Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Vitamin D3 Partly Antagonizes Advanced-Glycation Endproducts-Induced NFκB Activation in Mouse Podocytes

Background/Aims: We have previously shown that advanced glycation-endproducts (AGEs) induced NFκB activation in differentiated mouse podocytes. This NFκB activation may contribute to the progression of renal disease and mediation of fibrosis by various mechanisms. This study was undertaken to test whether this detrimental response may be reversed by vitamin D3 or its analogue paricalcitol. Methods: Differentiated mouse podocytes were challenged with glycated bovine serum albumin (AGE-BSA), or non-glycated control BSA (in the presence or absence of various concentrations of vitamin D3 (decostriol, 1α,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3)) or its active analog paricalcitol. Quantitative mRNA expressions were measured by real-time PCR, whereas protein expressions were determined by Western blotting followed by densitometry. Cytoplasmic and nuclear protein expression of the NFκB subunit p65 (Rel A) were determined by Western blotting. Furthermore, the ratio of phosphorylated to non-phosphorylated IκB-α was measured using specific antibodies. Electrophoretic mobility shift assays and a capture ELISA assay were used to assess NFκB transactivation in vitro. In addition, NFκB transactivation was also monitored in HEK-NFκBIA reporter cells using live cell luminometry. Results: Podocytes expressed the receptor for vitamin D. The vitamins did not suppress receptor for AGEs (RAGE) expression; instead, they rather upregulated RAGE. Although vitamin D3 and paricalcitol partly and differentially modified some of the studied parameters, both hormones inhibited AGE-BSA-induced NFκB transactivation, presumably by various mechanisms including the upregulation of IκB-α protein, keeping NFκB sequestered in an inactive state in the cytoplasm. Conclusion: Vitamin D3 or its analog paricalcitol partly prevented AGE-mediated NFκB activation, an important feature of diabetic nephropathy (DN). Whether this in vitro finding is of clinical relevance to prevent/treat DN requires further studies.
Factors Influencing Information and Communication Technology Use by Women Research Scientists in Universities of Agriculture in Nigeria

Information and communication technology (ICT) is a veritable tool for sustainable agricultural development in Nigeria. This paper analyzed the factors that influenced ICT use by women research scientists in the Universities of Agriculture in Nigeria. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 40 respondents per university from a population of 300 women research scientists across the three universities. This gave a total of 120 women scientists for the study. Data were generated using questionnaire and presented with descriptive statistics and Logit regression. Major findings show that the mean age of the respondents was 40 years 77% were married with mean household size of 4 persons, while a good number (46%) possessed MSc degree. The respondents spent between 1-4 hours in accessing ICT while, Global System of Mobile Communication (x = 3.49) and use of modem (x=3.27) were most preferred channels of ICTs used. Respondents’ educational level (0.190), primary assignment (0.151), year of working experience (0.097) and training on ICT (0.315) were significant and positively related to ICT uptake, at 1% level of probability. Respondents’ major challenges in accessing ICT were time (x =3.27), Network error (x= 3.08) and too many family problems (x= 3.08) respectively. The study recommends that researchers should restructure their work schedule to accommodate ICT practice and use in order to enhance ICT use.
Move to Work, Move to Stay? Mapping Atypical Labour Migration into Germany

Abstract Germany has become one of the major destination countries for labour migration within the European Union. The German government introduced temporary restrictions on labour migration after the eastern enlargement rounds of 2004 and 2007. These barriers had little impact on the overall volume of labour mobility. Rather they were accompanied by new “atypical” forms of mobility through the posting of workers, self-employment and seasonal workers, which according to EU rules are covered only by a minimum of host country regulations. The combination of temporary restrictions on regular migration and the opportunities through atypical mobility created strong incentives for companies to engage in ‘regime shopping’ strategies. This contributed to a considerable growth in outsourcing, subcontracting and flexible use of external labour added to pre-existing dynamics of low-wage competition, segmentation and fragmentation in the German labour market. Using data on the different forms of intra-EU migration to Germany, the article analyses the different paths that labour migration has frequently used since the fall of the Iron Curtain. First, it maps the changes in magnitude, character and direction of intra-EU labour mobility to Germany and the relative weight of the different channels through which such movements occurred from 2000 to 2015. Second, the article discusses the various responses by the government by the extension of collective agreements and the statutory minimum wage.
Improved training for online end-to-end speech recognition systems

