Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multidrug resistance in cells transfected with human genes encoding a variant P-glycoprotein and glutathione S-transferase-pi.

The nucleotide sequence of the mdr1 gene encoding a putative drug efflux pump (P-glycoprotein) is homologous to a class of bacterial membrane-associated transport proteins. These bacterial proteins are part of a multicomponent system that includes soluble periplasmic proteins that bind substrates, channeling them through the membrane in an energy-dependent manner. We have investigated the possibility that a similar multicomponent transport system exists in a multidrug-resistant human MCF-7 breast cancer cell line that was initially selected for resistance to doxorubicin (AdrR MCF-7). AdrR MCF-7 cells overexpress both the mdr1 gene and the pi class isozyme of glutathione S-transferase (GST-pi) (EC 2.5.1.18). The latter is one of several isozymes known to have a ligand-binding function in addition to drug-metabolizing capabilities. Although we have recently shown that transfection of a functional GST-pi expression vector is insufficient to confer resistance to doxorubicin in cells that lack P-glycoprotein expression [Mol. Pharmacol. 36:22-28 (1989)], we examined the possibility that GST-pi interacts with P-glycoprotein to alter multidrug resistance. To do this, we have cloned cDNAs encoding these proteins from AdrR MCF-7 cells, constructed expression vectors containing these two genes, and transfected these vectors sequentially into drug-sensitive MCF-7 cells. The human mdr1 cDNA isolated from AdrR MCF-7 is a variant gene whose sequence differs from that isolated previously from vinblastine-resistant KB cells [Cell 53:519-529 (1989)], resulting in an amino acid substitution of alanine to serine at position 893 (mdr1/893ala). Transfection of eukaryotic expression vectors containing the mdr1 gene isolated from AdrR MCF-7 cells produced a multidrug-resistant phenotype in recipient cells, with a cross-resistance pattern similar to that in the AdrR MCF-7 cells. To determine whether GST-pi expression could augment resistance provided by mdr1, two clones transfected with mdr1, one with high levels (153% of mdr1 RNA in AdR MCF-7 cells) and one with low levels (10% of mdr1 RNA in AdrR MCF-7 cells), were subsequently cotransfected with a GST-pi expression vector and pSVNeo and selected for resistance to G418. Six of these clones contained levels of GST-pi that were 8- to 18-fold greater than GST levels found in mdr1-expressing clones transfected with nonspecific DNA. We found no difference in the degree of resistance to doxorubicin, actinomycin D, and vinblastine between the clones expressing mdr1 only and the clones expressing both mdr1 and GST-pi. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Performance and parasite control of different genetic groups of lambs finished in irrigated pasture

The aim of this study was to compare the following four genetic groups of hair sheep: Santa Inês (SI), Morada Nova (MN), Brazilian Somali (BS), and the F1 ½Dorper x ½Morada Nova crossbreed on traits related to growth and parasitic infection. Thirty-three male lambs of the same age and of simple birth, under the same pre-weaning management conditions were used in the experiment. After weaning the animals were housed in a completely randomized design in paddocks made of Panicum maximum cv. Tanzania. Along the course of the research, the performance of the four groups of sheep was observed to be negatively affected by gastrointestinal parasites, but there was a genotype effect to the average daily weight gain (ADWG), where the SI and F1 genotypes presented higher values. The effects of genotype, time and genotype x time interaction were significant in weight and corporal score (CS) measurements. The BS lambs had the highest CS values throughout the experiment despite not presenting greater weight gain when compared to the SI and F1 breeds. There were also significant effects of time and genotype x time interaction for packed cell volume (PCV) and FAMACHA © score (FAM) and only the time effect was significant in the total number of eggs per gram (EPG) and total plasma protein (TPP). The MN lambs showed higher PCV values and unlike the other groups, presented a FAMACHA © score below 3 and PCV above 23% even having a higher EPG tendency, especially in the initial phase, indicating a possible higher resilience to infection caused by gastrointestinal parasites.
A Flexible Computer System for Renal Transplant Information

