Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The α Subunits of Gz and Gi Interact with the eyes absent Transcription Cofactor Eya2, Preventing Its Interaction with the Six Class of Homeodomain-containing Proteins*

Yeast two-hybrid techniques were used to identify possible effectors for the heterotrimeric G protein Gz in human bone marrow cells. Eya2, a human homologue of the Drosophila Eya transcription co-activator, was identified. Eya2 interacts with activated Gαz and at least one other member of the Gαi family, Gαi2. Interactions were confirmed in mammalian two-hybrid and glutathione S-transferase fusion protein pull-down assays. Regions of Eya2-mediating interaction were mapped to the C-terminal Eya consensus domain. Eya2 is an intrinsically cytosolic protein that is translocated to the nucleus by members of the Six homeodomain-containing family of proteins. Activated Gαzand Gαi2 prevent Eya2 translocation and inhibit Six/Eya2-mediated activation of a reporter gene controlled through the MEF3/TATA promoter. Although G proteins are known to regulate the activity of numerous transcription factors, this regulation is normally achieved indirectly via one or more intermediates. We show here a novel functional regulation of a co-activator directly by G protein subunits.
Ascidian bioresources: common and variant chemical compositions and exploitation strategy – examples of Halocynthia roretzi, Styela plicata, Ascidia sp. and Ciona intestinalis

Abstract To explore abundant marine ascidian bioresources, four species from two orders have been compared in their chemical compositions. After a universal separation of the animal body into two fractions, all tunics have been found rich in carbohydrate contents, while all inner body tissues are richer in proteins. Cellulose is present almost exclusively in the tunics and more in the order Stolidobranchia, while more sulfated polysaccharides are present in Phlebobranchia species. Almost all proteins are collagens with a high essential amino acid index and high delicious amino acid (DAA) content. All fractions also have high contents of good-quality fatty acids and trace minerals but low toxic element contents, with different sterols and glycosaminoglycans. There are species-specific characteristics observed for vanadium accumulation and sterol structures which are also meaningful for ascidian chemotaxonomy and resource exploitation. It is suggested that in addition to the present utilizations of tunics for cellulose production and of some species’ inner body tissues as human food, one should explore all species’ inner body tissues as human foods and all tunics as food or animal feed with the contained cellulose as dietary fiber. Collagens, sulfated polysaccharides, glycosaminoglycans, sterols and trace elements could be explored as byproducts for, e.g. pharmaceutical and chemical industries.
Microglia as modulators of cognition and neuropsychiatric disorders

It has become evident recently only that microglia are not only responsible for immunomodulatory functions in the brain but represent vital components of the larger synaptic formation, which also includes pre and postsynaptic neurones as well as astrocytes. Microglia critically contribute to CNS homeostasis by their actions in phagocytosis of cellular debris, release of a variety of cell signaling factors including neurotrophins and extracellular matrix components and direct contact with neurons. The purpose of this review is to summarize our current understanding of the involvement of microglia in cognitive processes and neuropsychiatric disorders including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, and Rett syndrome and to outline their potential signaling mechanisms in this context. © 2012Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Osteoid Osteoma and Osteoblastoma of the Spine: Factors Associated With the Presence of Scoliosis

