Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Anthocyanins Supplementation on Serum IGFBP-4 Fragments and Glycemic Control in Patients with Fasting Hyperglycemia: A Randomized Controlled Trial Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity: Targets and Therapy

Background: Insulin-like growth factor binding protein-4 (IGFBP-4) fragments have been shown to be associated with cardiometabolic diseases. Anthocyanins as a subgroup of natural polyphenols could have benefits on treating cardiometabolic diseases. The aim of this study was to examine the effects of purified anthocyanins on serum IGFBP-4 fragments and glycemic control in patients with fasting hyperglycemia. Methods: A set of 121 participants with elevated fasting glucose (≥5.6 mmol/L), who were originally randomly assigned to anthocyanins (320 mg/day) or placebo groups, were included in this study. Serum IGFBP-4 fragments, fasting and postload glucose, insulin, and C-peptide after a three-hour oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) were measured at baseline and at the end of 12 weeks. Results: Compared with placebo, anthocyanins increased serum IGFBP-4 fragments (net change 8.33 ng/mL, 95% CI [1.2, 15.47], p =0.023) and decreased fasting glucose (−0.4 mmol/L [−0.71, -0.1], p =0.01), 2-hour C-peptide (−1.02 ng/mL [−1.99, −0.04], p =0.041) and the 3-hour area under the curve (AUC) of C-peptide (−2.19 [−4.11, −0.27], p =0.026). No other significant difference in parameters for glycemic control and insulin resistance was observed. Conclusion: Anthocyanins supplementation for 12 weeks improved serum IGFBP-4 fragments and decreased fasting glucose and postload C-peptide in patients with fasting hyperglycemia. Further studies are needed to confirm our findings and clarify the potential mechanism.
International Journal of Agriculture and Environmental Research

E-waste is the toxic legacy of our digital age which is contributing in the depletion of Mother Nature by polluting natural resources. Electronic and electrical waste consists of hazardous and heavy metals, which are extremely harmful to living organism. Improper disposal of these elements by informal sector leads to air, land and water pollution which causes severe impact on the living organisms and environment. The present study was undertaken to examine the different perspectives related to e-waste handling like knowledge of e-waste handlers about ewaste and e-waste threats as perceived by them. The major findings of the study were that majority of e-waste handlers had lack of knowledge about harms in e-waste collection process (42.85%), deficiency of knowledge in awareness about hazard of e-waste (45.71%), unacceptance of e-waste as a potent threat (40%), misinformation about Chemicals in e-waste harming the environment (45.71%), and lack of information Hazardous chemicals in e-waste (45.71%). Thus by this data it was concluded that there is a need to conduct periodic training among e-waste handlers right from waste collection to waste disposal including information about hazards evoked through unorganized disposal of e-waste upon mankind and environment.
The Rising Skill Premium and Deunionization in the United States ∗

During the past 50 years, the US economy has been characterized by a rapid decline of labor unions and a substantial rise in the wage inequality. This paper proposes that the rise in the skill premium in the non-union sector, for instance, due to technical change, can potentially explain these trends. Based on the premise that labor unions compress wages between skilled and unskilled workers, a larger skill premium encourages skilled workers to withdraw from the union. If this is accompanied by a fall in the productivity of unskilled workers, ﬁrms become more reluctant to hire the relatively expensive union workers, reinforcing the decline in the unionization rate. To evaluate our hypothesis, we develop a macroeconomic model of endogenous union membership where union members are selected from the middle of the skill distribution and have signiﬁcant wage gains that are decreasing in skill, consistent with the US evidence. The model predicts that the rise in skill prices in the non-union sector explains 30-60% of the decline in the unionization rate. It was argued that the declining union activity contributed to the rise in wage inequality by changing the labor force composition. We ﬁnd this effect to be much smaller due to selection into union jobs. J.E. L. Codes: J24, J31, J51, J63
Biosynthesis and secretion of insect lipoprotein: involvement of furin in cleavage of the apoB homolog, apolipophorin-II/I Biosynthesis and secretion of insect lipoprotein: involvement of furin in cleavage of the apoB homolog, apolipo-phorin-II/I.

