Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Soluble Urokinase Receptor Is Released Selectively by Glioblastoma Cells That Express Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor Variant III and Promotes Tumor Cell Migration and Invasion*♦

Background: In glioblastoma, the EGF receptor mutation, EGFRvIII, is a biomarker of tumor aggressiveness even when only a small subpopulation of the cells express EGFRvIII. Results: EGFRvIII-expressing cells release soluble uPAR (suPAR), which activates cell signaling and promotes migration and invasion of EGFRvIII-negative cells. Conclusion: suPAR functions as a paracrine cancer-promoting factor in glioblastoma. Significance: suPAR is biologically active and may contribute to cancer aggressiveness. Genomic heterogeneity is characteristic of glioblastoma (GBM). In many GBMs, the EGF receptor gene (EGFR) is amplified and may be truncated to generate a constitutively active form of the receptor called EGFRvIII. EGFR gene amplification and EGFRvIII are associated with GBM progression, even when only a small fraction of the tumor cells express EGFRvIII. In this study, we show that EGFRvIII-positive GBM cells express significantly increased levels of cellular urokinase receptor (uPAR) and release increased amounts of soluble uPAR (suPAR). When mice were xenografted with human EGFRvIII-expressing GBM cells, tumor-derived suPAR was detected in the plasma, and the level was significantly increased compared with that detected in plasma samples from control mice xenografted with EGFRvIII-negative GBM cells. suPAR also was increased in plasma from patients with EGFRvIII-positive GBMs. Purified suPAR was biologically active when added to cultures of EGFRvIII-negative GBM cells, activating cell signaling and promoting cell migration and invasion. suPAR did not significantly stimulate cell signaling or migration of EGFRvIII-positive cells, probably because cell signaling was already substantially activated in these cells. The activities of suPAR were replicated by conditioned medium (CM) from EGFRvIII-positive GBM cells. When the CM was preincubated with uPAR-neutralizing antibody or when uPAR gene expression was silenced in cells used to prepare CM, the activity of the CM was significantly attenuated. These results suggest that suPAR may function as an important paracrine signaling factor in EGFRvIII-positive GBMs, inducing an aggressive phenotype in tumor cells that are EGFRvIII-negative.
Tobacco tax as a health protecting policy: a brief review of the New Zealand evidence.

AIM To review the evidence relating to tobacco taxation as a health and equity protecting policy for New Zealand. METHODS Searches of Medline, EconLit, ECONbase, Index NZ, and library databases for literature on tobacco taxation. RESULTS The New Zealand evidence indicates that increases in tobacco prices are associated with decreases in tobacco consumption in the general population over the long term. This finding comes from multiple studies relating to: tobacco supplies released from bond, supermarket tobacco sales, household tobacco expenditure data, trends in smoking prevalence data, and from data on calls to the Quitline service. For the 1988-1998 period, the overall price elasticity of demand for all smoking households was estimated to be such that a 10% price increase would lower demand by 5% to 8%. Two studies are suggestive that increased tobacco affordability is also a risk factor for higher youth smoking rates. There is evidence from two studies that tobacco price increases reduce tobacco consumption in some low-income groups and one other study indicates that tobacco taxation is likely to be providing overall health benefit to low-income New Zealanders. These findings are broadly consistent with the very large body of scientific evidence from other developed countries. CONCLUSIONS There is good evidence that tobacco taxation is associated with reduced tobacco consumption in the New Zealand setting, and some limited evidence for equity benefits from taxation increases. Substantial scope exists for improving tobacco taxation policy in New Zealand to better protect public health and to improve equity.
Expression and characterization of the chaperonin molecular machine from the hyperthermophilic archaeon Pyrococcus furiosus