Study Design. A retrospective study of 44 museum cases of spinal osteoid osteoma or osteoblastoma and a meta‐analysis using 421 additional cases from a review of the literature. Objectives. To identify the factors that are associated with the development of scoliosis in these patients. Summary of Background Data. Painful scoliosis is a well‐recognized presentation of spinal osteoid osteoma and osteoblastoma and is considered to be secondary to pain‐provoked muscle spasm on the side of the lesion. Previous studies have been based on small numbers of patients that did not permit statistical validation of the reported observations. Methods. Eight factors were assessed including: age, gender, duration of symptoms, site of lesion in the spine, vertebral level of lesion, site of lesion in the individual vertebra, type of lesion, and Cobb angle at presentation. Reports were reviewed only if the presence or absence of scoliosis could be determined. Statistical analyses initially were performed on the museum cases and then on a combination of museum cases and cases from the literature. Results. Overall, 63% of subjects had scoliosis. The lesions were typically present on the concave aspect of the curve. Three cases of scoliosis from the literature involved lesions that were reported to be on the convexity. Scoliosis is significantly more common in cases of osteoid osteoma than in cases of osteoblastoma (P < 0.0001); lesions are more common in the thoracic and lumbar regions than in the cervical region (P < 0.0001), in lower cervical region than in the upper cervical region (P value = 0.0027), and they are more commonly located to one side of the midline (P < 0.0001). Age, gender, and duration of symptoms were of no significance. Conclusions. The findings support the concept that scoliosis is secondary to asymmetric muscle spasm in patients with spinal osteoid osteoma or osteoblastoma.
An accidental intra-arterial injection of phenytoin in a 43-year-old woman

We report an accidental intra-arterial injection of phenytoin in a 43-year-old woman undergoing ventriculoperitoneal shunt for hydrocephalus. To flush the arterial line with heparin, mistakenly phenytoin was injected which caused cutaneous gangrene along the radial side of the forearm and an absence of pulsation in the radial artery. After flushing the artery with normal saline and lidocaine, the patient was transferred to the Intensive Care Unit. There the patient was put on intravenous heparin that resolved the problem leading to complete recovery of the patient. The case is being reported to emphasize the importance of close surveillance in injecting drugs through the arterial line access.
The age pattern of first-birth rates among U.S. women: The bimodal 1990s

Between 1990 and 2002, the age pattern of Type I first-birth rates (i.e., the hazard of a first birth) among U.S. women was bimodal. This pattern, driven by changing differential fertility patterns among racial and ethnic groups, reached its apex at the mid-1990s and had almost vanished by the decade’s end. Research on first-birth timing has tended to focus on Type II first-birth rates and therefore has failed to identify this larger, bimodal pattern. This article presents the benefits of using Type I rates, documents the emergence of the bimodal pattern via two new measures of bimodality, and uses a decomposition analysis to discuss the pattern’s causes.
Cuff-less blood pressure estimation using Kalman filter on android platform

The continuous monitoring of blood pressure (BP) has been found to significantly predict the risk of severe cardiovascular disease. Pulse arrival time (PAT), generally extracted from synchronized photoplethysmogram (PPG) and electrocardiogram (ECG) signals, is widely adopted in noninvasive blood pressure studies. However, motion artifact and physical activities introduce different levels of noise to the ECG and PPG signals in wearable devices, resulting in large fluctuations in PAT-based BP estimation, which may confuse and mislead users. We explored the potential of Kalman filter to enhance the stability of continuous BP estimation. We developed an Android application collecting data from the wearable device via Bluetooth technology, two Kalman filters were designed and implemented to evaluate the systolic blood pressure (SBP) and pulse pressure (PP) separately, whose gains were adjusted automatically by signal quality indicators. Validation experiments were performed on 6 volunteers to ensure the effectiveness of Kalman filters, and the preliminary results compared with a standard commercial sphygmomanometer showed that our approach can achieve higher stability than the method without Kalman filtering.
Heart Rate-Determined Physical Activity In New Zealand School Children: A Cross- Sectional Study

The aim of this study was to examine current levels of physical activity determined via heart rate monitoring. A total of 176 children (85 boys, 91 girls) aged 5-13 years wore sealed Polar heart rate monitors for at least 10 hours per day on at least 3 days. Mean daily minutes of moderate to vigorous-intensity physical activity was 65 ± 43 (mean ± SD) for boys and 54 ± 37 for girls. Daily minutes of vigorous-intensity activity was 31 ± 24 and 24 ± 21 for boys and girls respectively. Significant differences in physical activity levels were observed between school day and weekends, boys and girls, and among age and geographical groups. Only 36% of boys and 22% of girls met the New Zealand physical activity guideline. This research indicates that a large proportion of New Zealand children are not meeting physical activity recommendations. Keywords—activity guidelines, moderate activity, sedentary, vigorous activity
Postrelease Success of Two Rehabilitated Vervet Monkey (Chlorocebus aethiops) Troops in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