Achieving high accuracy with end-to-end speech recognizers requires careful parameter initialization prior to training. Otherwise, the networks may fail to find a good local optimum. This is particularly true for online networks, such as unidirectional LSTMs. Currently, the best strategy to train such systems is to bootstrap the training from a tied-triphone system. However, this is time consuming, and more importantly, is impossible for languages without a high-quality pronunciation lexicon. In this work, we propose an initialization strategy that uses teacher-student learning to transfer knowledge from a large, well-trained, offline end-to-end speech recognition model to an online end-to-end model, eliminating the need for a lexicon or any other linguistic resources. We also explore curriculum learning and label smoothing and show how they can be combined with the proposed teacher-student learning for further improvements. We evaluate our methods on a Microsoft Cortana personal assistant task and show that the proposed method results in a 19 % relative improvement in word error rate compared to a randomly-initialized baseline system.
Country Risk and Expected Returns across Global Equity Markets

Assessing and pricing country risk poses a considerable challenge to tactical asset allocation across national equity markets. This research examines the relationship between the country composite risk (together with its component risks related to: sovereign credit, currency, banking sector, economic structure, and political situation) and the expected returns, also identifying general investment practice implications. The equal-weighted portfolio of risky countries proved to outperform the safe countries by approximately 0.50 percentage points per month. The application of this cross-sectional pattern, however, still poses a significant challenge for investment practice. The abnormal performance proved insignificant for capitalization-weighted and liquidity weighted portfolios, as well as within the subgroups of the full sample. We also observed profitability of the risk-based strategies disappear in the years following the global financial crisis.
Primary Segmental Volvulus Mimicking Ileal Atresia

Neonatal intestinal volvulus in the absence of malrotation is a rare occurrence and rarer still is the intestinal volvulus in absence of any other predisposing factors. Primary segmental volvulus in neonates is very rare entity, which can have catastrophic outcome if not intervened at appropriate time. We report two such cases, which were preoperatively diagnosed as ileal atresia and intraoperatively revealed to be primary segmental volvulus of the ileum.
Structural and Functional Changes of the Invariant NKT Clonal Repertoire in Early Rheumatoid Arthritis

Invariant NKT cells (iNKT) are potent immunoregulatory T cells that recognize CD1d via a semi-invariant TCR (iNKT-TCR). Despite the knowledge of a defective iNKT pool in several autoimmune conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a clear understanding of the intrinsic mechanisms, including qualitative and structural changes of the human iNKT repertoire at the earlier stages of autoimmune disease, is lacking. In this study, we compared the structure and function of the iNKT repertoire in early RA patients with age- and gender-matched controls. We analyzed the phenotype and function of the ex vivo iNKT repertoire as well as CD1d Ag presentation, combined with analyses of a large panel of ex vivo sorted iNKT clones. We show that circulating iNKTs were reduced in early RA, and their frequency was inversely correlated to disease activity score 28. Proliferative iNKT responses were defective in early RA, independent of CD1d function. Functional iNKT alterations were associated with a skewed iNKT-TCR repertoire with a selective reduction of high-affinity iNKT clones in early RA. Furthermore, high-affinity iNKTs in early RA exhibited an altered functional Th profile with Th1- or Th2-like phenotype, in treatment-naive and treated patients, respectively, compared with Th0-like Th profiles exhibited by high-affinity iNKTs in controls. To our knowledge, this is the first study to provide a mechanism for the intrinsic qualitative defects of the circulating iNKT clonal repertoire in early RA, demonstrating defects of iNKTs bearing high-affinity TCRs. These defects may contribute to immune dysregulation, and our findings could be exploited for future therapeutic intervention.
Differential expression of microRNAs in hematopoietic cell lineages