The biosynthesis of neutral fat-transporting lipoproteins involves the lipidation of their nonexchangeable apolipoprotein. In contrast to its mammalian homolog apolipoprotein B, however, insect apolipophorin-II/I (apoLp-II/I) is cleaved posttranslationally at a consensus substrate sequence for furin, resulting in the appearance of two apolipoproteins in insect lipoprotein. To characterize the cleavage process, a truncated cDNA encoding the N-terminal 38% of Locusta migratoria apoLp-II/I, including the cleavage site, was expressed in insect Sf9 cells. This resulted in the secretion of correctly processed apoLp-II and truncated apoLp-I. The cleavage could be impaired by the furin inhibitor deca-noyl-Arg-Val-Lys-Arg-chloromethyl ketone (decRVKRcmk) as well as by mutagenesis of the consensus substrate sequence for furin, as indicated by the secretion of uncleaved apoLp-II/I-38. Treatment of L. migratoria fat body, the physiological site of lipoprotein biosynthesis, with decRVKRcmk similarly resulted in the secretion of uncleaved apoLp-II/I, which was integrated in of These results show that apoLp-II/I is posttranslationally cleaved by an insect furin and that biosynthesis and secretion of independent of this processing step. Structure modeling indicates that the cleavage of apoLp-II/ I represents a molecular adaptation in homologous apolipoprotein structures. We propose that cleavage enables speciﬁc features of insect lipoproteins, such as low density lipoprotein formation, endocytic recycling, and involvement in coagulation. Lipid Biotechnology The default settings were used for the BLASTp search. The most signiﬁcant matches were to sequences from apoLp-II/I, apoB, and vitellogenin, including silver lamprey lipovitellin. Sequence homologies were located within the ﬁrst 1,000 amino acid residues. The alignment program CLUSTAL W (19) was used to align the homologous N-terminal regions of silver lamprey lipovitellin, human apoB-100, and L. migratoria apoLp-II/I. This alignment was used to generate the structural model of the ﬁrst 1,009 amino acids (excluding the signal peptide) of locust apoLp-II/I using the program Modeller6 (20), based on the crystal structure of silver lamprey lipovitellin (PDB 1LSH) (21) and an all atom model for apoB (22). To eliminate steric problems and to opti-mize bond lengths and angles, the apoLp-II/I model was sub-jected to 250 steps of steepest descent energy minimization using the DISCOVER program package from INSIGHT2 (Accelerys, Inc.). A graphic representation of the model was generated by the Swiss-PdbViewer (23).
High-Density Lipoproteins Inhibit Vascular Endothelial Inflammation by Increasing 3 β -Hydroxysteroid- Δ 24 Reductase Expression and Inducing Heme Oxygenase-1

mRNA levels. Knockdown of vascular DHCR24 and HO-1 and systemic administration of tin-protoporphyrin-IX, an HO inhibitor, abolished these anti-inflammatory effects. In vitro: Preincubation of human coronary artery endothelial cells with (A-I)rHDL before activation with tumor necrosis factor- α increased DHCR24 and HO-1 mRNA levels and inhibited cytokine-induced vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 and intercellular adhesion molecule-1 expression. Transfection of the cells with DHCR24 and HO-1 small interfering RNA and tin-protoporphyrin-IX treatment abolished these effects. The (A-I)rHDL-mediated induction of HO-1 was reduced in human coronary artery endothelial cells transfected with DHCR24 small interfering RNA. Transfection of human coronary artery endothelial cells with HO-1 small interfering RNA and tin-protoporphyrin-IX treatment did not inhibit the (A-I)rHDL-mediated increase in DHCR24 expression. Inhibition of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/Akt reduced the (A-I)rHDL-mediated increase in HO-1, but not DHCR24 expression. The activation of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/Akt by (A-I)rHDL was decreased in human coronary artery endothelial cells that were transfected with DHCR24 small interfering RNA. Conclusions : Lipid-free apoA-I and (A-I)rHDL inhibit inflammation by increasing DHCR24 expression, which, in turn, activates phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/Akt and induces HO-1. ( Circ Res . 2013;112:278-288.) in HCAECs
Sur la singularité des noyaux de Bergman et de Szegö

