Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Risk of solid tumors and hematological malignancy in persons with Turner and Klinefelter syndromes: A national cohort study

The risk of solid and hematological malignancy in patients with Turner syndrome, characterized by X chromosome monosomy in women, and Klinefelter syndrome, characterized with two and more X chromosomes in men, is not well established, but such evidence may have etiological implications on cancer development. We identified a total of 1,409 women with Turner syndrome and 1,085 men with Klinefelter syndrome from the Swedish Hospital Discharge and Outpatient Register. These individuals were further linked to the Swedish Cancer Register to examine the standardized incidence ratios (SIRs) of cancer using the general population without Turner and Klinefelter syndromes as reference. The overall risk of cancer was 1.34 for women with Turner syndrome; it was increased only for solid tumors. For a specific type of tumor, the risk of melanoma and central nervous system tumor was significantly increased. For persons with Klinefelter syndrome, the risk of solid tumors was decreased (SIR = 0.66), whereas the risk of hematological malignancy was increased (SIR = 2.72). Non‐Hodgkin lymphoma and leukemia showed an increased SIR of 3.02 and 3.62, respectively. Our study supported the hypothesis that X chromosome plays an important role in the etiology of solid tumors. The underlying mechanisms for the increased incidence of non‐Hodgkin lymphoma and leukemia in persons with Klinefelter syndrome need to be investigated further.
Two-Dimensional Fluorescence Difference Spectroscopy of ZnO and Mg Composites in the Detection of Physiological Protein and RNA Interactions

Two-dimensional fluorescence difference spectroscopy (2-D FDS) was used to determine the unique spectral signatures of zinc oxide (ZnO), magnesium oxide (MgO), and 5% magnesium zinc oxide nanocomposite (5% Mg/ZnO) and was then used to demonstrate the change in spectral signature that occurs when physiologically important proteins, such as angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) and ribonuclease A (RNase A), interact with ZnO nanoparticles (NPs). When RNase A is bound to 5% Mg/ZnO, the intensity is quenched, while the intensity is magnified and a significant shift is seen when torula yeast RNA (TYRNA) is bound to RNase A and 5% Mg/ZnO. The intensity of 5% Mg/ZnO is quenched also when thrombin and thrombin aptamer are bound to the nanocomposite. These data indicate that RNA–protein interaction can occur unimpeded on the surface of NPs, which was confirmed by gel electrophoresis, and importantly that the change in fluorescence excitation, emission, and intensity shown by 2-D FDS may indicate specificity of biomolecular interactions.
Short-Term Load Forecasting With a New Nonsymmetric Penalty Function

In this paper, the problem of short-term load forecasting is redefined and solved with a new metric, which is the extension of the conventional sum of squared error (SSE) metric. The proposed metric is a nonsymmetric penalty function with different penalties for over-forecasting and under-forecasting. Therefore, a large family of approaches that utilize gradient-based methods such as artificial neural networks with back propagation learning and regressions method with least squares estimate are not useful in this case. To solve this problem, a modified radial basis function (RBF) network, which uses the genetic algorithm to estimate the weights of the network is presented. This network has the ability to handle the new penalty function. In addition, a fuzzy inference system is combined with the modified RBF network to incorporate the impact of temperature on load. As a real case study, we tried to forecast the electric power load of Mazandaran area in Iran. The comparison between the proposed method and the well-known RBF network demonstrates the efficiency of the proposed method with the new forecasting metric.
On the negative impact of time zone differences on international tourism

ABSTRACT This research note reports novel results on the negative effect of time zone differences on international tourism in a global sample of countries over the period 1995–2013. A gravity-type model, which has become standard in international tourism demand, is estimated with Pseudo-Poisson maximum likelihood, controlling for geographical distance and other potential confounders at the dyadic level in addition to origin-year and destination-year fixed effects. The effect of time zone differences is found to be substantively strong and approximately (log-)linear across the various hours of time zone difference, with an average negative effect of about 11.6% per hour of time difference.
Video action classification using symmelets and deep learning

Classification of human actions is very challenging and important in many video-based applications. Two common features, i.e., the hand-crafted and the deep-learned ones are usually adopted for video representation and have been proven to be effective in many famous datasets in the literature. However, the hand-crafted feature lacks the ability to detect the discriminative and semantic features and the deep-learned one fails to outperform previous hand-crafted feature. This paper propose a novel symmelet-based classification approach to improve the accuracy of the state-of-the-art frameworks. "Symmelet" is a symmetrical pair including a SURF point and its corresponding symmetrical point in the same frame. Many symmetrical properties often exist in various video scenes. With symmelets, various redundant (or background) features can be filtered out so that action contents can be more accurately represented. The new approach takes advantages of symmelets, improved dense trajectories (IDT), and trajectory-pooled deep-convolutional descriptor (TDD) to learn useful deep features for represent video contents deeply. Performance evaluation on two challenging datasets, i.e., HMDB51 and UCF101 shows that the proposed solution is superior and can achieve quite higher recognition accuracy than other state-of-art frameworks.
DNA-Fragments Are Transcytosed across CaCo-2 Cells by Adsorptive Endocytosis and Vesicular Mediated Transport

