Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antiproliferative and Proapoptotic Effects of Erucin, A Diet-Derived H2S Donor, on Human Melanoma Cells

Melanoma is the most dangerous form of skin cancer and is characterized by chemotherapy resistance and recurrence despite the new promising therapeutic approaches. In the last years, erucin (ERU), the major isothiocyanate present in Eruca sativa, commonly known as rocket salads, has demonstrated great efficacy as an anticancer agent in different in vitro and in vivo models. More recently, the chemopreventive effects of ERU have been associated with its property of being a H2S donor in human pancreatic adenocarcinoma. Here, we investigated the effects of ERU in modulating proliferation and inducing human melanoma cell death by using multiple in vitro approaches. ERU significantly reduced the proliferation of different human melanoma cell lines. A flow cytometry analysis with annexin V/PI demonstrated that ERU was able to induce apoptosis and cell cycle arrest in A375 melanoma cells. The proapoptotic effect of ERU was associated with the modulation of the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT)-related cadherins and transcription factors. Moreover, ERU thwarted the migration, invasiveness and clonogenic abilities of A375 melanoma cells. These effects were associated with melanogenesis impairment and mitochondrial fitness modulation. Therefore, we demonstrated that ERU plays an important role in inhibiting the progression of melanoma and could represent a novel add-on therapy for the treatment of human melanoma.
Phylogeography of the Atlantic Blue Crab Callinectes sapidus (Brachyura: Portunidae) in the Americas versus the Mediterranean Sea: Determining Origins and Genetic Connectivity of a Large-Scale Invasion

Simple Summary Due to its large size and importance in commercial and recreational fishery, the blue crab, Callinectes sapidus, has always been a well-known crab species all along the temperate and tropical American east coast. Over the past century, there have been increasing reports of this species from Africa, Asia, and Europe. However, the corresponding introduction pathways remain a reason for speculation. Its long larval development in marine plankton and tolerance towards varying salinities are prerequisites for a successful dispersal by marine currents or in ballast waters. On the other hand, being a highly valued seafood, it is conceivable that C. sapidus may have been intentionally released to establish breeding populations elsewhere. The species started expanding conspicuously in the east Mediterranean after the 1930s (Nile Delta, Thessaloniki Bay). On the other hand, western Mediterranean records are much more recent and regionally confined. The reconstruction of their origin is the main goal of the current study. For that purpose, the genetic composition of populations from the American native range and from the entire Mediterranean needed to be included and used for the overall comparison. It appears that only a few founding individuals are responsible for the invasion into Spanish and Italian waters, arguing in favor of a dispersal theory. Abstract The American blue crab Callinectes sapidus is a particularly successful invader in estuarine ecosystems worldwide. Despite increasing awareness of its potential harm, the invasion history and underlying genetic diversity of this species within the Mediterranean Sea remain unknown. This study constitutes the first large-scale approach to study phylogeographic patterns of C. sapidus in Europe, facilitated by the first comparison of all currently available COI sequence data. For this investigation, 71 individuals of C. sapidus were newly analyzed and the entire COI gene was sequenced and used for a comparative phylogeographic analyses. For the first time, two separately used adjacent regions of this gene were combined in a single dataset. This allowed emphasizing the prevalence of three geographically defined lineages within the native range: (1) eastern North America, including the Gulf of Mexico, (2) the Caribbean, and (3) Brazil. New data from the Mediterranean reveal that non-native populations of C. sapidus are characterized by a conspicuously low genetic diversity (except for Turkey, where stocking took place), and that there is surprisingly low connectivity among established populations. The occurrence of strong genetic bottlenecks suggests few founder individuals. This confirms that, even under a scenario of restricted large-scale gene flow, a very limited number of invasive individuals is sufficient for a massive impact.
Drought and Competition Mediate Mycorrhizal Colonization, Growth Rate, and Nutrient Uptake in Three Artemisia Species

