Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cytosine N4-Methylation via M.Ssp6803II Is Involved in the Regulation of Transcription, Fine- Tuning of DNA Replication and DNA Repair in the Cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803

DNA methylation plays a crucial role for gene regulation among eukaryotes, but its regulatory function is less documented in bacteria. In the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 five DNA methyltransferases have been identified. Among them, M.Ssp6803II is responsible for the specific methylation of the first cytosine in the frequently occurring motif GGCC, leading to N4-methylcytosine (GGm4CC). The mutation of the corresponding gene sll0729 led to lowered chlorophyll/phycocyanin ratio and slower growth. Transcriptomics only showed altered expression of sll0470 and sll1526, two genes encoding hypothetical proteins. Moreover, prolonged cultivation revealed instability of the initially obtained phenotype. Colonies with normal pigmentation and wild-type-like growth regularly appeared on agar plates. These colonies represent suppressor mutants, because the sll0729 gene was still completely inactivated and the GGCC sites remained unmethylated. The suppressor strains showed smaller cell size, lowered DNA content per cell, and decreased tolerance against UV compared to wild type. Promoter assays revealed that the transcription of the sll0470 gene was still stimulated in the suppressor clones. Proteomics identified decreased levels of DNA topoisomerase 4 subunit A in suppressor cells. Collectively, these results indicate that GGm4CC methylation is involved in the regulation of gene expression, in the fine-tuning of DNA replication, and DNA repair mechanisms.
Cancer modeling meets human organoid technology

Organoids are microscopic self-organizing, three-dimensional structures that are grown from stem cells in vitro. They recapitulate many structural and functional aspects of their in vivo counterpart organs. This versatile technology has led to the development of many novel human cancer models. It is now possible to create indefinitely expanding organoids starting from tumor tissue of individuals suffering from a range of carcinomas. Alternatively, CRISPR-based gene modification allows the engineering of organoid models of cancer through the introduction of any combination of cancer gene alterations to normal organoids. When combined with immune cells and fibroblasts, tumor organoids become models for the cancer microenvironment enabling immune-oncology applications. Emerging evidence indicates that organoids can be used to accurately predict drug responses in a personalized treatment setting. Here, we review the current state and future prospects of the rapidly evolving tumor organoid field.
Comparative Quality Indicators for Hospital Choice: Do General Practitioners Care?

Context The strategy of publicly reporting quality indicators is being widely promoted through public policies as a way to make health care delivery more efficient. Objective To assess general practitioners’ (GPs) use of the comparative hospital quality indicators made available by public services and the media, as well as GPs’ perceptions of their qualities and usefulness. Method A telephone survey of a random sample representing all self-employed GPs in private practice in France. Results A large majority (84.1%–88.5%) of respondents (n = 503; response rate of 56%) reported that they never used public comparative indicators, available in the mass media or on government and non-government Internet sites, to influence their patients’ hospital choices. The vast majority of GPs rely mostly on traditional sources of information when choosing a hospital. At the same time, this study highlights favourable opinions shared by a large proportion of GPs regarding several aspects of hospital quality indicators, such as their good qualities and usefulness for other purposes. In sum, the results show that GPs make very limited use of hospital quality indicators based on a consumer choice paradigm but, at the same time, see them as useful in ways corresponding more to the usual professional paradigms, including as a means to improve quality of care.
Requirement of cyclin B2, but not cyclin B1, for bipolar spindle formation in frog (Rana japonica) oocytes

Cyclin B, the regulatory subunit of maturation‐promoting factor (MPF), comprises several subtypes that are presumed to confer different functions on MPF although no direct evidence has been provided to date. To clarify the difference in the roles of cyclins B1 and B2, we used frog (Rana japonica) oocytes in which MPF is formed only after progesterone stimulation because it is possible to produce oocytes containing either cyclin B1‐MPF or cyclin B2‐MPF by antisense RNA‐mediated translational inhibition of each mRNA. Using this advantage, we investigated the functions of cyclins B1 and B2 and obtained the following results: (a) oocytes synthesizing cyclin B2‐MPF underwent meiosis I and II with formation of a bipolar spindle at each metaphase; (b) oocytes synthesizing cyclin B1‐MPF formed a monopolar spindle at metaphase I and extruded an abnormal polar body; and (c) both oocytes underwent germinal vesicle breakdown (GVBD) and chromosome condensation. Immunocytochemical observations also revealed continuous localization of cyclin B2 on the spindle during meiosis. These results provide evidence of the requirement of cyclin B2, but not cyclin B1, for organizing the bipolar spindle, though either cyclin B1 or B2 is redundant for inducing GVBD and chromosome condensation. Mol. Reprod. Dev. 59:199–208, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Hexamethylenediamine-Mediated Polydopamine Film Deposition: Inhibition by Resorcinol as a Strategy for Mapping Quinone Targeting Mechanisms