The chaperonin molecular machine from hyperthermophilic archaeon Pyrococcus furiosus was studied in this paper. The Pyrococcus furiosus chaperonin gene (PfCPN) was amplified by PCR from the Pyrococcus furiosus genomic DNA, and expressed in Escherichia coli BL21‐Codonplus(DE)3‐RIL. The recombinant PfCPN was purified to homogeneity by using ion‐exchange and size‐exclusion chromatography. It was found that the ATPase activity of the PfCPN was highest at 88 °C, and there existed a nested cooperativity of the ATPase activity of the PfCPN. This result suggested that nested allosteric behavior may be common to chaperonin molecular machines from archaea. The half‐life (t1/2) of the ATPase activity of the PfCPN at 100 °C was about 60 min. The PfCPN displayed chaperone activity in preventing lysozyme from thermal inactivation. This chaperone activity was in an ATP‐dependent manner. (© 2007 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
Stress Responses in Low‐Status Jobs and Their Relationship to Health Risks: Musculoskeletal Disorders

Abstract: Conditions typical of many low‐status jobs are known to induce elevated stress. In keeping with this, blue‐collar workers show elevated psychophysiological stress levels both during and after work compared with workers in more stimulating and flexible jobs. Health‐related behaviors, such as cigarette smoking and drug abuse, that are known to contribute to the social gradient in health, can be seen as ways of coping with a stressful work situation in order to get short‐term relief. Negative emotional states associated with low‐status jobs, combined with a lack of economic resources, are also likely to reduce the individual's motivation to seek proper medical treatment and, thus, increase the risk that transient symptoms develop into chronic illness. With regard to musculoskeletal disorders, it is well documented that physically monotonous or repetitive work is associated with an increase in neck, shoulder, and low back pain problems. However, recent studies also report an association between psychosocial factors and muscle pain syndromes. Possible mechanisms explaining these findings involve the assumption that psychological stress may induce sustained activation of small, low‐threshold motor units that may lead to degenerative processes, damage, and pain. Analysis of short periods of very low muscular electrical activity (EMG gaps) shows that female workers with a high frequency of EMG gaps seem to have less risk of developing myalgia problems than do workers with fewer gaps. Stress induced by psychosocial conditions at work, which is usually more lasting than that resulting from physical demands, may prevent the individual from shutting off their physiological activation and reduces the time for rest and recovery. In the modern work environment, with strong emphasis on a high work pace, competitiveness, and efficiency, it is possible that lack of relaxation is an even more important health problem than is the absolute level of contraction or the frequency of muscular activation.
Correlation of hepatitis B virus load with loss of e antigen and emerging drug‐resistant variants during lamivudine therapy

It remains unclear whether sequential assessment of hepatitis B virus (HBV) load during lamivudine therapy can predict the loss of hepatitis B e antigen or emergence of drug‐resistant variants. Therefore, a longitudinal study was carried out in 28 consecutive patients with chronic hepatitis B who started lamivudine therapy for a median of 12 months (range, 6–31). HBV DNA copy numbers were determined at 3‐month intervals. From month 6 onward, HBV viral load below the detection limit of the PCR was predictive of the loss of envelope antigen (P = 0.043). Continuously detectable HBV DNA during the first 12 months of treatment indicated emergence of drug‐resistant variants (P = 0.034). These data suggest that the goal of lamivudine therapy should be complete suppression of serum HBV DNA. J. Med. Virol. 65:659–663, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
La Charte marocaine de l’Environnement et du Développement durable sera-t-elle une loi fondamentale ?