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PREVALENCE AND ANTIMICROBIAL SUSCEPTIBILITY PATTERN OF UROPATHOGENS IN PATIENTS ATTENDING IN A TERTIARY CARE HOSPITAL

Background: Urinary tract infection (UTI) remains the most common infection worldwide that may occur in any age of an individual. It has been evaluated that symptomatic UTI occurs in around in 7 million patients visiting to emergency units and 100,000 hospitalized per annum worldwide. Urinary Tract Infections are more common in females, in reproductive age group (15-49) than in males. Mostly Enterobacteriacea members, particularly uropathogenic strains of Esch. coli and Enterobacter species are primary causative microorganism of UTIs. Material And Methods: Total 750 mid stream urine samples were collected from all groups of patients with clinically suspected to UTI. Patient urine samples were aseptically collected in sterile containers. In case of catheterized patients, it collected directly from catheter. Samples were inoculated on CLED agar, Blood agar and MacConkey agar plates by using standard loop. The organisms were identied by colony morphology as well as biochemical test and Antibiotic sensitivity test performed using standard microbiological procedure. Result: Total 750 urine samples were processed from outdoor and indoor patient out of which 298 (39.73%) were found to be culture positive and 452 (60.61%) are negative. Conclusion: The conclusion recommended the need for regular screening for the occurrence of symptomatic or asymptomatic bacteriuria for populations and constant monitoring of susceptibility to commonly used anti-microbial agents.
Issues in Comparing Stochastic Volatility Models Using the Deviance Information Criterion

The deviance information criterion (DIC) has been widely used for Bayesian model comparison. In particular, a popular metric for comparing stochastic volatility models is the DIC based on the conditional likelihood—obtained by conditioning on the latent variables. However, some recent studies have argued against the use of the conditional DIC on both theoretical and practical grounds. We show via a Monte Carlo study that the conditional DIC tends to favor overfitted models, whereas the DIC calculated using the observed-data likelihood—obtained by integrating out the latent variables—seems to perform well. The main challenge for obtaining the latter DIC for stochastic volatility models is that the observed-data likelihoods are not available in closed-form. To overcome this difficulty, we propose fast algorithms for estimating the observed-data likelihoods for a variety of stochastic volatility models using importance sampling. We demonstrate the methodology with an application involving daily returns on the Standard & Poors (S&P) 500 index.
Virus-Infected Sooty Mangabeys AIDS-Free Simian Immunodeficiency T Cells in + Severe Depletion of Mucosal CD4

HIV-infected humans and SIV-infected rhesus macaques experience a rapid and dramatic loss of mucosal CD4 (cid:1) T cells that is considered to be a key determinant of AIDS pathogenesis. In this study, we show that nonpathogenic SIV infection of sooty mangabeys (SMs), a natural host species for SIV, is also associated with an early, severe, and persistent depletion of memory CD4 (cid:1) T cells from the intestinal and respiratory mucosa. Importantly, the kinetics of the loss of mucosal CD4 (cid:1) T cells in SMs is similar to that of SIVmac239-infected rhesus macaques. Although the nonpathogenic SIV infection of SMs induces the same pattern of mucosal target cell depletion observed during pathogenic HIV/SIV infections, the depletion in SMs occurs in the context of limited local and systemic immune activation and can be reverted if virus replication is suppressed by antiretroviral treatment. These results indicate that a profound depletion of mucosal CD4 (cid:1) T cells is not sufﬁcient per se to induce loss of mucosal immunity and disease progression during a primate lentiviral infection. We propose that, in the disease-resistant SIV-infected SMs, evolutionary adaptation to both preserve immune function with fewer mucosal CD4 (cid:1)
FORCES ANALYSIS FOR MICROMANIPULATIONS IN DRY AND LIQUID MEDIA