Summary Renal transplantation is a life-sustaining treatment for a person whose kidneys cease to function. The duration of graft and patient survival time is extremely variable from patient to patient. A subset of the potential risk factors has been selected for study at the University of Minnesota, where 2,247 renal transplants were performed between January 1, 1968 and December 31, 1985. A computer system for storing and analyzing these risk factors has been successfully implemented at the University of Minnesota. Its design facilitates fast turnaround time, flexibility and timeliness of information. Further, routine operations require a minimum of clinician involvement. A part-time data abstractor collects and updates the information. A full-time biometrician manages and analyzes the data. The renal transplant computer system was implemented in 1976. The system produces reports, generates matched pair control groups and calculates frequencies, crosstabulations and life tables. It is capable of handling clinical trials as well as retrospective studies.
Liprin-α proteins: scaffold molecules for synapse maturation

Synapses are specialized communication junctions between neurons whose plasticity provides the structural and functional basis for information processing and storage in the brain. Recent biochemical, genetic and imaging studies in diverse model systems are beginning to reveal the molecular mechanisms by which synaptic vesicles, ion channels, receptors and other synaptic components assemble to make a functional synapse. Recent evidence has shown that the formation and function of synapses are critically regulated by the liprin-α family of scaffolding proteins. The liprin-αs have been implicated in pre- and post-synaptic development by recruiting synaptic proteins and regulating synaptic cargo transport. Here, we will summarize the diversity of liprin binding partners, highlight the factors that control the function of liprin-αs at the synapse and discuss how liprin-α family proteins regulate synapse formation and synaptic transmission.
Overview of the Second Social Media Mining for Health (SMM4H) Shared Tasks at AMIA 2017

The volume of data encapsulated within social media continues to grow, and, consequently, there is a growing interest in developing effective systems that can convert this data into usable knowledge. Over recent years, initiatives have been taken to enable and promote the utilization of knowledge derived from social media to perform health related tasks. These initiatives include the development of data mining systems and the preparation of datasets that can be used to train such systems. The overarching focus of the SMM4H shared tasks is to release annotated social media based health related datasets to the research community, and to compare the performances of distinct natural language processing and machine learning systems on tasks involving these datasets. The second execution of the SMM4H shared tasks comprised of three subtasks involving annotated user posts from Twitter (tweets): (i) automatic classification of tweets mentioning an adverse drug reaction (ADR) (ii) automatic classification of tweets containing reports of first-person medication intake, and (iii) automatic normalization of ADR mentions to MedDRA concepts. A total of 15 teams participated and 55 system runs were submitted. The best performing systems for tasks 2 and 3 outperformed the current state of the art systems.
Phase-Synchronization of Daily Motor Activities Can Reveal Differential Circadian Patterns

The aim of the study was to determine any alteration of the 24 h motor activity pattern of a bipolar patient in different mood states. Actigraphic records were collected on an outpatient basis for a total of 387 days. The daily actograms were synchronized in phase to the time of morning awakening before averaging, which significantly enhanced the structure of the averaged traces. The actograms were divided into three groups based on total daily count. The daily motor activity patterns of the low- and high-activity days have a different circadian pattern. We propose it may have a relevance to the different mood states. The phase-synchronization of the 24 h actograms to the patient's sleep-wake cycle, specifically to the time of awaking from the nighttime sleep, may help reveal differences in the daily temporal patterns of motor activity.
Perceptions of Coping Behaviors by Persons With Cancer and Health Care Providers