Objectives: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play key roles in a wide variety of normal and pathological cellular processes. A number of studies identified hematopoietic‐specific miRNAs that are necessary for correct function of blood cells. Out of our microarray data, we chose 13 miRNAs that showed differential expression in peripheral blood cells (miR‐15b, miR‐16, miR‐24, miR‐30c, miR‐106b, miR‐142‐3p, miR‐142‐5p, miR‐150, miR‐155, miR‐181, miR‐223, miR‐342, and miR‐451) and examined their expression in separated hematopoietic cell lineages.
Silent somatotroph tumour revisited from a study of 80 patients with and without acromegaly and a review of the literature.

BACKGROUND Silent somatotroph tumours are growth hormone (GH) immunoreactive (IR) pituitary tumours without clinical and biological signs of acromegaly. Their better characterisation is required to improve the diagnosis. MATERIALS AND METHODS Twenty-one silent somatotroph tumours were compared to 59 somatotroph tumours with acromegaly. Tumours in each group were classified into GH and plurihormonal (GH/prolactin (PRL)/±thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH)) and into densely granulated (DG) and sparsely granulated (SG) types. The two groups were then compared with regards to proliferation (Ki-67, p53 indexes and mitotic count), differentiation (expression of somatostatin receptors SSTR2A-SSTR5 and transcription factor Pit-1) and secretory activity (% of GH- and PRL-IR cells). RESULTS The silent somatotroph tumours represented 2% of all tested pituitary tumours combined. They were more frequent in women than in men (P = 0.002), more frequently plurihormonal and SG (P < 0.01), with a lower percentage of GH-IR cells (P < 0.0001) compared to those with acromegaly. They all expressed SSTR2A, SSTR5 and Pit-1. The plurihormonal (GH/PRL/±TSH) tumours were mostly observed in women (sex ratio: 3/1) and in patients who were generally younger than those with acromegaly (P < 0.001). They were larger (P < 0.001) with a higher Ki-67 index (P = 0.007). CONCLUSIONS The silent somatotroph tumours are not uncommon. Their pathological diagnosis requires the immunodetection of GH and Pit-1. They are more frequently plurihormonal and more proliferative than those with acromegaly. A low secretory activity of these tumours might explain the normal plasma values for GH and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1) and the absence of clinical signs of acromegaly.
Pathogenic Role of Connective Tissue Growth Factor (CTGF/CCN2) in Osteolytic Metastasis of Breast Cancer

The role of CTGF/CCN2 in osteolytic metastasis by breast cancer cells and its mechanism of action were studied. Osteolytic metastasis accompanied by CCN2 and PTHrP overproduction was efficiently inhibited by an anti‐CCN2 antibody. Furthermore, we found that CCN2 was induced by PTHrP through PKA‐, PKC‐, and ERK‐mediated pathways therein.
Early Retirement from Work: A Longitudinal Study of the Impact of Organisational Change in a Public Enterprise*

Abstract This paper reports on the consequences of organisational change on the psychosocial work environment, employee health, workplace absenteeism and early retirement from work in a Norwegian public company. The company was studied longitudinally over one year, during which time it reduced the number of refuse collectors by 30 per cent and reorganised work procedures. One survey was undertaken during the initial phases of the downsizing and reorganisation, and a further study a year later. It was observed that five of the refuse collectors were granted a disability pension (termed ‘leavers’) during the year the study lasted. This group was compared with the rest of the employees in the company. Among the leavers the authors observed a high social identification with the job, reflecting a lack of alternative job possibilities for this group. There was also a significant drop in job security among the leavers compared to the rest of the employees. The diagnoses given for the disability pensions were not in accordance with the subjective health symptoms that were most prevalent among the leavers. Although refuse collection may have become more efficient as a result of the downsizing and reorganisation process, the early retirements and other indicators of a deteriorated psychosocial work environment may reflect the longer term effects for the company and for society.
A highly purified form of staphylococcal protein A alleviates murine immune thrombocytopenia (ITP)