During microscale object manipulation, contact (pull-oﬀ) forces and non-contact (capillary, van der Waals, and electrostatic) forces determine the behaviour of the micro-objects rather than the inertial forces. The aim of this article is to give an experimental analysis of the physical phenomena at a microscopic scale in dry and liquid media. This article introduces a review of the major diﬀerences between dry and submerged micromanipulations. The theoretical inﬂuences of the medium on van der Waals forces, electrostatic forces, pull-oﬀ forces and hydrodynamic forces are presented. Experimental force measurements based on an AFM system are carried out. These experiments exhibit a correlation better than 40% between the theoretical forces and the measured forces (except for pull-oﬀ in water). Finally, some comparative experimental micromanipulation results are described and show the advantages of the liquid medium
ROCK ART FROM WEST AND SOUTH WEST ARABIA: SOCIO-CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY’S INSIGHTS FOR THE REGION’S EASTERN TRANSITION ZONES

Socio-cultural anthropology has a fairly long record of contributing expertise to the analysis and interpretation of rock art, although that record was somewhat neglected in recent times. The present paper offers an updated usage of that legacy from a particular methodological angle, by putting it into practice through comparative means for South West and West Arabian evidence from the hilly and mountain parts of the region‟s transition zones to the east. That evidence was primarily established during an ethnographic documentation and field work project of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The visual results from this as well as from other projects presently are systematically classified and analyzed in Vienna, in the framework of the Institute for Social Anthropology‟s “Visual Archive for South West Arabian Ethnographic Materials” at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. This article builds on a first survey of about one dozen examples of rock art cases, but selects only a couple among them considered to be fairly representative of the overall collection. The empirical sample then is addressed by means of comparative insights from socio-cultural anthropology. The sample primarily represents visualizations of hunting scenes. The analytical and methodological tools best suited for discussing it are derived from anthropology‟s expertise about the contexts and relevance of human hunting activities under early scriptural conditions. As long as few other methods of dating can yet be applied to most of the materials in this particular sample, and parallel to possibly more reliable ways of dating in the future, precise conceptualizations about the contexts and features of hunting under early scriptural conditions will remain indispensable.
Refinement Types for Logical Frameworks

The logical framework LF and its metalogic Twelf can be used to encode and reason about a wide variety of logics, languages, and other deductive systems in a formal, machine-checkable way. Recent studies have shown that ML-like languages can profitably be extended with a notion of subtyping called refinement types. A refinement type discipline uses an extra layer of term classification above the usual type system to more accurately capture certain properties of terms. I propose that adding refinement types to LF is both useful and practical. To support the claim, I exhibit an extension of LF with refinement types called LFR, work out important details of its metatheory, delineate a practical algorithm for refinement type reconstruction, and present several case studies that highlight the utility of refinement types for formalized mathematics. In the end I find that refinement types and LF are a match made in heaven: refinements enable many rich new modes of expression, and the simplicity of LF ensures that they come at a modest cost.
Ultrastructural study on the mucosa of the rectal caeca of the common kestrel , Falco tinnunculus rupicolaeformis , and the common moorhen ,

: The present work aimed to gain more information about the ultrastructure of the rectal caeca of two avian species, the carnivorous common kestrel, Falco tinnunculus rupicolaeformis , and the omnivorous common moorhen, Gallinula chloropus . The mucosa of the rectal caeca of both studied species is divided into two layers; namely: the epithelial layer and the lamina propria. The epithelial layer is built up mainly of enterocytes. Such layer of Falco t. rupicolaeformis is characterized by the presence of the M-cells. Moreover, the lamina propria of Falco t. rupicolaeformis is formed of connective tissue that is filled with numerous large and small lymphocytes and few crypts of Lieberkühn. On the other hand, the lamina propria of G. chloropus is formed of connective tissue, which has numerous crypts of Lieberkühn that are lined by enterocytes. The enterocytes of both studied species are columnar cells the luminal surface. The length of the microvilli of Falco t. rupicolaeformis is of about 700 nm throughout the whole rectal length. However, in G. chloropus , the microvilli of the proximal and middle parts of the rectal caeca have a uniform length of about 1 µm, while those of the distal part are shorter and their length is of about 600 nm.
Induction of Heme Oxygenase-1 During Endotoxemia Is Downregulated by Transforming Growth Factor- (cid:98) 1