In South Africa, the most common primate in rehabilitation centres is the vervet monkey (Chlorocebus aethiops). Here we evaluated the efficacy of releasing two vervet monkey troops into the wild, using the standard methods employed by an established rehabilitation centre. Two troops were assembled over 2–3 years. Coloured ear tags identified adults, subadults and juveniles. Radiocollars were placed on all the adults and subadults of both troops (41% of all individuals). Each troop was released at a suitable site after 2 nights in a holding cage, and supplementary food was provided for 2 months after release. For 10 months, locations of both troops were recorded, as well as the presence/absence of individuals and their general behaviour. The smaller troop survived better than the larger troop, with only 6 of 35 individuals (17%) confirmed alive in the large troop compared with 12 of 24 (50%) in the small troop. Large numbers of missing monkeys make it difficult to determine whether the release was a success. However, results suggest that rehabilitated vervet monkeys could be successfully released in the future. Recommendations are provided for consideration in future releases.
DNA Damage-induced MDMX Degradation Is Mediated by MDM2*

Although genetic studies have demonstrated that MDMX is essential to maintain p53 activity at low levels in non-stressed cells, it is unknown whether MDMX regulates p53 activation by DNA damage. We show here that DNA damage-induced p53 induction is associated with rapid down-regulation of the MDMX protein. Significantly, interference with MDMX down-regulation results in the suppression of p53 activation by genotoxic stress. We also demonstrate that DNA damage-induced MDMX reduction is mediated by MDM2, which targets MDMX for proteasomal degradation by a distinct mechanism that permits preferential MDMX degradation and therefore ensures optimal p53 activation.
Hypertension in standard criteria deceased donors is associated with inferior outcomes following kidney transplantation

Singh RP, Farney AC, Rogers J, Gautreaux M, Reeves‐Daniel A, Hartmann E, Doares W, Iskandar S, Adams P, Stratta RJ. Hypertension in standard criteria deceased donors is associated with inferior outcomes following kidney transplantation. Clin Transplant 2011: 25: E437–E446. © 2011 John Wiley & Sons A/S.
Tissue plasminogen activator in chronic subdural hematomas as a predictor of recurrence.

OBJECT Chronic subdural hematomas (CSDHs) recur in 7 to 18% of cases. The present study was conducted to determine whether serum or lesion concentrations of coagulofibrinolytic and angiogenic factors, which have been reported to be potential markers of CSDH development, might predict such recurrences. METHODS Sixty consecutive patients (mean age 71.5 years) with CSDHs (74 affected sides) were studied. Samples of serum in preoperative peripheral venous blood and of hematomas (obtained during surgery) were collected and analyzed. The CSDH recurred in six (8.1%) of the 74 affected sides in six patients. None of the values of the coagulative factors or tests in serum showed significant variation between cases with and those without recurrence. Among coagulofibrinolytic factors, tissue plasminogen activator (TPA) in hematomas demonstrated significantly greater levels in recurrent than in nonrecurrent cases; a similar tendency was noted for alpha2-plasmin inhibitor-plasmin complex in hematomas. Both factors were greater in the lesions than in the serum. Among the angiogenic factors, levels of hepatic growth factor (HGF) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in hematomas were significantly greater than in serum, whereas those of basic fibroblast growth factor were rather lower. Note that comparisons between recurrent and nonrecurrent cases revealed no significant difference. CONCLUSIONS Patients harboring CSDHs with high TPA concentrations on sampling at the initial surgery have a relatively high probability of recurrence and require follow up with computerized tomography scanning. Angiogenic factors, such as HGF and VEGF, might be candidate markers of CSDH enlargement but are not useful as predictors of recurrence.
Face Detection through Scale-Friendly Deep Convolutional Networks

