Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Myeloid-Derived Suppressor Cells Alleviate Renal Fibrosis Progression via Regulation of CCL5-CCR5 Axis

Background Renal fibrosis is inevitable in all progressive chronic kidney diseases (CKDs) and represents a serious public health problem. Immune factors contribute to the progression of renal fibrosis. Thus, it is very possible that immunosuppression cells, such as myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs), could bring benefits to renal fibrosis. Herein, this study investigated the antifibrotic and reno-protective effect of MDSCs and the possible mechanisms. Methods Murine and cell models of unilateral ureter obstruction (UUO) renal fibrosis were used. Bone marrow-induced MDSCs and granulocyte–macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) were pretreated before surgery. Kidney weight, pathological injury, extracellular matrix deposition, and epithelial–mesenchymal transition progression were examined. Transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1)/Smad/Snail signaling pathway involvement was investigated through Western blotting and quantitative PCR (qPCR). Accumulation of MDSC, CD4+ T cell, regulatory T (Treg), and T helper 1 (TH1) cell accumulation, and CCL5 and CCR5 expression level in MDSCs and non-MDSCs were evaluated using flow cytometry. Results In vitro- and in vivo-induced MDSCs significantly ameliorated UUO-induced tubulointerstitial fibrosis, inhibited the TGF-β1/Smad/Snail signaling pathway, and enhanced MDSC and Treg infiltration in the kidney while downregulating the TH1 cells. Both in vitro and in vivo experiments confirmed CCL5 elevation in the two MDSC-treated groups. Conclusion In vitro- and in vivo-induced MDSCs alleviated renal fibrosis similarly through promoting the CCL5–CCR5 axis interaction and TGF-β1/Smad/Snail signaling pathway inhibition. Our results indicate an alternative treatment for renal fibrosis.
The Growth and Investigation of Interface of Sio2/Si by Anodic Oxidation Technique Using Acetic Acid Medium

This work investigats the physical properties and the nanotopography of the growth SiO2 film in the thickness range (2.212.9) nm on Silicon polycrystalline p-type substrates, by using the anodic oxidation technique using acetic acid medium containing 0.1N KNO3 as supporting electrolyte. In this technique the polarization curve indicates the presence of active peak. The chemical analysis of the surface of SiO2 has been done by (SEM ) shows the presence of O2 gas and C element, The films thickness has been found to increase as formation potential increases. The quality of the SiO2/Si interface, as examined by FTIR and it appears, the value of band apbsorption displacement depends on SiO2 thickness. Moreover the bond angle Si–O–Si has been found to depends on SiO2 thickness. The (AFM) is used to study the nanotopography of SiO2 film . However it has been found that a relation between SiO2 film thickness and roughness of the SiO2 film (As the SiO2 thickness increase the surface roughness of SiO2 film increase too).
Association Between Severity of Leptospirosis and Subsequent Major Autoimmune Diseases: A Nationwide Observational Cohort Study

Introduction Infections play a role in autoimmune diseases (AD). Leptospirosis has been linked to the trigger of systemic lupus erythematosus. Objective To investigate subsequent risk of major AD in hospitalized Taiwanese for Leptospirosis. Methods Retrospective observational cohort study was employed. The enrolled period was from 2000 to 2012. In the main model, we extracted 4026 inpatients with leptospirosis from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) and 16,104 participants without leptospirosis at a 1:4 ratio propensity-score matched (PSM) by age, gender, index year, and comorbidities. The follow-up period was defined as the time from the initial diagnosis of leptospirosis to major AD occurrence or 2013. This study was re-analyzed by frequency-matching as a sensitivity analysis for cross-validation. Univariable and multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression models were applied to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Results The adjusted HR (95% CI) of major ADs for the leptospirosis group was 4.45 (3.25–6.79) (p < 0.001) compared to the controls after full adjustment. The risk of major ADs was 5.52-fold (95% CI, 3.82–7.99) higher in leptospirosis patients hospitalized for seven days and above than the controls, while 2.80-fold (95% CI, 1.68–5.61) in those hospitalized less than seven days. The sensitivity analysis yields consistent findings. Stratified analysis revealed that the association between leptospirosis and major ADs was generalized in both genders, and all age groups. Conclusions Symptomatic leptospirosis is associated with increased rate of subsequent major ADs, and the risk seems to be higher in severe cases.
Construction of Interferon-Gamma-Related Gene Signature to Characterize the Immune-Inflamed Phenotype of Glioblastoma and Predict Prognosis, Efficacy of Immunotherapy and Radiotherapy