Dietary DNA is degraded into shorter DNA-fragments and single nucleosides in the gastrointestinal tract. Dietary DNA is mainly taken up as single nucleosides and bases, but even dietary DNA-fragments of up to a few hundred bp are able to cross the intestinal barrier and enter the blood stream. The molecular mechanisms behind transport of DNA-fragments across the intestine and the effects of this transport on the organism are currently unknown. Here we investigate the transport of DNA-fragments across the intestinal barrier, focusing on transport mechanisms and rates. The human intestinal epithelial cell line CaCo-2 was used as a model. As DNA material a PCR-fragment of 633 bp was used and quantitative real time PCR was used as detection method. DNA-fragments were found to be transported across polarized CaCo-2 cells in the apical to basolateral direction (AB). After 90 min the difference in directionality AB vs. BA was >103 fold. Even undegraded DNA-fragments of 633 bp could be detected in the basolateral receiver compartment at this time point. Transport of DNA-fragments was sensitive to low temperature and inhibition of endosomal acidification. DNA-transport across CaCo-2 cells was not competed out with oligodeoxynucleotides, fucoidan, heparin, heparan sulphate and dextrane sulphate, while linearized plasmid DNA, on the other hand, reduced transcytosis of DNA-fragments by a factor of approximately 2. Our findings therefore suggest that vesicular transport is mediating transcytosis of dietary DNA-fragments across intestinal cells and that DNA binding proteins are involved in this process. If we extrapolate our findings to in vivo conditions it could be hypothesized that this transport mechanism has a function in the immune system.
Growing Vascularized Heart Tissue From Stem Cells

Abstract: The promise of stem cells to repair the heart after damage or heart attack has not been realized because most such cells are lost after transplantation. A new approach is to grow substantial viable pieces of cardiac tissue from human stem cells by cardiac tissue engineering. Such constructs must be fully vascularized and perfused to ensure the viability of clinically relevant volumes of tissue. This requires careful choice of cells, culture conditions, a biomaterial to act as scaffold, and crucial strategies for vascularization. Autologous stem cells with high plasticity, which would avoid the need for antirejection therapies after transplantation, are an attractive source of both cardiomyocytes and vascular cells. Most stem cells also have inherent paracrine activity, releasing cytoprotective factors and growth-promoting cytokines that can further stimulate tissue regeneration and neovascularization through recruitment of endogenous stem and progenitor cells. Current advances for growing vascularized and functional cardiac constructs with human stem cells are described, bringing us a step closer to the engineering of complex cardiac tissues such as pacemaker, conducting tissue, or contractile myocardial flaps ideal for transplantation. From studies in rats successful transplantation of thin constructs to the ventricle has been reported, but there remain further issues to resolve before larger human constructs will be available to test in the clinic.
BIOTECHNOLOGICALLY RELEVANT ENZYMES AND PROTEINS Identification and characterization of IS1 transposition in plasmid amplification mutants of E. coli clones producing DNA vaccines

Merck Research Laboratories has developed a highly productive Escherichia coli fermentation process to produce plasmid DNA for use as vaccines. The process consists of a fed-batch fermentation in a chemically defined medium. Initiation of the feed stream precedes a growthlimited phase in which plasmid DNA is amplified. The fermentation is only maximally productive for a small fraction of E. coli transformants designated as high-producers, while the predominant low-producer population does not amplify plasmid DNA. In experiments undertaken to probe this phenomenon, transposition of the 768-bp E. coli insertion sequence IS1 into an HIV DNA vaccine vector was observed in several low-producer clones. IS1 was found to insert in or near the neomycin resistance gene in nearly a dozen unique sites from within a single population of plasmid molecules. The fraction of IS1-containing plasmids within several clones was determined by quantitative polymerase chain reaction and was found to increase with increasing cultivation time in the chemically defined medium. Because transposition into an antibiotic-resistance gene is unlikely to affect plasmid amplification, the genomes of highand low-producers of three different HIV DNA vaccine vectors were subsequently profiled by restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis. In all three cases, IS1 insertional mutations were found in the genomes of the predominant low-producers, while the genomes of the high-producers were indistinguishable from untransformed cells. The insertions reside on similarly sized fragments for two of the low-producer clones, and the fragment size is smaller for the third clone. The third clone also produces much less plasmid DNA than a typical lowproducer. The results suggest the presence of an IS1 insertional mutation that affects plasmid replication and amplification, possibly in a position-dependent manner.
Evolving Adaptive Traffic Signal Controllers for a Real Scenario Using Genetic Programming with an Epigenetic Mechanism