In this paper, we share our experience in designing a convolutional network-based face detector that could handle faces of an extremely wide range of scales. We show that faces with different scales can be modeled through a specialized set of deep convolutional networks with different structures. These detectors can be seamlessly integrated into a single unified network that can be trained end-to-end. In contrast to existing deep models that are designed for wide scale range, our network does not require an image pyramid input and the model is of modest complexity. Our network, dubbed ScaleFace, achieves promising performance on WIDER FACE and FDDB datasets with practical runtime speed. Specifically, our method achieves 76.4 average precision on the challenging WIDER FACE dataset and 96% recall rate on the FDDB dataset with 7 frames per second (fps) for 900 * 1300 input image.
Rapid communication: nucleotide sequence of the river buffalo kappa-casein cDNA.

Name of the Sequence. River buffalo kappa-casein cDNA. Genus and Species. Bubalus arnee bubalis. Origin of the Clone. Ten micrograms of total RNA from mammary tissue of lactating buffalo was reverse-transcribed using an oligo d(T)17 primer and superscript II reverse transcriptase (GIBCO-BRL, Grand Island, NY). The forward primer (5′GTGACAAGGAAAGGTGCAATG3′) was designed from conserved regions, through a multiple alignment of bovine, ovine, caprine, and porcine kappa-casein cDNA sequences. Second-strand synthesis was performed using a dilution of the cDNA as template. The specific PCR product was purified and cloned into pMOSblue T-vector (Amersham, U.K.). Two individual positive clones were sequenced on both the strands by an automated sequencer (ABI 377, Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA) and characterized. Comparison with Related Sequences. The coding region of river buffalo kappa-casein cDNA is 573 bp long and reveals a homology of 96, 94, 94, and 68%, at the nucleotide level, with cow (Stewart et al., 1984), goat (Coll et al., 1993), sheep (Furet et al., 1990), and pig (Levine et al., 1992), respectively. At the amino acid level, it is 93, 89, 87, and 57% identical to bovine, caprine, ovine, and porcine cDNA sequences, respectively. The coding regions of caprine and ovine cDNA are longer by two amino acids and porcine cDNA is shorter by one amino acid than the buffalo kappa-casein cDNA. Our sequence is comparable to some earlier GenBank entries (Acc. Nos. U96662, D14368.1, D14369.1, and D14370.1) that are genomic in origin and partial in nature. The coding sequence of the cDNA reported here differs from Acc. No. U96662 at nucleotide positions 467 and 471 (T to C at both the positions), resulting in one amino acid substitution at the first position. This variation may be a polymorphism. Sequence Data. The 794-bp amplified fragment (Figure 1) contains the cDNA coding region in a single open reading frame encoding the complete expressed product of kappa-casein. The first 21 amino acids constitute the putative signal peptide and the mature peptide is 169 amino acids long.
A developmental study of attention.

Summary. This is a study of the development of attention in young children. A continuous response, 40-minute auditory vigilance task, was administered to 612 children between the ages of 7 to 13. Performance improved with age, with greatest improvement between the ages of 8 and 9. Girls were significantly better than boys at ages 7, 8 and 12. There were no correlations (within sub-samples) between vigilance performance and intelligence (Raven's Progressive Matrices and Crichton Vocabulary Scale) or between vigilance performance and personality (extraversion and neuroticism scores on the Junior Eysenck Personality Inventory). All age groups showed variation in performance (the ‘vigilance decrement’) within the task. Results are compared with previous findings and it is concluded that (i) attentional capacity is independent of intelligence and (ii) that critical changes in this capacity may occur between ages 8 and 9.
Neural basis for impaired time reproduction in Parkinson's disease: An fMRI study