We studied perceptions of the importance and difficulty of coping behaviors from the perspectives of cancer patients (n = 33) and health care providers (i.e. nursing and technical personnel, n = 24). They rated the importance and difficulty of 43 behaviors that correspond to six domains of coping with cancer. Generally, ratings of importance were similar for both patients and providers. However, patients rated the domains of Coping with Treatment Related Side Effects and Seeking Support as less important than staff. Ratings of difficulty were quite divergent. Patients perceived coping as less difficult than the medical staff in the following domains: Maintenance of Activity and Independence, Coping With Treatment‐Related Side‐Effects, Accepting Cancer/Maintaining Positive Attitude, and Seeking Support. These differences in difficulty ratings between patients and health care providers may reflect distinct perspectives or schemas about coping. That is, patients may hold ‘positive illusions’ about their coping capacity and, therefore, rate coping as less difficult. Health care providers may overestimate patients' distress and, therefore, underestimate patients' coping capacity. An understanding of these different perspectives may assist medical staff in fostering self‐efficacy expectations for coping behaviors. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Global Economic Growth and Agricultural Land Conversion under Uncertain Productivity Improvements in Agriculture

&NA; We study how stochasticity in the evolution of agricultural productivity interacts with economic and population growth at the global level. We use a two‐sector Schumpeterian model of growth, in which a manufacturing sector produces the traditional consumption good and an agricultural sector produces food to sustain contemporaneous population. Agriculture demands land as an input, itself treated as a scarce form of capital. In our model both population and sectoral technological progress are endogenously determined, and key technological parameters of the model are structurally estimated using 1960‐2010 data on world GDP, population, cropland and technological progress. Introducing random shocks to the evolution of total factor productivity in agriculture, we show that uncertainty optimally requires more land to be converted into agricultural use as a hedge against production shortages, and that it significantly affects both optimal consumption and population trajectories.
Addressing the Problem of Unbalanced Data Sets in Sentiment Analysis

: Sentiment Analysis is a research area where the studies focus on processing and analysing the opinions available on the web. This paper deals with the problem of unbalanced data sets in supervised sentiment classification. We propose three different methods to under-sample the majority class documents, namely Remove Similar, Remove Farthest and Remove by Clustering. Our goal is to compare the effectiveness of the proposed methods with the common random under-sampling. We use for classification three standard classifiers: Naïve Bayes, Support Vector Machines and k-Nearest Neighbours. The experiments are carried out on two different Arabic data sets that we have built and labelled manually. We show that results obtained on the first data set, which is slightly skewed, are better than those obtained on the second one which is highly skewed. The results show also that we can rely on the proposed techniques and that they are typically competitive with random under-sampling.
On-Engine Validation of Mean Value Models for IC Engine Air-Path Control and Evaluation

Mean value engine models (MVEM) are well established for the study of IC engine air-path performance. Closed-loop control of the air-path is used to ensure the tracking of reference signals subject to constraints. To meet these requirements model predictive control (MPC) has been applied successfully to several air-path applications. This paper reports on the development of an MVEM and suitable MPC controller for transient performance evaluation which is then applied to the engine. A linearised prediction model is evaluated at each control time step, based on the current operating conditions, which ensures the model remains valid across a wide range of speeds and loads. This linearisation of the nonlinear model allows for the formulation of quadratic programming (QP) problems, which are efficiently solved as part of the proposed MPC algorithm. Special treatment in the measurement and calculation of the states and their derivatives is demonstrated to provide excellent tracking performance and a good match between the model and real-time experimental results. The systematic process of modelling coupled with MPC is shown to closely match test-bed performance, which verifies the methodology for studying air-path hardware alternatives.
Bone Geometry, Volumetric Density, Microarchitecture, and Estimated Bone Strength Assessed by HR‐pQCT in Adult Patients With Hypophosphatemic Rickets