Hexamethylenediamine (HMDA) and other long chain aliphatic diamines can induce substrate-independent polymer film deposition from dopamine and several other catechols substrates at relatively low concentrations, however the mechanism of the diamine-promoted effect has remained little understood. Herein, we report data indicating that: (a) film deposition from 1 mM HMDA and dopamine is not affected by chemical oxidation with periodate but is markedly inhibited by resorcinol, which also prevents PDA film formation at 10 mM monomer concentration in the absence of HMDA; (b) N-acetylation of HMDA completely inhibits the effect on PDA film formation; (c) HMDA enables surface functionalization with 1 mM 5,6-dihydroxyindole (DHI) polymerization at pH 9.0 in a resorcinol-inhibitable manner. Structural investigation of the polymers produced from dopamine and DHI in the presence of HMDA using solid state 13C and 15N NMR and MALDI-MS suggested formation of covalent cross linked structures. It is concluded that HMDA enhances polydopamine adhesion by acting both on dopamine quinone and downstream, e.g., via covalent coupling with DHI. These results provide new insights into the mechanisms of PDA adhesion and disclose resorcinol as a new potent tool for targeting/mapping quinone intermediates and for controlling polymer growth.
Recent Advances in the Genetics of Fractures in Osteoporosis

Genetic susceptibility, together with old age, female sex, and low bone mineral density (BMD) are amongst the strongest determinants of fracture risk. Tmost recent large-scale genome-wide association study (GWAS) meta-analysis has yielded fifteen loci. This review focuses on the advances in the research of genetic determinants of fracture risk. We first discuss the genetic architecture of fracture risk, touching upon different methods and overall findings. We then discuss in a second paragraph the most recent advances in the field and focus on the genetics of fracture risk and also of other endophenotypes closely related to fracture risk such as bone mineral density (BMD). Application of state-of-the-art methodology such as Mendelian randzation in fracture GWAS are reviewed. The final part of this review touches upon potential future directions in genetic research of osteoporotic fractures.
Factors that Influence Information Technology Use during Post-Implementation: a literature Review

Organizations invest in Information Technology (IT) expecting to derive organizational performance benefits from their investments. However, most of the investments do not result in expected benefits because either the implementation fails, or the IT implemented gets misused, underutilized or abandoned during post-implementation. Research suggests that for an organization to derive benefits from its IT investments, users in the organization should actively use the IT for an extended period. Consequently, researchers have investigated factors that can influence IT-use during post-implementation; howbeit, the factors are dispersed across individual publications. Drawing on a review of 68 empirical articles on IT-use, this paper collates and synthesizes factors that influence IT-use during postimplementation. The factors consist of support structures, support properties, and support activities, and do manifest at different levels. Relationships among the factors and IT-use are discussed. Further, this study collates various perspectives on IT-use to improve our understanding of the different ways in which users engage with IT during post-implementation. Finally, the implications of the findings for research and practice are discussed. In general, this study contributes to research on the derivation of business value of IT from IT investments, and specifically, to research on IT-use during post-
Continuous Theta Burst Stimulation Over the Right Orbitofrontal Cortex Impairs Conscious Olfactory Perception

The right orbitofrontal cortex (rOFC) has been proposed as the region where conscious olfactory perception arises; however, evidence supporting this hypothesis has all been collected from neuroimaging and lesion studies in which only correlation and not a temporal pattern can be established. Continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) causes a reversible disruption of cortical activity and has been used successfully to disrupt orbitofrontal activity. To overcome intrinsic limitations of current experimental research, a crossover, double-blind, prospective and longitudinal study was carried out in which cTBS was applied over the rOFC to evaluate its effect on odorant stimuli detection. All subjects received real and sham cTBS. Experimental procedures were done in two different sessions with a separation of at least one week between them to avoid carryover and learning effects. A total of 15 subjects completed the experiment, and their data were included in the final analysis (10 women, 5 men, mean age 22.40 ± 3.41). Every session consisted of two different measures of the conscious olfactory perception task: A baseline measure and one 5 min after cTBS/sham. Compared to baseline, marks in the olfactory task during the sham cTBS session increased (p = 0.010), while marks during the real cTBS session decreased (p = 0.017). Our results support the hypothesis that rOFC is an important node of a complex network required for conscious olfactory perception to arise. However, the exact mechanism that explains our results is unclear and could be explained by the disruption of other cognitive functions related to the rOFC.
Research on Circulating Current Characteristics and the Vibration Mechanism on the GIS Enclosure