F. , Missiaglia, E. , Juilland, M. , Iwaszkiewicz, J., Fataccioli, V. , Bisig, B. , Roberti, A. , Grewal, J., Bruneau, J., Fabiani, B. , Martin, A. , Bonnet, C. , Michielin, O. , Jais, J.P., Figeac, M. , Bernard, O.A. , Delorenzi, M. , Haioun, C. , Tournilhac, O. , Thome, M. , Gascoyne, R.D. , Gaulard, P. & de Leval, L. (2016) Activating mutations in genes related to TCR signaling in angioimmunoblastic and other follicular helper T-cell-derived lymphomas. Blood, 128, 1490–1502.
MLVA is a valuable tool in epidemiological investigations of Escherichia coli and for disclosing multiple carriage

Abstract Background: Escherichia coli is a common cause of healthcare-associated urinary tract infection, and is frequently present in the urine of elderly people. Transmission of E. coli between individuals has been suggested, and individuals can be concurrently colonized with several types. Efficient typing methods are required to investigate these epidemiological relationships, and we have examined the applicability of multiple-locus variable number tandem repeat analysis (MLVA). Methods: Up to 20 E. coli isolates were sampled per individual from 30 elderly residents at 2 long-term care facilities, and typed using MLVA, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and PhenePlate (PhP). Results: Thirty-one E. coli types were identified using MLVA, compared to 38 and 32 using PFGE and PhenePlate, respectively. All isolates were typeable using MLVA and PhenePlate, whereas PFGE failed to type isolates from 2 individuals. The Wallace 1 coefficient indicated a high probability that isolates of the same PFGE type were also of the same type according to the other 2 methods. However, the Wallace 2 coefficient indicated a low probability that isolates of the same PhP type would be classified as the same type by PFGE. Twenty-four of the MLVA types were uniquely restricted to single individuals, whilst 7 MLVA types were found in more than 1 individual. Colonization with more than 1 MLVA type was seen in 8 individuals. There was no evidence of specific institutional types at either of the 2 long-term care facilities. Conclusion: MLVA displays a high discriminatory power, and shows substantial potential with respect to epidemiological studies and infection control issues.
THE IMPACT OF MONETARY POLICY ON THE BANKING SECTOR IN NIGERIA

This study investigates the effect of monetary policy on Banking sector performance in Nigeria. This is to ascertain the factors that influence the banking sector performance using bank’s deposit liabilities as proxy for bank performance. The study period covers 36 years from 1970 to 2006, using selected indicator and employing the OLS regression technique. We tested the null hypothesis of no significant relationship between bank deposit liabilities and chosen indices of banking performance, namely Exchange Rate (EXR), Deposit Rate (DR) and Minimum Discount Rate (MDR). Results showed that overall; monetary policy has a significant effect on the banks deposit liabilities. Main while, on individual basis, we discovered that Deposit Rate (DR) and Minimum Discount Rate (MDR) had a negative influence on the banks deposit liabilities in Nigeria, whereas Exchange Rate (EXR) had a positive and significant influence on the banks deposit liabilities in Nigeria. We conclude therefore that monetary policy plays a vital role in determining the volume of bank’s deposit liabilities in Nigeria. We recommended that government and its monetary authorities should strive to create a conducive environment for banking sectors to grow in the country by packaging appropriate monetary policies that would guarantee and enhance growth and development of the banking sectors in Nigeria.
Embodied representation of the body contains veridical spatial information

