Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
β‐estradiol stimulation of DNA synthesis requires different PKC isoforms in HepG2 and MCF7 cells

The role exerted by protein kinase C (PKC) on estrogen‐induced DNA synthesis has been investigated in hepatic and mammary gland cells, HepG2 and MCF7. 17‐β‐estradiol stimulated DNA synthesis in HepG2 and MCF7 cells, maximal effect occurring at 10 nM. DNA synthesis stimulation was prevented by anti‐estrogen ICI 182,780 and by inhibitor of PKC, Ro 31‐8220. The rapid estradiol effects in MCF7 cells were determined by following the inositol trisphosphate (IP3) production and PKC‐α membrane translocation. After estradiol treatment the increase of IP3 production, prevented by anti‐estrogen or by phospholipase C (PLC) inhibitor (neomycin), was present in MCF7 cells. In MDA cells, devoid of estrogen receptor, no effect was observed. The PKC‐α presence on the membranes appeared unchanged in MCF7 cells. The PLC inhibitors, neomycin and U73,122, and PKC‐α down regulator, phorbol 12‐myristate 13‐acetate (PMA), were able to prevent estradiol‐induced DNA synthesis in hepatoma cells, but ineffective in mammary cells; wortmannin, an inhibitor of phosphoinositide 3‐kinases (PI3‐K), blocked DNA synthesis in both cell lines. These data show that β‐estradiol, via an estrogen receptor‐mediated mechanism, activates more signal transduction pathways, and consequently different PKC isoforms in two responsive cell lines. In both cell lines PI3‐K/PKC pathway is functional to the estrogen regulation of DNA synthesis, whereas in HepG2 cells the parallel involvement of the PLC/PKC‐α pathway is present. The reported results indicate that the DNA synthesis stimulation by β‐estradiol requires the estrogen receptor and utilises one or more activated pathways in dependence on the cell equipment. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Detection of HBsAg mutants

HBsAg screening is carried out routinely to detect hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. The immunoassays used employ capture antibodies often having specificity for epitopes present on the antigenic (a) determinant of the HBsAg. Loss of detection may occur due to mutations within and/or outside of the a determinant that affect conformational epitope recognition or HBsAg secretion or expression. Most of the mutations associated with immune escape occur within the second loop of the a determinant. In order to detect these HBsAg mutants, antibodies to subdominant regions within the a determinant or outside of the HBsAg may be required, and this has been the focus of many recent studies. Any changes to immunoassay formulations should also address the possible effect of HBV genotypic polymorphisms on assay specificity and sensitivity. HBsAg mutants may also be identified through nucleic acid detection of HBV in serum. Various molecular analysis methods have been developed to provide specific and sensitive detection of HBsAg mutants, including sequencing, limiting dilution cloning PCR (LDC‐PCR), gap ligase chain reaction (gLCR), and real time PCR. Sequencing the HBsAg coding region provides specific information on the nucleotide sequence; however, it is relatively insensitive for the detection of minority quasispecies. Other nucleic acid methods offer greater sensitivity for the detection of point mutations. To improve immunoassays, further research will be required to increase detection sensitivity and specificity. Ultimately, a better understanding of the structure of antibody‐bound HBsAg will help identify the immunological targets required for the accurate detection of HBsAg in blood. J. Med. Virol. 78:S48–S51, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The Importance of an Early Diagnosis in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus.

BACKGROUND Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease with a high degree of variability at onset, making it difficult to reach a correct and prompt diagnosis. OBJECTIVES To present the difficulties faced by the clinician in making a SLE diagnosis, based on the characteristics at study entry of an Italian cohort of SLE patients with recent onset as compared to two similar cohorts. METHODS Beginning on 1 January 2012 all patients with a diagnosis of SLE (1997 ACR criteria) and disease duration of less than 12 months were consecutively enrolled in a multicenter prospective study. Information on clinical and serological characteristics was collected at study entry and every 6 months thereafter. RESULTS Our cohort consisted of 122 patients, of whom 103 were females. Among the manifestations included in the 1997 American College of Rheumatology (ACR) criteria, cutaneous, articular and hematologic symptoms were the most prevalent symptoms at study entry. CONCLUSIONS Data from the literature confirm that the diagnosis of SLE is challenging, and that SLE is a severe disease even at onset when a prompt diagnosis is necessary for initiating the appropriate therapy.
Serum amyloid A inhibits osteoclast differentiation to maintain macrophage function