Voulu par le Roi du Maroc et elabore par une commission gouvernementale, le projet de la Charte Nationale de l’Environnement et du Developpement Durable (CNEDD) ambitionne de faire evoluer la politique environnementale du pays. Le libelle sommaire de ce texte peut conduire a s’interroger sur sa reelle portee en droit de l’environnement. Le discours royal l’ayant initie (juillet 2009) semble suggerer l’idee de sa constitutionnalisation. Or, le dernier discours du trone (juillet 2010), donne l’impression d’abandonner cette idee en annoncant la formule de loi-cadre sans pour autant paraitre l’attribuer clairement a la CNEDD. La CNEDD sera-t-elle une loi fondamentale, une loi-cadre ou un simple texte declaratoire a valeur incitative ? Cet article se propose de relever sa veritable « valeur ajoutee » en verifiant notamment la plausibilite de la piste constitutionnelle.
A model study of the seasonal circulation in the Gulf of Maine

The Princeton Ocean Model is used to study the circulation in the Gulf of Maine and its seasonal transition in response to wind, surface heat flux, river discharge, and the M2 tide. The model has an orthogonal-curvature linear grid in the horizontal with variable spacing from 3 km nearshore to 7 km offshore and 19 levels in the vertical. It is initialized and forced at the open boundary with model results from the East Coast Forecast System. The first experiment is forced by monthly climatological wind and heat flux from the Comprehensive Ocean Atmosphere Data Set; discharges from the Saint John, Penobscot, Kennebec, and Merrimack Rivers are added in the second experiment; the semidiurnal lunar tide (M2) is included as part of the open boundary forcing in the third experiment. It is found that the surface heat flux plays an important role in regulating the annual cycle of the circulation in the Gulf of Maine. The spinup of the cyclonic circulation between April and June is likely caused by the differential heating between the interior gulf and the exterior shelf/slope region. From June to December, the cyclonic circulation continues to strengthen, but gradually shrinks in size. When winter cooling erodes the stratification, the cyclonic circulation penetrates deeper into the water column. The circulation quickly spins down from December to February as most of the energy is consumed by bottom friction. While inclusion of river discharge changes details of the circulation pattern, the annual evolution of the circulation is largely unaffected. On the other hand, inclusion of the tide results in not only the anticyclonic circulation on Georges Bank but also modifications to the seasonal circulation.
Strotz Meets Allais : Diminishing Impatience and the Certainty Effect

Consider a decision maker who prefers an immediate-smaller reward to a later-larger reward, but prefers the latter to the former when both alternatives are equally delayed. This decision maker is said to exhibit diminishing impatience (or present bias). It is a robust characteristic of many people’s preferences, based both on introspection (Robert H. Strotz 1955) and numerous experimental studies (e.g., Richard Thaler 1981). A decision maker who makes future plans but does not take into account that, as time passes, the distant future becomes immediate, becomes more impatient, and will revise her choices as time progresses. Following this line of reasoning, diminishing impatience has become the leading experimental evidence brought to support time-inconsistent preferences. Diminishing impatience has been instrumental in the adoption of hyperbolic discounting, and particularly quasi-hyperbolic discounting (David Laibson 1997), which captures this regularity most succinctly. These formulations model diminishing impatience by assuming that the pure time preference, as measured by the discount rate, is highest at the present. This paper presents an alternative perspective on diminishing impatience. It suggests that the crucial distinction between the present and the future is that only the present can be certain, while any future plan is uncertain. To model this asymmetry between the present and the future, the current study models the future as a random process that has a positive probability of stopping at any given period. This modeling strategy fits, among others, one uncertainty that can never be assumed away: uncertain lifetime. In this case, the termination probability may be interpreted as the hazard of mortality. Alternatively, it allows one to capture the risk that a promise of a future reward may be breached. In both cases, any path of planned consumption becomes random. If a decision maker evaluates this stochastic path using a utility function that is not linear in the continuation probability (that is, of the non-expected utility form), she will exhibit diminishing impatience. The intuition behind this result is that under non-expected utility, preferences are disproportionately sensitive to certainty (Maurice Allais 1953; Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky 1979), which is a distinctive feature of the present. Therefore, the agent will exhibit present bias. It is well known that in the realm of expected utility models, stopping probability (mortality risk) has a similar effect on time discounting as the pure time preference (Menahem E.
Relative humidity at moderate ambient temperatures: Its effect on male broiler chickens and turkeys