In two experiments, the extent to which mental body representations contain spatial information was examined. Participants were asked to compare distances between various body parts. Similar to what happens when people compare distances on a real visual stimulus, they were faster as the distance differences between body parts became larger (Experiment 1), and this effect could not (only) be explained by the crossing of major bodily categories (umbilicus to knee vs. knee to ankle; Experiment 2). In addition, participants also performed simple animate/inanimate verification on a set of nouns. The nouns describing animate items were names of body parts. A spatial priming effect was found: Verification was faster for body part items preceded by body parts in close spatial proximity. This suggests automatic activation of spatial body information. Taken together, results from the distance comparison task and the property verification task showed that mental body representations contain both categorical and more metric spatial information. These findings are further discussed in terms of recent embodied cognition theories.
Present status and future perspectives of intestinal transplantation

Intestinal transplantation (ITx) is the only definitive therapy for irreversible intestinal failure. Owing to the limited short‐ and long‐term graft survival over the years, ITx has been a complementary treatment to home parenteral nutrition. However, the development of intestinal and multivisceral transplantation has been significant over the past 15–20 years owing to the progress in immunosuppressive therapy, refinement of surgical techniques, post‐transplant care, intestinal immunology, and immunological as well as anti‐infectious monitoring. The improvement of patient‐ and graft survival over the last few years together with data on the cost effectiveness of ITx, following 2 years after transplantation, may require a redefinition of the indication for ITx.
Dynameomics: protein dynamics and unfolding across fold space

Abstract All currently known structures of proteins together define ‘protein fold space’. To increase the general understanding of protein dynamics and protein folding, we selected a set of 807 proteins and protein domains that represent 95% of the currently known autonomous folded domains present in globular proteins. Native state and unfolding simulations of these representatives are now complete and accessible via a novel database containing over 11 000 simulations. Because protein folding is a microscopically reversible process, these simulations effectively sample protein folding across all of protein fold space. Here, we give an overview of how the representative proteins were selected and how the simulations were performed and validated. We then provide examples of different types of analyses that can be performed across our large set of simulations, made possible by the database approach. We further show how the unfolding simulations can be used to compare unfolding of structural elements in isolation and in different structural contexts, using as an example a short, triple stranded β-sheet that forms the WW domain and is present in several larger unrelated proteins.
Equity crowdfunding in China: Current practice and important legal issues

By studying two leading Chinese equity crowdfunding portals, namely, Renrentou and Zhongou8, this paper provides the very first empirical evidence on the practice and regulation of equity crowdfunding in China. In the case of Renrentou, I examine a hand-collected sample consisting of the investment documentation of the 53 crowdfunding projects that are successfully completed as of June 30, 2016 on the portal. It is found that the utmost task of the contractual terms in these agreements is to secure the investors’ right of return. Control on the part of investors is rather minimal, and most of the time only encompasses the basic information and monitoring rights. Although investors are not first pooled to form a new entity before investing, it is still a prevalent practice for projects to commission a third party manager to manage the investment for the crowdfunders and exercise monitoring rights in the project entity on their behalf. In the Zhongtou8 case study, I go beyond the margins of investment contracts and explore the operation of the business with a both broader and deeper view. It is found that, the leading investors of crowdfunding projects are very often served by entities that are in some ways related to the founder of the portal. In addition, the portal is also identified to have financial interests in many projects besides that. While these practices do raise concerns about potential conflicts of interests, the regulatory solutions proposed by the Crowdfunding Measures are nevertheless overly cautious and effectually not enforceable. It is therefore argued that the regulator should rather focus on ensuring effective disclosure from the parties with better information, so that the investors can use it to make effective decisions. Furthermore, by setting down high entry thresholds for qualified investors, the Crowdfunding Measures essentially regulate equity crowdfunding in analogy to private equity funds. Doing so fails to establish equity crowdfunding as a new financing alternative, but rather create a minimized version of the NEEQ private placement. As such, it would be meaningful for China to consider lowering the investor qualifications and allow crowds to participate, so that equity crowdfunding can grow into a true new alternative for entrepreneurs to avail in addition to existing fundraising channels.