Serum amyloid A is an acute phase protein that is elevated under inflammatory conditions. Additionally, the serum levels of serum amyloid A are associated with the progression of inflammatory arthritis; thus, serum amyloid A might be involved in the regulation of osteoclast differentiation. In the present study, we examined the effects of serum amyloid A on osteoclast differentiation and function. When bone marrow‐derived macrophages, as osteoclast precursors, were stimulated with serum amyloid A in the presence of M‐CSF and receptor activator of nuclear factor‐κB ligand, osteoclast differentiation and its bone‐resorption activity were substantially inhibited. TLR2 was important in the inhibitory effect of serum amyloid A on osteoclast differentiation, because serum amyloid A stimulated TLR2. The inhibitory effect was absent in bone marrow‐derived macrophages obtained from TLR2‐deficient mice. Furthermore, serum amyloid A inhibited the expression of c‐Fos and nuclear factor of activated T cells c1, which are crucial transcription factors for osteoclast differentiation, but prevented downregulation of IFN regulatory factor‐8, a negative regulator of osteoclast differentiation. In contrast, serum amyloid A sustained the endocytic capacity of bone marrow‐derived macrophages and their ability to induce the proinflammatory cytokines, IL‐6, IL‐1β, and TNF‐α. Taken together, these results suggest that serum amyloid A, when increased by inflammatory conditions, inhibits differentiation of macrophages to osteoclasts, likely to maintain macrophage function for host defense.
Distribution of genetic variability in populations of two chromosomal races of Dichroplus pratensis (Melanoplinae, Acrididae) and their hybrid zone

We examined, through allozyme electrophoresis, the genetic structure of populations of the acridid grasshopper Dichroplus pratensis from two chromosomal races (Northern and Southern) and their hybrid zone in Argentina. No fixed alleles for any particular race were found, although genetic differentiation among parental races was significant (θ = 0.044, 95% CI: 0.004–0.068). Hybrid populations are genetically more similar to the Southern race (θ = 0.008, 95% CI: −0.005–0.018) than to Northern ones (θ = 0.018, 95% CI: 0.002–0.030). Differential viability or fertility of hybrids, or asymmetry in mating preferences in favour of one particular cross would cause a higher proportion of matings between hybrid individuals and those from the Southern race. This would explain the high genetic similarity between those groups, in spite of their geographical vicinity with northern race populations.
Teratogenicity of Antiepileptic Drugs: Analysis of Possible Risk Factors

Summary: : To determine the primary factors responsible for the increased incidence of malformation in the offspring of antiepileptic drug (AED)‐treated epileptic mothers, special attention was paid to drug combinations in a prospective study of 172 deliveries. Variables used for analysis were eight antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) and total daily dosages (drug score), and seven background factors consisting of maternal age at delivery, gravida, outcome of previous pregnancy, etiology and type of epilepsy, occurrence of seizures in the first trimester of pregnancy, and seizure frequency during pregnancy. The overall rate of malformation was 14.0%. Thirty‐one patients were administered a single drug, and the rate of malformation was 6.5%. The remaining 141 patients were treated with multiple AEDs, and the rate of malformation was 15.6%. The drug score of the latter group was significantly higher than the former (p = 0.01). There was no definite dose‐ dependent increase in the incidence of malformations associated with any individual AEDs. There was no relationship between the type of defect and individual AEDs. Wilcoxon rank‐sum test revealed significant association between the drug score, valproate (VPA), and congenital malformation. Carbamazepine (CBZ) also reached an almost significant level. Furthermore, VPA polypharmacy produced the highest incidence of malformation, higher than that produced by any other AED or drug combination. There was no significant association between the presence of malformations and the other putative risk factors. These results suggest that high dose of AEDs reflecting polypharmacy, VPA polypharmacy in particular, are primary factors responsible for the increased incidence of congenital malformation in the offspring of treated epileptic mothers.
Perivascular Axillary Block V: Blockade following 60 ml of Mepivacaine 1 % Injected as a Bolus or as 30 + 30 ml with a 20‐min Interval

Perivascular axillary blockade was performed on 60 patients with the aid of a catheter technique. The patients were randomly allocated to two groups. All patients received the same dose of local anaesthetic: 60 ml of mepivacaine 1 % with adrenaline, but one group received the dose as a bolus injection, whereas the other group received the dose as fractional injections of 30 + 30 ml with an interval of 20 min. Blood concentrations of mepivacaine were measured up to 90 min after injection of local anaesthetic. Sensory and motor blockade were evaluated 20, 30 and 40 min after injection. Forty minutes after the last injection of local anaesthetic, there was no difference between the blockades of the two groups, except for the sensory blockade of the lower lateral cutaneous nerve of the arm, in which the frequency of analgesia was 90% after bolus injection and 63% after fractional injections. There was no difference in blood concentrations of mepivacaine between the two groups. None of the 60 patients showed any sign of systemic toxic reactions. Fractional injection of local anaesthetic in perivascular axillary blockade does not offer any advantage over bolus injection with regard to the resulting blockade.
Exchange market pressure and primary commodity – exporting emerging markets