Hypophosphatemic rickets (HR) is characterized by a generalized mineralization defect. Although densitometric studies have found the patients to have an elevated bone mineral density (BMD), data on bone geometry and microstructure are scarce. The aim of this cross‐sectional in vivo study was to assess bone geometry, volumetric BMD (vBMD), microarchitecture, and estimated bone strength in adult patients with HR using high‐resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography (HR‐pQCT). Twenty‐nine patients (aged 19 to 79 years; 21 female, 8 male patients), 26 of whom had genetically proven X‐linked HR, were matched with respect to age and sex with 29 healthy subjects. Eleven patients were currently receiving therapy with calcitriol and phosphate for a median duration of 29.1 years (12.0 to 43.0 years). Because of the disproportionate short stature in HR, the region of interest in HR‐pQCT images at the distal radius and tibia were placed in a constant proportion to the entire length of the bone in both patients and healthy volunteers. In age‐ and weight‐adjusted models, HR patients had significantly higher total bone cross‐sectional areas (radius 36%, tibia 20%; both p < 0.001) with significantly higher trabecular bone areas (radius 49%, tibia 14%; both p < 0.001) compared with controls. In addition, HR patients had lower total vBMD (radius −20%, tibia −14%; both p < 0.01), cortical vBMD (radius −5%, p < 0.001), trabecular number (radius −13%, tibia −14%; both p < 0.01), and cortical thickness (radius −19%; p < 0.01) compared with controls, whereas trabecular spacing (radius 18%, tibia 23%; p < 0.01) and trabecular network inhomogeneity (radius 29%, tibia 40%; both p < 0.01) were higher. Estimated bone strength was similar between the groups. In conclusion, in patients with HR, the negative impact of lower vBMD and trabecular number on bone strength seems to be compensated by an increase in bone diameter, resulting in HR patients having normal estimates of bone strength. © 2014 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.
Cerebral lateralization of language in normal left-handed people studied by functional MRI

Objective: To use functional MRI (fMRI) to further define the occurrence of left-hemisphere, bilateral, and right-hemisphere language in a normal left-handed population. Methods: A total of 100 healthy volunteers, consisting of 50 left-handed subjects and a reference group of 50 right-handed subjects, were studied by fMRI of the frontal cortex during silent word generation. Results: Ninety-six percent of right-handed subjects showed fMRI changes lateralized to the left hemisphere, whereas 4% showed a bilateral activation pattern. In contrast, left-hemisphere lateralization occurred in 76% of left-handers, bilateral activation in 14%, and right-hemisphere lateralization in the remaining 10%. The predominance of right-hemisphere activation, however, was weak in these cases; only a single left-handed subject (2%) showed complete right-hemisphere lateralization. Conclusions: Silent word generation lateralizes to the left cerebral hemisphere in both handedness groups, but right-hemisphere participation is frequent in normal left-handed subjects. Exclusive right-hemisphere activation rarely occurred in the frontal lobe region studied.
The Effect of Interpersonal Relationships on Psychosomatic Symptoms: Moderating Role of Gender.

The purposes of this study were twofold: (1) to verify whether or not gender and interpersonal relationships influence the variance of psychosomatic symptoms in Taiwanese adolescents; and (2) to examine the moderating role of gender between interpersonal relationships and psychosomatic symptoms in Taiwanese adolescents. The present study adopted data from the Taiwan Education Panel Survey (TEPS) using a stratified-random methodology. Results indicated that: (1) gender accounts for a significant amount of variance of psychosomatic symptoms; (2) interpersonal relationships account for a significant amount of variance in psychosomatic symptoms over and above gender; and (3) gender moderates the associations of mother-adolescent and teacher-student relationships and psychosomatic symptoms, whereas it does not moderate the associations between father-adolescent, sibling, or peer relationships or psychosomatic symptoms.
TNF-alpha and IFN-gamma regulate the expression of the NOD2 (CARD15) gene in human intestinal epithelial cells.