The genus Artemisia includes several keystone shrub species that dominate the North American sagebrush steppe. Their growth, survival, and establishment are negatively affected by exotic invasive grasses such as Taeniatherum caput-medusae. While the outcomes of symbiotic relationships between Artemisia spp. and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are ambiguous, the benefits of ameliorated nutrient and drought stress may be cryptic and better revealed under competition. We evaluated the effects of a commercial AMF inoculum on ameliorating biotic (competition with T. caput-medusae) and abiotic (drought) stress of Artemisia tridentata ssp. wyomingensis, Artemisia arbuscula, and Artemisia nova when grown in sterile and microbially active field soil. Stress amelioration was measured as an increase in biomass production and nutrient acquisition. Mycorrhizal colonization of roots was lower in Artemisia plants grown in competition, while T. caput-medusae colonization was higher in plants with greater moisture. Both types of stress negatively affected plant biomass. Commercial AMF inoculation did not increase biomass. Colonization from field soil increased average phosphorous concentration under drought for A. tridentata ssp. wyomingensis by 36% and A. nova by 125%. While commercial inoculum and live soil led to AMF colonization of T. caput-medusae, only the commercial inoculum increased average phosphorus uptake by 71%.
The Cat–Owner Relationship: Validation of the Italian C/DORS for Cat Owners and Correlation with the LAPS

Simple Summary Since most people globally own a pet, it is important to understand and assess the features of the owner–pet relationship. The Cat-/Dog-Owner Relationship Scale (C/DORS) is a questionnaire aimed at investigating specific aspect of pet-owner relationships. This tool has never been tested for validity or reliability on cat owners in Italy. We achieved this aim by translating and back translating the C/DORS from the original English into Italian and modifying the original response options from 1–5 to 1–7 to increase variability in responses. We determined the most appropriate factor model, which was the same one reported for the English version (i.e., Perceived Emotional Closeness = PEC, Pet–Owner Interactions = POI, Perceived Costs = PC). We confirmed its construct validity by correlating the C/DORS subscales with the Lexington Attachment to Pets (LAPS) subscales. We found a higher score for POI and PEC for those cats living exclusively indoors compared with indoor/outdoor cats. People that also owned a dog scored lower in POI but higher in PC. Similarly, behaviour problems, not being neutered, and lack of previous experience with cat ownership were associated with lower scores on PC. Abstract Globally, most people now own a pet. Scales have been developed to understand the impact of pet ownership on people’s lives and to measure specific aspects of the owner–pet relationship. The Cat-/Dog-Owner Relationship Scale (C/DORS) is a tool developed to investigate this relationship in both dog and cat owners. The aim of the study was to refine and validate the C/DORS for cat owners in Italian. Exploratory Factor Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) were used to determine the most appropriate factor model. Construct validity was confirmed by correlating the C/DORS subscales with the Lexington Attachment to Pets (LAPS) subscales. Results confirmed the original structure of the English version (i.e., three factors: Pet Owner Interaction = POI, Perceived Emotional Closeness = PEC, Perceived Costs = PC) and CFA confirmed the structure of LAPS and C/DORS scales. Cronbach’s alpha demonstrated the Italian version of the two scales to have good internal reliability for all domains. Owners of cats living exclusively indoors reported higher scores on POI and PEC compared to indoor/outdoor cats. Owning both cats and dogs was correlated with lower scores on POI, and fewer perceived costs (i.e., PC) of cat ownership. Finally, behaviour problems, not being neutered, and lack of previous experience with cat ownership were associated with lower scores on PC.
Physical characteristics of arctic stratus clouds

Abstract Observations of the physical properties of Arctic status clouds (ASC) over the Beaufort Sea area were made by the NCAR Electra aircraft during June 1980. The cloud morphology and microstructure observed during these experiments are described here. Arctic stratus clouds were formed under various meteorological conditions, but not when the axis of the Beaufort Sea ridge was zonal and the airflow into the region was continental. The mean drop diameter in clouds observed under all conditions remained near 10 μm, while the mean liquid water content (LWC) was characteristic of the air mass forming the clouds and essentially determined by the mean drop concentration. Clouds showed considerable horizontal homogeneity but significant vertical changes occurred within them. The vertical profiles of LWC show that the values generally increased with height, as a result of an increase in droplet size rather than concentration. The drop size distribution near the base was monomodal, characteristic of condensati.
Effects of Ascorbic Acid on Physiological Characteristics during Somatic Embryogenesis of Fraxinus mandshurica