ABSTRACT This paper studies short-term sensitivity between exchange market pressure and various domestic and external factors in primary commodity-exporting emerging markets. The paper focuses on the top country-commodity groups in sugar, cereal, fuels, ores and coffee during the pre-peak and post-peak commodity price periods across floating and pegged exchange rate regimes, using the price of crude oil as a general benchmark. Employing a panel model and panel VAR analysis, the paper finds the heterogeneity of response patterns unique to country-commodity groups and exchange rate regimes. According to the results, in flexible regimes, volatility occurs via the foreign exchange market, interest rates, and domestic credit cycles, feeding into the social costs for structurally weaker economies. Hard exchange-rate pegs often result in a drain on international reserves as the terms of trade deteriorate following post-price peaks, leading to unpopular depreciation. These results accentuate concerns over uneven international trade patterns, an open economy’s short-term foreign exchange policy, and speculative capital flows. Such sensitivity has broad implications for macroeconomic balance and the sustainability of implied exchange rate targets in the presence of a foreign exchange constraint across emerging markets.
‘She gets the job done’: Entrenched gender meanings and new returns to essentialism in India’s elite professional firms

Using the case of elite Indian professionals, this article offers a contrast to the robust literature suggesting collinearity between gender essentialism and inequality in organizational settings. Analyzing 139 interviews with professionals in India’s elite litigation, transactional law, and consulting ﬁrms, it reveals that while gendered meanings and hierarchies certainly inﬁltrate all workspaces, not all trajectories for Indian women in high-status work are prematurely disadvantaged. Particularly, it suggests an unlikely positive valorization in the case of women working in new and elite law ﬁrms doing global transactional work. While other female professionals were dismissed or overlooked for not performing maleness in an organizational setting, it was the reverse for transactional lawyers who were regarded positively for similar traits. Instead of being passed over for opportunities or dismissed by their clients, many of these women were seen as best suited for handling the important, global work they were entrusted with and often requested on transactions. The limited case of these professionals reveals how in some new contexts, gendered assumptions about work can further rather than inhibit egalitarian outcomes. However, even as the theoretical extensions in highlighting this mechanism helps add nuance to our understandings of essentialism, it does so while conﬁrming that even in moments of departure, equality is accessed within strictly patriarchal scripts in elite organizations.
Non-transcriptional Priming and Deubiquitination Regulate NLRP3 Inflammasome Activation*

Background: The NLRP3 inflammasome is a critical mediator of inflammation in response to pathogens, tissue damage, and metabolic diseases. Results: Non-transcriptional priming and activation signals stimulate NLRP3 deubiquitination. Conclusion: The NLRP3 inflammasome is non-transcriptionally primed and activated by a deubiquitination mechanism. Significance: Understanding the mechanism of activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome is crucial for the development of therapeutics to alleviate NLRP3-dependent inflammatory diseases. The NLRP3 inflammasome is a key component of the innate immune response to pathogenic infection and tissue damage. It is also involved in the pathogenesis of a number of human diseases, including gouty arthritis, silicosis, atherosclerosis, and type 2 diabetes. The assembly of the NLRP3 inflammasome requires a priming signal derived from pattern recognition or cytokine receptors, followed by a second signal derived from extracellular ATP, pore-forming toxins, or crystalline materials. How these two signals activate the NLRP3 inflammasome is not yet clear. Here, we show that in mouse macrophages, signaling by the pattern recognition receptor TLR4 through MyD88 can rapidly and non-transcriptionally prime NLRP3 by stimulating its deubiquitination. This process is dependent on mitochondrial reactive oxygen species production and can be inhibited by antioxidants. We further show that signaling by ATP can also induce deubiquitination of NLRP3 by a mechanism that is not sensitive to antioxidants. Pharmacological inhibition of NLRP3 deubiquitination completely blocked NLRP3 activation in both mouse and human cells, indicating that deubiquitination of NLRP3 is required for its activation. Our findings suggest that NLRP3 is activated by a two-step deubiquitination mechanism initiated by Toll-like receptor signaling and mitochondrial reactive oxygen species and further potentiated by ATP, which could explain how NLRP3 is activated by diverse danger signals.
Neutron Tomography of a Fuel Cell: Statistical Learning Implementation of a Penalized Likelihood Method