Interferon-gamma (IFNG) has profound impacts on tumor-immune interaction and is of great clinical significance for multiple cancers. Exploring the role of IFNG in glioblastoma (GBM) may optimize the current treatment paradigm of this disease. Here, multi-dimensional data of 429 GBM samples were collected. Various bioinformatics algorithms were employed to establish a gene signature that characterizes immunological features, genomic alterations, and clinical characteristics associated with the IFNG response. In this way, a novel IFNG-related gene signature (IFNGrGS, including TGFBI, IL4I1, ACP5, and LUM) has been constructed and validated. Samples with increased IFNGrGS scores were characterized by increased neutrophil and macrophage infiltration and exuberant innate immune responses, while the activated adaptive immune response may be frustrated by multiple immunosuppressive mechanisms. Notably, the IFNG pathway as well as its antagonistic pathways including IL4, IL10, TGF-beta, and VEGF converged on the expression of immune checkpoints. Besides, gene mutations involved in the microenvironment were associated with the IFNGrGS-based stratification, where the heterogeneous prognostic significance of EGFR mutation may be related to the different degrees of IFNG response. Moreover, the IFNGrGS score had solid prognostic value and the potential to screen ICB and radiotherapy sensitive populations. Collectively, our study provided insights into the role of IFNG on the GBM immune microenvironment and offered feasible information for optimizing the treatment of GBM.
Motivators of Participation and Non-Participation in Youth Environmental Protests

This paper is an exploratory study investigating motivators of teenagers to both attend and not attend a climate change related protest event. Using open-ended surveys and focus groups, 16–19-year-old Australian students were asked about their motivators to attend and abstain from School Strike 4 Climate events. Through qualitative analysis and thematic coding, results show key motivators to attend a Strike include climate change and acts of political participation that provide youth with a public voice. Protest is positioned as a key part of teen political repertoires. Reasons for non-attendance included prioritizing schoolwork and low efficacy in protest or participatory action. However, low efficacy in climate change mitigation, or an outright rejection of climate science, was not evident in this sample. Overall, reasons for attendance and non-attendance at a Strike event were not direct mirror images of the other, and implications for inclusion of non-participants in further studies is discussed in this light.
Quantifying Time-Frequency Co-movement Impact of COVID-19 on U.S. and China Stock Market Toward Investor Sentiment Index

The worldwide spread of COVID-19 dramatically influences the world economic landscape. In this paper, we have quantitatively investigated the time-frequency co-movement impact of COVID-19 on U.S. and China stock market since early 2020 in terms of daily observation from National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Index (NDX), Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), Standard & Poor's 500 Index (SPX), Shanghai Securities Composite Index (SSEC), Shenzhen Securities Component Index (SZI), in favor of spatiotemporal interactions over investor sentiment index, and propose to explore the divisibility and the predictability to the volatility of stock market during the development of COVID-19. We integrate evidence yielded from wavelet coherence and phase difference to suggest the responses of stock market indexes to the COVID-19 epidemic in a long-term band, which could be roughly divided into three distinguished phases, namely, 30–75, 110–150, and 220–280 business days for China, and 80–125 and 160–175 after 290 business days for the U.S. At the first phase, the reason for the extreme volatility of stock market mainly attributed to the sudden emergence of the COVID-19 epidemic due to the pessimistic expectations from investors; China and U.S. stock market shared strongly negative correlation with the growing number of COVID-19 cases. At the second phase, the revitalization of stock market shared strong simultaneous moves but exhibited opposite responses to the COVID-19 impact on China and U.S. stock market; the former retained a significant negative correlation, while the latter turned to positively correlated throughout the period. At the third phase, the progress in vaccine development and economic stimulus began to impose forces to stock market; the vulnerability to COVID-19 diminished to some extent as the investor sentiment indexes rebounded. Finally, we attempted to initially establish a coarse-grained representation to stock market indexes and investor sentiment indexes, which demonstrated the homogenous spacial distribution in the vectorgraph after normalization and quantization, implying the strong consistency when filtering the frequent small fluctuations during the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic, which might help insights into the prediction of possible status transition in stock market performance under the public health issues, potentially performing as the quantitative references in reasonably deducing the economic influences.
Relinquishing Owners Underestimate Their Dog's Behavioral Problems: Deception or Lack of Knowledge?