—Heme oxygenase (HO)-1 generates CO, a gas with vasodilatory properties, during heme metabolism. HO-1 is expressed highly in vascular tissue after endotoxin stimulation, and generation of CO through the HO-1 pathway contributes to the hemodynamic compromise of endotoxic shock. Shock related to endotoxemia is an immune-mediated process that involves the generation of proinflammatory cytokines such as interleukin (IL)-1 (cid:98) . Because transforming growth factor (TGF)- (cid:98) 1 is a modulator of immune-mediated inflammatory responses and it blocks the hypotension of endotoxic shock, we determined whether TGF- (cid:98) 1 could be used to reduce expression of HO-1 in vascular tissue and smooth muscle cells. In a rat model of endotoxic shock, lipopolysaccharide-induced HO-1 mRNA and protein expression was reduced by TGF- (cid:98) 1 in highly vascularized tissue, such as heart and lung, by Northern and Western analysis. Furthermore, TGF- (cid:98) 1 downregulated HO-1 mRNA after its induction by IL-1 (cid:98) in vascular smooth muscle cells in culture. TGF- (cid:98) 1 also decreased HO-1 but not HO-2 protein expression in these cells. TGF- (cid:98) 1 decreased HO enzyme activity induced in IL-1 (cid:98) –treated vascular smooth muscle cells to a level not different from that in vehicle-treated cells. These studies suggest that this downregulation of HO-1 mRNA and protein expression and decrease in IL-1 (cid:98) –induced HO enzyme activity may contribute to the beneficial effect of TGF- (cid:98) 1 on endotoxic shock. ( Circ Res . 1998;83:396-403.)
in killer

transgenic mice provide evidence for a histocompatibility complex-dependent education process natural cell development. 94720 Summary The Ly49 natural killer (NK) cell receptors are class I MHC–specific inhibitory receptors that are distributed to overlapping NK cell subsets. The formation of the Ly49 receptor repertoire was examined with transgenic mice that express Ly49A in all NK cells. In MHC class I–deficient mice, the Ly49A transgene did not prevent expression of endogenous Ly49 genes. How-ever, in H-2 d mice that express a Ly49A ligand, the transgene caused clear alterations in the endogenous Ly49 repertoire. The frequency of NK cells expressing another H-2 d –specific receptor, Ly49G2 (cid:2) , was substantially reduced. Reduced numbers of cells expressing endogenous Ly49A was suggested by reduced endogenous Ly49A mRNA levels. These results support the existence of an MHC-dependent education process that limits the number of NK cells that coexpress multiple self-specific Ly49 receptors. Ligand-dependent downregulation of Ly49 cell surface levels was also examined. Cell-surface downregulation occurred even when the transgene was expressed at low levels. The results demonstrate that downregulation of Ly49A cell surface levels is a posttranscriptional event, and argue against a model in which Ly49 receptors are calibrated to specific cell surface levels depending on the available class I
Correlates of Physical Activity Behavior in Adults: A Data Mining Approach

Purpose A data mining approach was applied to establish a multilevel hierarchy explaining physical activity (PA) behavior, and to methodologically identify the correlates of PA behavior. The 46-year follow-up data from the population-based Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966 were used to create a hierarchy using Chi-square Automatic Interaction Detection (CHAID) decision tree technique for predicting PA behavior. The study’s subjects were classified as physically active or physically inactive based on their activity profiles derived from objective measurement of PA. The variables were a wide list of potentially modifiable factors including self-reported, clinical, and environmental measures. We then analyzed the association of the factors emerging from the model with three PA metrics including sedentary (SED), light PA (LPA), and moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) minutes per day.