At the NIST Neutron Imaging Facility, we collect neutron projection data for both the dry and wet states of a Proton-Exchange-Membrane (PEM) fuel cell. Transmitted thermal neutrons captured in a scintillator doped with lithium-6 produce scintillation light that is detected by an amorphous silicon detector. Based on joint analysis of the dry and wet state projection data, we reconstruct a residual neutron attenuation image with a Penalized Likelihood method with an edge-preserving Huber penalty function that has two parameters that control how well jumps in the reconstruction are preserved and how well noisy fluctuations are smoothed out. The choice of these parameters greatly influences the resulting reconstruction. We present a data-driven method that objectively selects these parameters, and study its performance for both simulated and experimental data. Before reconstruction, we transform the projection data so that the variance-to-mean ratio is approximately one. For both simulated and measured projection data, the Penalized Likelihood method reconstruction is visually sharper than a reconstruction yielded by a standard Filtered Back Projection method. In an idealized simulation experiment, we demonstrate that the cross validation procedure selects regularization parameters that yield a reconstruction that is nearly optimal according to a root-mean-square prediction error criterion.
Indigenous Culture and Academic Discourse: A Critique of English Textbooks in Pakistan

The paper aims to explore how far English textbooks in Pakistan embody Pakistan and its culture. In this connection, the reading passages and pictures/images of the textbooks taught at secondary level in the government schools of Punjab were analyzed. It was a mixed method study and the specific method employed was content analysis. For this purpose all the reading passages of both the textbooks were firstly categorized and quantified into three categories; Source Culture/s, Other Culture/s and Neutral and then the cultural elements of Source Culture/s were discussed qualitatively using an adapted checklist. The results of the study reveal that the English textbook of class 9 has 12 passages out of which 75% have Source cultural elements, 8.83% have cultural elements of Other Culture/s and 16.66% are Neutral. As far as the English textbook of class 10 is concerned, there are 13 reading passages out of which 23.07% have Source cultural elements, 15.38% have cultural elements of Other Culture/s and 61.53% are Neutral. The findings of the study show that English, being an international language and as a result of globalization, has become compulsory for people belonging to different countries to learn it. However, in order to retain their identity, they try to appropriate English language to underpin their own culture/s through English language used in the textbooks of Pakistan.
Democratic Perception and Attitudes of the Pre-Service Music Teachers in Turkey

Democracy, a lifestyle as much as it is a form of government, begins to be learned in the family. The youth observe and acquire the democratic attitudes of their parents. The task of passing it on to the new generations and helping them acquire democratic values is the mission of schools, namely teachers. It is a commonly known fact that developmental level of countries shows parallelism with the democratic attitudes of individuals. It is important to understand the democratic perceptions and attitudes of teachers who are responsible for positioning democratic structure and thus raising the democratic level of countries. For this reason, the research aims to examine the democratic perceptions and attitudes of music teacher candidates in terms of some variables. Data collected using the democratic attitude scale were analyzed using t-test, Kruskal-Wallis H test, and Spearman’s correlation coefficient. Results showed that attitude scores did not change according to gender, level of parents’ education or the year students were in. Scale scores were negatively correlated with the amount of parents’ income. There was no correlation between the students’ GPAs and the scale scores. Music teaching requires a democratic environment intrinsically; therefore, the democratic perceptions and attitudes of the music teacher candidates who will carry out the music lessons in which they should maintain the democratic environment must be determined. As aforementioned notions suggest, this study is of the essence since the results will shed light on the academic staff in the institutions that train music teachers.
Modeling Chinese Consumer Responses to a Vignette Television Commercial Drama for a Vacation Resort

ABSTRACT This study involved the formulation and testing of a model of Chinese consumers’ cognitive and affective responses to a vignette television commercial drama for a vacation resort area on the South China Sea. Results indicate that response to the commercial was cognitive in nature with perceived homophily, sympathy, beliefs and attitude toward the ad partially mediating the influence of perceived verisimilitude on attitude toward the brand. Unexpectedly, empathy did not play a mediating role. Possible reasons for this, including cultural factors, are discussed. The results also suggest that to effectively promote tourism services a commercial’s production value and realism must be high to produce sufficient verisimilitude. In addition, the behavior and appearance of the actors chosen for the commercial should match those of the intended target audience in order to produce sufficient homophily.
Mitigating agency risk between investors and ventures’ managers

The general management literature has long focused on the agency risks involved in the relationship between general managers and shareholders. Shareholders can deploy contractual and noncontractual mechanisms to reduce these inefficiencies. This study examines—based on a broad international sample of investment contracts—how the use of contractual and noncontractual mechanisms is related to the degree of risks associated with the venture’s development stage as well as how these practices differ across countries. Hypotheses are tested using a proprietary data set of 265 hand-collected investment contracts associated with ventures in the United States, Israel, and nine European countries. Findings suggest that the use of mitigating contractual and noncontractual mechanisms is related to the degree of agency risks and that these practices vary across countries. This study draws implications for how investors can best deploy their capital in different institutional settings while nurturing their relationships with managers and entrepreneurs.