Undesirable behavior is a leading cause of canine relinquishment. Relinquishing owners could provide valuable information about their dog's behavior, although the reliability of their reports has been questioned by the sheltering community. This study aimed to investigate (a) whether relinquishing owners' reports of dog behavior differed based on the behavioral screening method; (b) whether relinquishing owners' reports were impacted by the confidentiality of their responses; and (c) whether relinquishing and non-relinquishing owners perceived the behavior of their dogs differently. The sample included 427 relinquished dogs from three animal shelters and 427 pet dogs, matched for sex and breed. Owners responded to a direct question about whether they were experiencing problems with their dog's behavior and completed the mini C-BARQ which includes 42 questions about the frequency and severity of specific canine behaviors in various circumstances. More than two-thirds (69.3%) of relinquishing owners indicated they were not experiencing problems with their dog's behavior when asked directly, compared with only 34.5% of pet owners. Yet, relinquished dogs had significantly higher (less desirable) scores than pet dogs across most C-BARQ scales. The disparity between C-BARQ scores and the single, direct question does not appear to be the result of deliberately biased reporting by relinquishing owners as the perceived confidentiality (or lack thereof) did not affect their responses (X2 = 1.44, p = 0.97). It is possible that relinquishing owners had less understanding of dog behavior and did not recognize behavior problems as a problem. Our findings support the use of standardized behavioral questionnaires, such as the mini C-BARQ, to collect behavioral information from owners at the time of relinquishment and highlight opportunities for animal shelters to reduce relinquishment by assisting owners to recognize and manage behavioral problems.
Effects of High-Fat and High-Fat/High-Sucrose Diet-Induced Obesity on PVAT Modulation of Vascular Function in Male and Female Mice

Increased adiposity in perivascular adipose tissue (PVAT) has been related to vascular dysfunction. High-fat (HF) diet-induced obesity models are often used to analyze the translational impact of obesity, but differences in sex and Western diet type complicate comparisons between studies. The role of PVAT was investigated in small mesenteric arteries (SMAs) of male and female mice fed a HF or a HF plus high-sucrose (HF + HS) diet for 3 or 5 months and compared them to age/sex-matched mice fed a chow diet. Vascular responses of SMAs without (PVAT-) or with PVAT (PVAT+) were evaluated. HF and HF + HS diets increased body weight, adiposity, and fasting glucose and insulin levels without affecting blood pressure and circulating adiponectin levels in both sexes. HF or HF + HS diet impaired PVAT anticontractile effects in SMAs from females but not males. PVAT-mediated endothelial dysfunction in SMAs from female mice after 3 months of a HF + HS diet, whereas in males, this effect was observed only after 5 months of HF + HS diet. However, PVAT did not impact acetylcholine-induced relaxation in SMAs from both sexes fed HF diet. The findings suggest that the addition of sucrose to a HF diet accelerates PVAT dysfunction in both sexes. PVAT dysfunction in response to both diets was observed early in females compared to age-matched males suggesting a susceptibility of the female sex to PVAT-mediated vascular complications in the setting of obesity. The data illustrate the importance of the duration and composition of obesogenic diets for investigating sex-specific treatments and pharmacological targets for obesity-induced vascular complications.
Phosphorus Dynamics in Sugarcane Fertilized With Filter Cake and Mineral Phosphate Sources