1. The effect of relative humidity (RH, 40% to 75%) at moderate ambient temperatures (T a , 28° and 30°C) on the performance and thermoregulation of male broiler chickens and turkeys was studied at the age of 4 to 8 weeks. 2. Weight gain and food intake of male broiler chickens were significantly higher at 60% to 65% RH but food conversion efficiency was not affected by RH. In male turkeys, no effect of RH on performance was recorded. 3. Both chickens and turkeys controlled body temperature at normothermic levels during exposure to the experimental environmental conditions. 4. The rate of panting estimated from blood pH and p CO 2 was lower in chickens exposed to 28°C than to 30°C. In turkeys, the rate was lower than that recorded in chickens at both T a s. 5. Plasma T 3 was positively and significantly correlated with food intake. 6. It may be concluded that RH plays a role in the performance of chickens exposed to 30° and 28°C. whereas male turkeys must respond to RH at T a >30°C.
Electrophoretic karyotypes of clinical isolates of Coccidioides immitis

Chromosomes of the fungal respiratory pathogen, Coccidioides immitis, were separated by contour-clamped homogeneous electric field gel electrophoresis. Twelve isolates were examined, the majority of which showed four chromosomes with a range of molecular size from 11.5 to 3.2 Mb. Three isolates (C634, C735, and L) revealed three chromosomal bands under the conditions employed for electrophoretic separation. However, in two of these isolates (C634 and C735), four chromosomes were visible on membrane transfers of pulsed-field gels after Southern hybridization between the chromosomal DNA and selected DNA probes. The probes included a conserved ribosomal gene and three previously described cDNAs isolated from C. immitis expression libraries. The L isolate was determined to have the same genome size as a typical four-chromosome isolate on the basis of microspectrophotometric comparison of fluorescence intensity of the ethidium bromide-stained nuclear DNA. The genome size of C. immitis determined by microspectrophotometry was approximately 28.2 +/- 2.6 Mb. The calculated genome size based on addition of the average molecular weights of chromosomal bands separated by contour-clamped homogeneous electric field gel electrophoresis was approximately equal to the estimate derived from the spectrophotometric analyses. This is the first report of the electrophoretic karyotype of C. immitis.
Prevalence and risk factors associated with pulmonary hypertension in HIV-infected patients on regular follow-up

Background:Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is uncommon among HIV-positive patients. However, it is a potentially life-threatening condition. Transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) is a noninvasive tool validated for PAH screening. The aim of our study was to establish the prevalence and factors associated with PAH in HIV-infected patients. Methods:Consecutive HIV-infected individuals attended at one HIV reference clinic in Madrid, Spain, during year 2011 were examined. Demographics and clinical data were recorded and a Doppler echocardiography was performed in all individuals. PAH was considered when right ventricular pressure was more than 35 mmHg (mild if <40 mmHg, moderate if 40–65 mmHg, and severe if >65 mmHg). Results:Three hundred and ninety-two individuals were examined (83.4% men, median age 47 years, 53% were men who have sex with men and 53% former intravenous drug addicts). Overall, 84% were on HAART, 76% had undetectable HIV viral load and median CD4 cell counts were 577 cells/&mgr;l. Cardiovascular risk factors were smoking 50%, arterial hypertension 16% and diabetes mellitus 9%. A total of 28.5 and 4.8% had chronic hepatitis C (CHC) and 4.8% chronic hepatitis B, respectively. PAH was diagnosed in 9.9% of patients (6.4% mild, 2.8% moderate and 0.8% severe). Multivariate logistic regression analysis [odds ratio (OR), 95% confidence interval (CI)] showed that detectable plasma HIV-RNA [OR, 3.3; 95% CI, 1.04–10], CHC [OR, 3.1; 95% CI 1.2–8.2] and female sex [OR, 2.9; 95% CI, 1.04–8.3] were independently associated with PAH. Conclusion:The prevalence of PAH HIV-infected patients on regular follow-up approaches 10%, being moderate–severe in nearly 4% of cases. Patients with CHC and/or uncontrolled HIV replication exhibit a higher risk of PAH.
Quality of care in the US territories.