BACKGROUND & AIMS NOD2, a member of the NOD1/Apaf-1 family, was recently identified as the first susceptibility gene for Crohn's disease. The aim of this report was to describe the regulation and functional significance of NOD2 expression in intestinal epithelial cells. METHODS Expression of NOD2 messenger RNA was determined by reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR); NOD2 protein was detected by Western blot. Promoter activity was assessed by reporter gene assays and DNA-binding of NF-kappaB by electrophoretic mobility shift assays. IL-8 production was investigated by RT-PCR and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. RESULTS TNF-alpha induced an up-regulation of NOD2 in epithelial cell lines (HT-29, SW620, SW948, HeLa S3) and in primary colonic epithelial cells. A synergism was seen by cotreatment with IFN-gamma. Two NF-kappaB binding sites were identified in the promoter. Deletion of either site or overexpression of dominant negative IkappaBalpha led to reduced levels of TNF-alpha/IFN-gamma-stimulated reporter gene activity. The identified kappaB3 site was bound by NF-kappaB as determined by gelshift assays. Elevated amounts of NOD2 protein were also found in colonic epithelial cells from patients with IBD. LPS induced high levels of IL-8 production in SW620 cells overexpressing NOD2. CONCLUSIONS TNF-alpha(/IFN-gamma) treatment up-regulates the expression of the NOD2 gene in intestinal epithelial cells and subsequently increases their LPS susceptibility. Together with the mutation-derived truncation and functional change of the NOD2 protein, this could be part of the complex pathophysiology of barrier disruption as it is observed in inflammatory bowel diseases.
An eradication program without economic loss in a herd infected with bovine leukemia virus (BLV).

An eradication program in a leukosis herd (80% positive) was designed since 1978, and performed successfully from 1982 to 1986 by checking BLV antibodies and generous segregation of positive cattle from the negatives. Slaughter of the positives were in due order, and good milk yield was resulted. The results obtained would be a good model of eradication program with the least economic loss.
Contractile effects of angiotensin peptides in rat aorta are differentially dependent on tyrosine kinase activity

It has been suggested that tyrosine kinase activity participates in the regulation of signal transduction associated with angiotensin II (Ang II)-induced pharmaco-mechanical coupling in rat aortic smooth muscle. We further tested the effects of genistein, a tyrosine-kinase inhibitor, and its inactive analogue, daidzein, on angiotensin I (Ang I), angiotensin III (Ang III) and angiotensin IV (Ang IV) contractions, as compared with those on Ang II. Genistein partially inhibited Ang II- and Ang I-induced contractions. The genistein-induced inhibition was more evident on Ang III and especially important on Ang IV contractile effects. Thus, Ang IV- and Ang III-induced contractions seem to be more dependent on tyrosine kinase activity than those evoked by Ang II or Ang I. Daidzein did not significantly affect the contractile effects of any of angiotensin peptides tested. These results clearly suggest that the inhibition of the action of angiotensin peptides actions by genistein is mediated by inhibition of endogenous tyrosine kinase activity. Furthermore, our data show that the type and/or intensity of tyrosine kinase activity is differentially associated with the contractile effects of different angiotensin peptides in rat aorta. Nifedipine, a blocker of membrane L-type Ca2+ channels, strongly inhibited Ang IV-induced contractions. At the same time, it significantly inhibited Ang III contractile effects as compared with Ang II and Ang I contractions. Meanwhile, we observed a close relationship between calcium influx and tyrosine kinase phosphorylation activity under the stimulatory effects of angiotensin peptides. Furthermore, genistein did not significantly influence the phasic contractions induced by angiotensin peptides in Ca2+-free Krebs-Henseleit solution. Thus, it appears that Ca2+ influx, rather than the release of Ca2+ from IP3-sensitive stores, may play a major role in the contractile effects of angiotensin peptides in rat aorta via tyrosine kinase activation. One argument against a direct action of genistein on the Ca 2+ channel itself is that it did not markedly affect the K+-induced contraction (depolarisation) in rat aorta. At the same time, a potential role for tyrosine kinase activity in the process of calcium entry is suggested. An elevation of intracellular calcium via tyrosine kinase-mediated processes may mediate the actions of G-protein coupled receptor agonists in smooth muscle, including angiotensin peptides.