Mechanical faults of Gas Insulated Switchgear (GIS) often occurred, which may cause serious losses. it's of great significance to detect vibration signal for condition monitoring and fault diagnosis of GIS. Firstly, the characteristics of circulating current in the enclosure of GIS were analyzed in this paper, based on the electromagnetic inductive theorem. It was shown that the circulating current of three phase in one tank type GIS was different from that of three-phase sub-aspect type GIS, resulting in the difference of vibration between the two structures. Secondly, the vibration mechanism of GIS was researched from two aspects of electromagnetic force and magnetostriction, and the natural frequency of GIS was also studied. The vibration frequency of operating GIS was about 100Hz under normal condition, while vibration signal of iron core equipment contained a lot of higher harmonic components besides the 100Hz component due to non-linearity of iron core material. Lastly, the mechanical vibration characteristic of GIS in service was detected and researched based on a developed diagnosis system, we could see that vibration frequency of operating GIS was about 100Hz under normal condition, which was consistent with theoretical analysis.
Stable Casimir equilibria and quantum trapping

Something repulsive in the Casimir effect Two uncharged objects (metal plates for instance) will experience an attractive force between them, the magnitude of which increases as they are brought closer together. This force, or Casimir effect, is caused by vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field. Effectively, more modes outside than between the objects results in the objects being pushed together. Zhao et al. show that the extent of the electromagnetic fluctuations can be controlled by coating one of the objects with a dielectric (Teflon), which changes the Casimir effect to a repulsive force at small distances. This then cancels out the force between plates and produces a point of stable equilibrium. Science, this issue p. 984 A dielectric coating can produce a repulsive force between two objects to produce a stable Casimir equilibrium. The Casimir interaction between two parallel metal plates in close proximity is usually thought of as an attractive interaction. By coating one object with a low–refractive index thin film, we show that the Casimir interaction between two objects of the same material can be reversed at short distances and preserved at long distances so that two objects can remain without contact at a specific distance. With such a stable Casimir equilibrium, we experimentally demonstrate passive Casimir trapping of an object in the vicinity of another at the nanometer scale, without requiring any external energy input. This stable Casimir equilibrium and quantum trapping can be used as a platform for a variety of applications such as contact-free nanomachines, ultrasensitive force sensors, and nanoscale manipulations.
Mucosa-Associated Microbiota in Gastric Cancer Tissues Compared With Non-cancer Tissues

The link between microbiota and gastric cancer (GC) has attracted widespread attention. However, the phylogenetic profiles of niche-specific microbiota in the tumor microenvironment is still unclear. Here, mucosa-associated microorganisms from 62 pairs of matched GC tissues and adjacent non-cancerous tissues were characterized by 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Functional profiles of the microbiota were predicted using PICRUSt, and a co-occurrence network was constructed to analyze interactions among gastric microbiota. Results demonstrated that mucosa-associated microbiota from cancerous and non-cancerous tissues established micro-ecological systems that differed in composition, structure, interaction networks, and functions. Microbial richness and diversity were increased in cancerous tissues, with the co-occurrence network exhibiting greater complexity compared with that in non-cancerous tissue. The bacterial taxa enriched in the cancer samples were predominantly represented by oral bacteria (such as Peptostreptococcus, Streptococcus, and Fusobacterium), while lactic acid-producing bacteria (such as Lactococcus lactis and Lactobacillus brevis) were more abundant in adjacent non-tumor tissues. Colonization by Helicobacter pylori, which is a GC risk factor, also impacted the structure of the microbiota. Enhanced bacterial purine metabolism, carbohydrate metabolism and denitrification functions were predicted in the cancer associated microbial communities, which was consistent with the increased energy metabolism and concentration of nitrogen-containing compounds in the tumor microenvironment. Furthermore, the microbial co-occurrence networks in cancerous and non-cancerous tissues of GC patients were described for the first time. And differential taxa and functions between the two groups were identified. Changes in the abundance of certain bacterial taxa, especially oral microbiota, may play a role in the maintenance of the local microenvironment, which is associated with the development or progression of GC.
Mesenchymal Stromal Cells for Transplant Tolerance

In solid organ transplantation lifelong immunosuppression exposes transplant recipients to life-threatening complications, such as infections and malignancies, and to severe side effects. Cellular therapy with mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC) has recently emerged as a promising strategy to regulate anti-donor immune responses, allowing immunosuppressive drug minimization and tolerance induction. In this review we summarize preclinical data on MSC in solid organ transplant models, focusing on potential mechanisms of action of MSC, including down-regulation of effector T-cell response and activation of regulatory pathways. We will also provide an overview of available data on safety and feasibility of MSC therapy in solid organ transplant patients, highlighting the issues that still need to be addressed before establishing MSC as a safe and effective tolerogenic cell therapy in transplantation.
Exploring Data Value Assessment: A Survey Method and Investigation of the Perceived Relative Importance of Data Value Dimensions