Fraxinus mandshurica is one of the precious tree species in northeast China and has important economic and ecological value. Ascorbic acid (ASA) is a strong antioxidant that can significantly improve plant photosynthetic efficiency and stress resistance and participate widely in plant growth and development. In this study, we investigated the development process of mature zygotic embryos of F. mandshurica under different concentrations of ASA and found that 100 mg·L−1 exogenous ASA was the optimal concentration and that the induction rate of somatic embryos (SEs) was the highest at 72.89%, which was 7.13 times higher than that of the control group. The polyphenol content, peroxidase (POD) activity, nitric oxide (NO) content, nitrate reductase (NR) activity, total ascorbic acid (T-ASA) content, ASA content, ASA/Dehydroascorbic acid (DHA) ratio, GSH/GSSG ratio, and ascorbate peroxidase (APX) activity were significantly increased under the application of exogenous ASA in explants, whereas the polyphenol oxidase (PPO) activity, phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL) activity, superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity, and catalase (CAT) activity, malondialdehyde (MDA) content and nitric oxide synthase (NOS) activity were decreased. At the same time, the content of T-ASA and ASA, T-GSH and GSSG, and PAL and SOD had the same change pattern in the control group and the treatment group. These results suggested that high or low concentrations of ASA could not promote the somatic embryogenesis of F. mandshurica and that exogenous ASA had significant effects on the physiology of F. mandshurica explants. ASA was also highly related to somatic embryogenesis and the explant browning of F. mandshurica. Our results could provide a reference for further study on the browning mechanism of F. mandshurica explants and lay the foundation for optimizing the condition of somatic embryogenesis in F. mandshurica.
Shell crossings and the Tolman model

We consider the problem of shell crossings and regular maxima in the Tolman model. The necessary and sufficient conditions which guarantee no shell crossings will arise in Tolman models are derived, and we show explicitly that a Tolman model (in general, with a surface layer) may contain both elliptic and hyperbolic regions without developing any shell crossings and without the hyperbolic regions recollapsing. This finding is contrary to the recent hypothesis of Zel'dovich and Grishchuk. We also show that the properties that distinguish shell crossings from more serious singularities in spherical symmetry are independent of the equation of state.
Therapeutic Targeting of TLR4 for Inflammation, Infection, and Cancer: A Perspective for Disaccharide Lipid A Mimetics

The Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) signaling pathway plays a central role in the prompt defense against infectious challenge and provides immediate response to Gram-negative bacterial infection. The TLR4/MD-2 complex can sense and respond to various pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) with bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) being the most potent and the most frequently occurring activator of the TLR4-mediated inflammation. TLR4 is believed to be both a friend and foe since improperly regulated TLR4 signaling can result in the overactivation of immune responses leading to sepsis, acute lung injury, or pathologic chronic inflammation involved in cancer and autoimmune disease. TLR4 is also considered a legitimate target for vaccine adjuvant development since its activation can boost the adaptive immune responses. The dual action of the TLR4 complex justifies the efforts in the development of both TLR4 antagonists as antisepsis drug candidates or remedies for chronic inflammatory diseases and TLR4 agonists as vaccine adjuvants or immunotherapeutics. In this review, we provide a brief overview of the biochemical evidences for possible pharmacologic applications of TLR4 ligands as therapeutics and report our systematic studies on the design, synthesis, and immunobiological evaluation of carbohydrate-based TLR4 antagonists with nanomolar affinity for MD-2 as well as disaccharide-based TLR4 agonists with picomolar affinity for the TLR4/MD-2 complex.
A Single-to-Three-Phase 12-Switch AC–DC–AC Converter