Organic residual material such as filter cake, combined with mineral phosphate fertilizers, may alter the soil phosphorus (P) bioavailability for sugarcane as a consequence of the competing effect in adsorption sites. This study aimed to quantify the changes in both the inorganic and organic soil P fractions as amended by phosphate fertilizer sources and filter cake and to link the P fractions to sugarcane response. An experiment was conducted in an Oxisol, in a randomized block design with factorial arrangement of 4 × 2, and three replications. Three P fertilizer sources (triple superphosphate, Araxá rock phosphate, and Bayóvar® reactive phosphate) plus a control (no P) were evaluated under both the presence and absence of filter cake. At the end of the second crop cycle, the following were measured: the cane yield, the tissue P content, and soil P fractions. All fertilizer sources were efficient in supplying P to sugarcane. Araxá rock phosphate generated a higher accumulation in moderately labile P, whereas the soluble triple superphosphate resulted in higher labile P. The filter cake, as a source of nutrients and organic matter, has an important contribution to maintain more available P for sugarcane absorption, especially when associated with triple superphosphate. The amount of P absorbed by sugarcane was correlated with the soil labile P (r = 0.58) and also with the inorganic P moderately labile (r = 0.42). Both fractions must be taken into account for a short- to medium-term availability of P for sugarcane in Oxisols.
Computerized Music-Reading Intervention Improves Resistance to Unisensory Distraction Within a Multisensory Task, in Young and Older Adults

Incoming information from multiple sensory channels compete for attention. Processing the relevant ones and ignoring distractors, while at the same time monitoring the environment for potential threats, is crucial for survival, throughout the lifespan. However, sensory and cognitive mechanisms often decline in aging populations, making them more susceptible to distraction. Previous interventions in older adults have successfully improved resistance to distraction, but the inclusion of multisensory integration, with its unique properties in attentional capture, in the training protocol is underexplored. Here, we studied whether, and how, a 4-week intervention, which targets audiovisual integration, affects the ability to deal with task-irrelevant unisensory deviants within a multisensory task. Musically naïve participants engaged in a computerized music reading game and were asked to detect audiovisual incongruences between the pitch of a song’s melody and the position of a disk on the screen, similar to a simplistic music staff. The effects of the intervention were evaluated via behavioral and EEG measurements in young and older adults. Behavioral findings include the absence of age-related differences in distraction and the indirect improvement of performance due to the intervention, seen as an amelioration of response bias. An asymmetry between the effects of auditory and visual deviants was identified and attributed to modality dominance. The electroencephalographic results showed that both groups shared an increase in activation strength after training, when processing auditory deviants, located in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. A functional connectivity analysis revealed that only young adults improved flow of information, in a network comprised of a fronto-parietal subnetwork and a multisensory temporal area. Overall, both behavioral measures and neurophysiological findings suggest that the intervention was indirectly successful, driving a shift in response strategy in the cognitive domain and higher-level or multisensory brain areas, and leaving lower level unisensory processing unaffected.
Effects of Trandolapril on Structural, Contractile and Electrophysiological Remodeling in Experimental Volume Overload Heart Failure

Chronic volume overload induces multiple cardiac remodeling processes that finally result in eccentric cardiac hypertrophy and heart failure. We have hypothesized that chronic angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibition by trandolapril might affect various remodeling processes differentially, thus allowing their dissociation. Cardiac remodeling due to chronic volume overload and the effects of trandolapril were investigated in rats with an aortocaval fistula (ACF rats). The aortocaval shunt was created using a needle technique and progression of cardiac remodeling to heart failure was followed for 24 weeks. In ACF rats, pronounced eccentric cardiac hypertrophy and contractile and proarrhythmic electrical remodeling were associated with increased mortality. Trandolapril substantially reduced the electrical proarrhythmic remodeling and mortality, whereas the effect on cardiac hypertrophy was less pronounced and significant eccentric hypertrophy was preserved. Effective suppression of electrical proarrhythmic remodeling and mortality but not hypertrophy indicates that the beneficial therapeutic effects of ACE inhibitor trandolapril in volume overload heart failure might be dissociated from pure antihypertrophic effects.
The Validity of Physiological Measures to Identify Differences in Intrinsic Cognitive Load