Studies involving brain-lesioned subjects have used the paced finger tapping (PFT) task to investigate the neural systems that govern motor timing. Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), for example, demonstrate abnormal performance on the PFT, characterized by decreased accuracy and variability changes, suggesting that the basal ganglia may play a critical role in motor timing. Consistent with this hypothesis, an fMRI study of healthy participants demonstrated that the medial frontostriatal circuit (dorsal putamen, ventrolateral thalamus, SMA) correlated with explicit time-dependent components of the PFT task. In the current fMRI study, PD patients and healthy age-matched controls were imaged while performing the PFT. PD patients underwent 2 imaging sessions, 1 on and the other off dopamine supplementation. Relative to controls, PD patients were less accurate and showed greater variability on the PFT task relative to controls. No PFT performance differences were observed between the on and off medication states despite significantly greater motor symptoms on the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) in the off medication state. Functional imaging results demonstrated decreased activation within the sensorimotor cortex (SMC), cerebellum, and medial premotor system in the PD patients compared to controls. With dopamine replacement, an increase in the spatial extent of activation was observed within the SMC, SMA, and putamen in the PD patients. These results indicate that impaired timing reproduction in PD patients is associated with reduced brain activation within motor and medial premotor circuits. Despite a lack of improvement in PFT performance, PD patient's brain activation patterns were partially “normalized” with dopamine supplementation. These findings could not be attributed to greater head movement artifacts or basal ganglia atrophy within the PD group. (JINS, 2003, 9, 1088–1098.)
The study of medical image enhancement based on curvelet.

BACKGROUND Breast cancer is a tumor that begins in the breast tissue and is largely identified through X-ray imaging; however, human tissue, illumination, noise and other factors make the image's calcifications and masses unclear, which in turn affects the doctors' identification of lesions and normal tissue through X-ray imaging. Therefore, the rate of misdiagnoses can be reduced through the enhancement of X-ray images that make the images' calcifications and masses more prominent. OBJECTIVE Enhancing the breast image would highlight the calcifications and masses. METHODS One such way to do so is to use a curvelet that can detect curves and can, therefore, enhance the tumor characteristics. Essentially, existing methods perform a curvelet transform on each sub-image simultaneously; as the curvelet is based on the Radon transform, it involves complex computation and can easily result in difficulties. Based on this information, this article improved the algorithm that detects edges by curvelet and refines edges by wavelet. Simulation experiments using mammography X-ray images are implemented through Matlab. RESULTS The results suggest that, after implementation of the improved algorithm, the image's edges and textures are clear, the calcifications are independent, and there is no caking. CONCLUSIONS The curvelet method is imporved in efficacy with respect to the wavelet method.
Not Extent of Telecommuting, But Job Characteristics as Proximal Predictors of Work-Related Well-Being

Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the curvilinear relationship between extent of telecommuting and work-related well-being (ie, burnout, work engagement, and cognitive stress complaints), as well as to test whether job characteristics act as explanatory mechanisms underlying this relationship. Methods: A sample of 878 employees from an international telecommunication company with a long history of telecommuting participated in a survey on psychosocial risk factors and well-being at work. Mediation path analyses were conducted to test the hypotheses. Results: Social support from colleagues, participation in decision-making, task autonomy, and work-to-family conflict, but not extent of telecommuting, were directly related to work-related well-being. Extent of telecommuting was indirectly related to well-being via social support. Conclusion: Employers should invest in creating good work environments in general, among both telecommuters and nontelecommuters.
Filtered Monte Carlo

By a filtered Monte Carlo estimator we mean one whose constituent parts—summands or integral increments—are conditioned on an increasing family of σ-fields. Unbiased estimators of this type are suggested by compensator identities. Replacing a point-process integrator with its intensity gives rise to one class of examples; exploiting Levy's formula gives rise to another. We establish variance inequalities complementing compensator identities. Among estimators that are (Stieltjes) stochastic integrals, we show that filtering reduces variance if the integrand and the increments of the integrator have conditional positive correlation. We also provide more primitive hypotheses that ensure this condition, making use of stochastic monotonicity properties. Our most detailed conditions apply in a Markov setting where monotone, up-down, and convex generators play a central role. We give examples. As an application of our results, we compare certain estimators that do and do not exploit the property that Poisson arr.