This article proposes a new single-to-three-phase converter composed by two three-leg converters. The proposed converter is an alternative to cope with the single-phase-to-three-phase asymmetry, since it guarantees a reduction in the input current by the rectifier circuit. The reduced component count is another advantage of proposed converter compared with the other solutions presented in the literature. Therefore, the proposed configuration is a good alternative to solve the problem found in remote (or rural) applications, where only a single-phase grid is available and there is a demand to supply three-phase loads. The overall control strategy for providing dc-link voltage control, grid current control, and pulsewidth modulation generation are presented. Experimental results are presented as well, in different scenarios.
Effects of Data Filtering On Inversion of Gravity Gradient Data

Gravity gradiometer data are affected by high-frequency noise originating from the movement of the platform. Lowpass filters are often applied to remove such motion-related noise. The filtering, however, does not discriminate between signal and noise and removes both from frequencies outside the pass band. As a result, the anomalies become wider and their amplitudes become smaller. If this effect is not taken into consideration, interpretation of such data produces source bodies that are deeper and wider than the true sources. In this presentation, we first quantify the errors in the inverted models that result when the low-pass filtering is ignored using a simple parametric example. We then incorporate the low-pass filtering into the forward modeling and sensitivity calculations. This ensures that the forward operator includes both the physics and acquisition system characteristics, and hence, that it is consistent with the data to be inverted. Application to synthetic and field examples demonstrates that such an approach can largely ameliorate the adverse effect of low-pass filtering. We illustrate this result here using a synthetic parametric model, and will discuss the application to 3D problems and field data sets during the presentation.
Effect of commercial guar meal (CGM) on the performance and nutrient utilization in broilers

A biological trial was undertaken to study the effect of inclusion of graded levels of commercial guar meal (CGM) in diet on the performance and nutrient digestibility in commercial broiler chickens. A total of 350 oneday- old broiler male chicks (Cobb 400) were reared on wire floor electrically heated battery brooders. The chicks were randomly divided into 7 groups. Each treatment had 10 replicates of 5 chicks each. All the groups received iso-nitrogenous and iso-caloric diets. First group was fed maize-SBM; 2nd, 3rd and 4th groups were fed control diet during pre-starter phase (1â€“14 days), later (starter and finisher phase) CGM was incorporated at 6, 12 and 18% respectively, replacing SBM. In rest 3 groups (5th, 6th and 7th), CGM was incorporated at 6% during pre-starter phase followed by (starter and finisher phase) incorporation of CGM at 6, 12 and 18% respectively. The results showed that body weight gain (BWG) was significantly better at 6% CGM inclusion and depressed at 12 and 18% CGM. There was no significant effect of non-inclusion of CGM in juvenile phase on BWG; though feed intake did not differ significantly by CGM inclusion but FCR was significantly higher at all inclusion levels of CGM (6, 12 and 18%). The slaughter parameters, nutrient digestibility, serum parameters did not differ significantly. It can be concluded that CGM could be incorporated up to 6% (60 g/kg diet) in broiler diets without affecting growth performance, nutrient utilization and slaughter variables.
Five Years of Pulsar Flux Density Monitoring: Refractive Scintillation and the Interstellar Medium

We have monitored the radio flux density of 21 pulsars on a daily basis for five years. The 610 MHz flux density time series for these pulsars range from nearly constant for the most distant and heavily scattered pulsars to rapidly varying, saturated time series for more nearby pulsars. The measured stability of the flux density from the most distant pulsars (variations less than 5%) implies that the average radio emission from pulsars, before it has been affected by propagation through the interstellar medium, is constant in strength on timescales of a few hours to several years. The modulation index of the flux density variations never exceeds 0.5, ruling out a density inhomogeneity spectrum with a steep power-law exponent (β > 4). The flux density variations for 15 of the pulsars are consistent with a Kolmogorov turbulence spectrum over a range of more than 5 orders of magnitude in scattering strength, with no detectable presence of an inner scale. For these lines of sight we constrain the inhomogeneity slope to be in the range 3.5 ≤ β ≤ 3.7, which brackets the Kolmogorov value of β = 3.67. The flux density variations are greater than predicted by this model for six pulsars—including the Crab and Vela—but this group is consistent with a Kolmogorov spectrum and an inner scale of ≈1010 cm. The lines of sight to three of the other pulsars in this group pass through H II regions around young, hot stars. For six pulsars we have found a change in the slope of the intensity structure function, which could be connected with a change in the slope of the inhomogeneity power spectrum at a scale of ≈1013 cm.
Breakdown theory for bootstrap quantiles