A sample of 33 experiments was extracted from the Web-of-Science database over a 5-year period (2016–2020) that used physiological measures to measure intrinsic cognitive load. Only studies that required participants to solve tasks of varying complexities using a within-subjects design were included. The sample identified a number of different physiological measures obtained by recording signals from four main body categories (heart and lungs, eyes, skin, and brain), as well as subjective measures. The overall validity of the measures was assessed by examining construct validity and sensitivity. It was found that the vast majority of physiological measures had some level of validity, but varied considerably in sensitivity to detect subtle changes in intrinsic cognitive load. Validity was also influenced by the type of task. Eye-measures were found to be the most sensitive followed by the heart and lungs, skin, and brain. However, subjective measures had the highest levels of validity. It is concluded that a combination of physiological and subjective measures is most effective in detecting changes in intrinsic cognitive load.
Combined Scutellarin and C18H17NO6 Imperils the Survival of Glioma: Partly Associated With the Repression of PSEN1/PI3K-AKT Signaling Axis

Glioma, the most common intracranial tumor, harbors great harm. Since the treatment for it has reached the bottleneck stage, the development of new drugs becomes a trend. Therefore, we focus on the effect of scutellarin (SCU) and its combination with C18H17NO6 (abbreviated as combination) on glioma and its possible mechanism in this study. Firstly, SCU and C18H17NO6 both suppressed the proliferation of U251 and LN229 cells in a dose-dependent manner, and C18H17NO6 augmented the inhibition effect of SCU on U251 and LN229 cells in vitro. Moreover, there was an interactive effect between them. Secondly, SCU and C18H17NO6 decreased U251 cells in G2 phase and LN229 cells in G2 and S phases but increased U251 cells in S phase, respectively. Meanwhile, the combination could further reduce U251 cells in G2 phase and LN229 cells in G2 and S phases. Thirdly, SCU and C18H17NO6 both induced the apoptosis of U251 and LN229. The combination further increased the apoptosis rate of both cells compared with the two drugs alone. Furthermore, SCU and C18H17NO6 both inhibited the lateral and vertical migration of both cells, which was further repressed by the combination. More importantly, the effect of SCU and the combination was better than positive control-temozolomide, and the toxicity was low. Additionally, SCU and C18H17NO6 could suppress the growth of glioma in vivo, and the effect of the combination was better. Finally, SCU and the combination upregulated the presenilin 1 (PSEN1) level but inactivated the phosphatidylinositol 3−kinase (PI3K)-protein kinase B (AKT) signaling in vitro and in vivo. Accordingly, we concluded that scutellarin and its combination with C18H17NO6 suppressed the proliferation/growth and migration and induced the apoptosis of glioma, in which the mechanism might be associated with the repression of PSEN1/PI3K-AKT signaling axis.
Psychology Doctoral Program Experiences and Student Well-Being, Mental Health, and Optimism During the COVID-19 Pandemic

In a sample of 916 doctoral students from 144 universities across the United States, we examined psychology graduate students’ experiences in their programs, as well as their mental health, well-being, and optimism during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a path model, we found that students’ psychological experiences in their programs (i.e., social belonging, threat, and challenge) were associated with better mental health and well-being, which in turn was associated with greater optimism about the future during the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings were also corroborated in students’ open-ended responses regarding how COVID-19 has impacted their lives. Findings varied by racial, gender, and sexual identities, as racial minorities, LGBTQ+ students, and women expressed more negative psychological experiences in their programs. We outline suggestions for graduate programs to support their graduate students, which include facilitating social connection, providing encouragement, and emphasizing students’ well-being over their productivity as the current pandemic persists.