinine (95% CI 1.00-2.98). CONCLUSIONS The findings suggest that exposure to toluene has a toxic effect on the auditory system. Further research is needed on the mechanisms underlying the effects of toluene and on the adequacy of current recommended exposure limits.
Body image and psychological well‐being in pregnancy. A comparison of exercisers and non‐exercisers

Summary: This study compared the perceptions of body image and psychological well‐being between exercising and non‐exercising pregnant women. A prospective longitudinal study was conducted with 65 nulliparous women (mean age years = 30.3, range = 23–39) who were allocated to 2 groups based on level of recreational exercise participation; 25 exercisers were compared with 18 non‐exercisers. A self‐report exercise history questionnaire and a 10 item Body Cathexis Scale were completed on two occasions during the pregnancy, at approximately 17 weeks and 30 weeks of gestation. The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ‐28) was administered in late pregnancy. There was a significant difference between the exercise group and the non‐exercise group in late pregnancy for some items on the Body Cathexis Scale. The exercise group had a lower level of probable caseness on the GHQ‐28 with reduced frequency of somatic symptoms, anxiety and insomnia, and a higher level of psychological well‐being.
Gene expression differences in bipolar disorder revealed by cDNA array analysis of post‐mortem frontal cortex

Previous studies have implicated a number of biochemical pathways in the etiology of bipolar disorder (BD). However, the precise abnormalities underlying this disorder remain to be established. To investigate novel factors that may be important in the pathophysiology of BD, we utilized cDNA expression arrays to examine differences in expression of up to 1200 genes known to be involved in potentially relevant biochemical processes. This investigation was undertaken in post‐mortem samples of frontal cortex tissue from patients with BD and matched controls, obtained (n = 10/group) from the Stanley Foundation Neuropathology Consortium. Results include significant (greater than 35% change in signal intensity) differences between BD and controls in a number of genes (n = 24). Selected targets were analyzed by RT‐PCR, which confirmed a decrease in transforming growth factor‐beta1 (TGF‐β1), and an increase in both caspase‐8 precursor (casp‐8) and transducer of erbB2 (Tob) expression in BD. We further observed a significant decrease of TGF‐β1 mRNA levels in BD by RT‐PCR in individual post‐mortem samples. Given the neuroprotective role attributed to this inhibitory cytokine, our results suggest that the down‐regulation of TGF‐β1 may lead to various neurotoxic insults potentially involved in the etiology of certain mood disorders.
Optimal Phasor Measurement Units Placement for fault location on overhead electric power distribution feeders

This paper proposes a new approach for optimal phasor measurement units placement for fault location on electric power distribution systems using Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search Procedure metaheuristic and Monte Carlo simulation. The optimized placement model herein proposed is a general methodology that can be used to place devices aiming to record the voltage sag magnitudes for any fault location algorithm that uses voltage information measured at a limited set of nodes along the feeder. An overhead, three-phase, three-wire, 13.8 kV, 134-node, real-life feeder model is used to evaluate the algorithm. Tests show that the results of the fault location methodology were improved thanks to the new optimized allocation of the meters pinpointed using this methodology.