A general formula for computing the breakdown point (in robustness) for the tth bootstrap quantile of a statistic T n is obtained. The answer depends on t and the breakdown point of T n . Since the bootstrap quantiles are vital ingredients of bootstrap confidence intervals, the theory has implications pertaining to robustness of bootstrap confidence intervals. For certain L and M estimators, a robustification of bootstrap is suggested via the notion of Winsorization.
Association of Early Childhood Caries with Bitter Taste Receptors: A Meta-Analysis of Genome-Wide Association Studies and Transcriptome-Wide Association Study

Although genetics affects early childhood caries (ECC) risk, few studies have focused on finding its specific genetic determinants. Here, we performed genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in five cohorts of children (aged up to 5 years, total N = 2974, cohorts: Center for Oral Health Research in Appalachia cohorts one and two [COHRA1, COHRA2], Iowa Fluoride Study, Iowa Head Start, Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children [ALSPAC]) aiming to identify genes with potential roles in ECC biology. We meta-analyzed the GWASs testing ~3.9 million genetic variants and found suggestive evidence for association at genetic regions previously associated with caries in primary and permanent dentition, including the β-defensin anti-microbial proteins. We then integrated the meta-analysis results with gene expression data in a transcriptome-wide association study (TWAS). This approach identified four genes whose genetically predicted expression was associated with ECC (p-values < 3.09 × 10−6; CDH17, TAS2R43, SMIM10L1, TAS2R14). Some of the strongest associations were with genes encoding members of the bitter taste receptor family (TAS2R); other members of this family have previously been associated with caries. Of note, we identified the receptor encoded by TAS2R14, which stimulates innate immunity and anti-microbial defense in response to molecules released by the cariogenic bacteria, Streptococcus mutans and Staphylococcus aureus. These findings provide insight into ECC genetic architecture, underscore the importance of host-microbial interaction in caries risk, and identify novel risk genes.
Who Seeks Clear Aligner Therapy? A European Cross-National Real-World Data Analysis

A key step prior to clear aligner therapy (CAT) is the clinical examination and case selection, which includes understanding the specific orthodontic problem to be managed and the wider evaluation of oral health. Seeking CAT may further differ along sociodemographic parameters or across countries, as may perceived orthodontic treatment needs and oral health. We aimed to characterize patients seeking CAT across five European countries. Anonymized real-life data from one large CAT provider (DrSmile, Berlin, Germany) was retrospectively sampled for the period 1 November 2021–31 December 2021. A total of 15,015 patients (68.4% females, 31.6% males, with an age range of 18–81 years, median 30.0 years) were included. The cross-national comparison revealed a significant difference in gender distribution (p < 0.001/Chi-square), with the highest proportion of males in Italy (434/1199, 36.2%) and the lowest in Poland (457/1600, 28.6%); generally, more females sought CAT. The largest motivational factor in all countries for seeking CAT was crowding, in both males and females. By and large, patients paid out of pocket for CAT. The prevalence of caries, periodontitis, and craniomandibular dysfunction as well as the numbers of missing teeth were generally low, albeit with significant differences between sociodemographic groups and countries for caries and periodontitis. Patients seeking CAT showed a low prevalence in oral conditions but differed in their sociodemographic characteristics across countries. Dentists and orthodontists should consider these country-specific differences when planning CAT.