BACKGROUND Health care quality in the US territories is poorly characterized. We used process measures to compare the performance of hospitals in the US territories and in the US states. METHODS Our sample included nonfederal hospitals located in the United States and its territories discharging Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) patients with a principal discharge diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction (AMI), heart failure (HF), or pneumonia (PNE) (July 2005-June 2008). We compared risk-standardized 30-day mortality and readmission rates between territorial and stateside hospitals, adjusting for performance on core process measures and hospital characteristics. RESULTS In 57 territorial hospitals and 4799 stateside hospitals, hospital mean 30-day risk-standardized mortality rates were significantly higher in the US territories (P<.001) for AMI (18.8% vs 16.0%), HF (12.3% vs 10.8%), and PNE (14.9% vs 11.4%). Hospital mean 30-day risk-standardized readmission rates (RSRRs) were also significantly higher in the US territories for AMI (20.6% vs 19.8%; P=.04), and PNE (19.4% vs 18.4%; P=.01) but was not significant for HF (25.5% vs 24.5%; P=.07). The higher risk-standardized mortality rates in the US territories remained statistically significant after adjusting for hospital characteristics and core process measure performance. Hospitals in the US territories had lower performance on all core process measures (P<.05). CONCLUSIONS Compared with hospitals in the US states, hospitals in the US territories have significantly higher 30-day mortality rates and lower performance on every core process measure for patients discharged after AMI, HF, and PNE. Eliminating the substantial quality gap in the US territories should be a national priority.
Giant True Brachial Artery Aneurysm

True brachial artery aneurysms (BAAs) are uncommon peripheral vessel aneurysms that typically occur in the setting of injury. While its relationship with trauma and infectious etiologies are well defined, the association between arteriovenous fistulas (AVFs) and BAA is less well understood. We present a case of a giant true BAA that presented several years post-AVF ligation. A review of BAA, its association with AVF, and its management follows.
From Protocols to Publications: A Study in Selective Reporting of Outcomes in Randomized Trials in Oncology.

PURPOSE The decision by journals to append protocols to published reports of randomized trials was a landmark event in clinical trial reporting. However, limited information is available on how this initiative effected transparency and selective reporting of clinical trial data. METHODS We analyzed 74 oncology-based randomized trials published in Journal of Clinical Oncology, the New England Journal of Medicine, and The Lancet in 2012. To ascertain integrity of reporting, we compared published reports with their respective appended protocols with regard to primary end points, nonprimary end points, unplanned end points, and unplanned analyses. RESULTS A total of 86 primary end points were reported in 74 randomized trials; nine trials had greater than one primary end point. Nine trials (12.2%) had some discrepancy between their planned and published primary end points. A total of 579 nonprimary end points (median, seven per trial) were planned, of which 373 (64.4%; median, five per trial) were reported. A significant positive correlation was found between the number of planned and nonreported nonprimary end points (Spearman r = 0.66; P < .001). Twenty-eight studies (37.8%) reported a total of 65 unplanned end points; 52 (80.0%) of which were not identified as unplanned. Thirty-one (41.9%) and 19 (25.7%) of 74 trials reported a total of 52 unplanned analyses involving primary end points and 33 unplanned analyses involving nonprimary end points, respectively. Studies reported positive unplanned end points and unplanned analyses more frequently than negative outcomes in abstracts (unplanned end points odds ratio, 6.8; P = .002; unplanned analyses odd ratio, 8.4; P = .007). CONCLUSION Despite public and reviewer access to protocols, selective outcome reporting persists and is a major concern in the reporting of randomized clinical trials. To foster credible evidence-based medicine, additional initiatives are needed to minimize selective reporting.