This paper describes the development and execution of a data value assessment survey of data professionals and academics. Its purpose was to explore more effective data value assessment techniques and to better understand the perceived relative importance of data value dimensions for data practitioners. This is important because despite the current deep interest in data value, there is a lack of data value assessment techniques and no clear understanding of how individual data value dimensions contribute to a holistic model of data value. A total of 34 datasets were assessed in a field study of 20 organisations in a range of sectors from finance to aviation. It was found that in 17 out of 20 of the organisations contacted that no data value assessment had previously taken place. All the datasets evaluated were considered valuable organisational assets and the operational impact of data was identified as the most important data value dimension. These results can inform the community’s search for data value models and assessment techniques. It also assists further development of capability maturity models for data value assessment and monitoring. This is to our knowledge the first publication of the underlying data for a multi-organization data value assessment and as such it represents a new stage in the evolution of evidence-based data valuation.
The Power of Beauty: Leveraging on Deep Learning to Disentangle the effect of Image Aesthetics on Online Purchase

Visuals have been deemed as one of the primary marketing formats in service e-tailing environments to compensate for the abstract and intangible nature of services. Yet, despite the overwhelming empirical evidence attesting to the importance of aesthetics in product and website designs, there is a dearth of research on how the beauty of images depicting service offerings could affect consumers’ behaviour. Subscribing to Stimuli-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework, we attempt to elucidate the power of aesthetics in shaping consumers’ cognitive and emotional responses when they are exposed to the portal image of a service offering. Additionally, we endeavour to explore the heterogeneity of consumers’ responses or their centrality of visual aesthetics, to such images. Blending computer vision and deep learning techniques, we advance a computable and decomposable aesthetic assessment method for scoring the aesthetics of portal images belonging to more than 299,000 local service offerings on a leading Chinese group buying site. We then employ Propensity Score Matching (PSM) to yield initial evidence demonstrating that aesthetics exerts significant effects on the online sales of services.
Towards an Understanding of Conspiracy echo Chambers on Facebook

Selective online exposure to information that serves to only affirm people’s opinions or is strongly aligned with their interests is considered to be a major issue in modern societies. Echo chambers, for example, are online environments in which users are only exposed to confirming opinions and alternative voices are excluded or discredited. Echo chambers are considered to be particularly dangerous, because they may lead to polarization and even radicalization. Social media facilitate the formation of echo chambers as described in the Social Identity Theory by means of homophily and depersonalization. This can be especially harmful in the case of conspiracy beliefs, where particularly extreme opinions lead to a stronger seclusion from society, encourage socially destructive actions, and curate Fake News. In our research we will assess different echo chambers in terms of actively established common patterns of consumed online information sources. To that end, we analyse the news source Likes from over 7,000 users with their approximately 1,450,000 Likes on Facebook. We intend to identify different types of Facebook echo chambers with a focus on conspiracy groups, understand distinguishing characteristics in communicative behaviour of the conspiracy groups on Facebook and explore unique characteristics of users in conspiracy echo chambers.
Research on the Improved DV-HOP Localization Algorithm in WSN

To solve the inaccurate node localization in WSN, this paper first analyzes the problems in current DV-HOP algorithm, takes the received signal RSS as a reference standard through the weighted centroid algorithm, effectively reduces the localization errors, and adopts the improved two-dimensional hyperbola algorithm in the distance estimation to make the estimated distance more accurate. The simulation results show that the presented algorithm has been significantly improved compared to the algorithms in literature, and enhanced the localization accuracy to a certain extent.
Paving the Way for the Adoption of Autonomous driving: Institution-based Trust as a Critical Success factor

Autonomous driving is a technology that could fundamentally change people’s lives, however, safety and liability concerns dominate public debates. For individuals, giving up control and trusting the car’s technology is an obstacle that has yet to be overcome. To address this issue, we investigated the impact of institution-based trust on trust in autonomous vehicles and on the adoption process. Therefore, we built on the technology acceptance model and included the level of perceived uncertainty, anthropomorphism and individual disposition to trust. A PLS-SEM (n = 286) shows that trust in technology is pivotal for the intention to use autonomous vehicles. We identify institution-based trust, more specifically the subdimensions perceived technical protection and situational normality, as the major drivers of trust in autonomous driving technologies. Furthermore, we find that uncertainty moderates the relationship between perceived technical protection and trust. This article contributes to the academic discourse on the adoption of autonomous vehicles by highlighting the relevance of institution-based trust to overcome structural barriers in the adoption process. Furthermore, it highlights the interplay of institution-based trust with technical and individual antecedents of trust, thereby enlightens mechanisms of the trust building process and provides comprehensive empirical evidence on the relative importance of trust’s determinants.