An important challenge for traffic signal control is adapting to irregular changes in traffic. In recent years, different heuristics have been developed to address this issue. However, most of them are tested in artificial scenarios under controlled circumstances. In this paper, we present the first implementation of Genetic Programming in the evolution of traffic signal controllers for a real-world scenario. The evolved controllers are compared with a static control and an actuated control. The results indicate a significant improvement over traditional methods. Moreover, additional experiments indicate that the evolved controllers have the ability to adapt to unplanned changes in traffic conditions.
Nonlinear characterization of silver nanocrystals incorporated tellurite glasses for fiber development

To develop high nonlinear optical fibers for all-optical switching applications, 7.5 wt% AgNO<inf>3</inf> was incorporated into tellurite glasses with composition of 75TeO<inf>2</inf>-20ZnO-5Na<inf>2</inf>CO<inf>3</inf> (TZN75) under precisely-controlled experimental conditions to form 7.5Ag-TZN75 glass. Surface Plasmon resonance absorption peak of Ag nanocrystals embedded in 7.5Ag-TZN75 glass was found to center at 552 nm. By degenerated four-wave mixing method, the non-resonant nonlinear refractive index, n<inf>2</inf>, of 7.5Ag-TZN75 glass was measured to be 7.54×10<sup>−19</sup> m<sup>2</sup>·W<sup>−1</sup> at 1500 nm, about 3 times of the reference TZN75 glass without any dopant and 27 times of the silicate glasses and fibers, and the response time is about 1 picosecond.
Choline intake and risk of lethal prostate cancer: incidence and survival.

BACKGROUND Meat, milk, and eggs have been inconsistently associated with the risk of advanced prostate cancer. These foods are sources of choline-a nutrient that may affect prostate cancer progression through cell membrane function and one-carbon metabolism. No study has examined dietary choline and the risk of lethal prostate cancer. OBJECTIVE Our objective was to examine whether dietary choline, choline-containing compounds, and betaine (a choline metabolite) increase the risk of lethal prostate cancer. DESIGN We prospectively examined the intake of these nutrients and the risk of lethal prostate cancer among 47,896 men in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. In a case-only survival analysis, we examined the postdiagnostic intake of these nutrients and the risk of lethal prostate cancer among 4282 men with an initial diagnosis of nonmetastatic disease during follow-up. Diet was assessed with a validated questionnaire 6 times during 22 y of follow-up. RESULTS In the incidence analysis, we observed 695 lethal prostate cancers during 879,627 person-years. Men in the highest quintile of choline intake had a 70% increased risk of lethal prostate cancer (HR: 1.70; 95% CI: 1.18, 2.45; P-trend = 0.005). In the case-only survival analysis, we observed 271 lethal cases during 33,679 person-years. Postdiagnostic choline intake was not statistically significantly associated with the risk of lethal prostate cancer (HR for quintile 5 compared with quintile 1: 1.69; 95% CI: 0.93, 3.09; P-trend = 0.20). CONCLUSION Of the 47,896 men in our study population, choline intake was associated with an increased risk of lethal prostate cancer.
Molecular Mechanisms of Apoptosis Induced by Cytotoxic Chemicals

ABSTRACT The purpose of this review article is to discuss established molecular mechanisms of apoptosis and their relevance to cell death induced by environmental toxicants. Apoptosis is a highly regulated form of cell death distinguished by the activation of a family of cysteine-aspartate proteases (caspases) that cleave various proteins resulting in morphological and biochemical changes characteristic of this form of cell death. Abundant evidence supports a role for mitochondria in regulating apoptosis. Specifically, it seems that a number of death stimuli target these organelles and stimulate, by an unknown mechanism, the release of several proteins, including cytochrome c. Once released into the cytosol, cytochrome c binds to its adaptor molecule, Apaf-1, which oligomerizes and then activates pro-caspase-P. Caspase-9 can signal downstream and activate pro-caspase-3 and -7. The release of cytochrome c can be influenced by different Bcl-2 family member proteins, including, but not limited to, Bax, Bid, Bc1-2, and Bcl-XL, Bax and Bid potentiate cytochrome c release, whereas Bcl-2 and Bcl-XL antagonize this event. Although toxicologists have traditionally associated cell death with necrosis, emerging evidence suggests that different types of environmental contaminants exert their toxicity, at least in part, by triggering apoptosis. The mechanism responsible for eliciting the pro-apoptotic effect of a given chemical is often unknown, although in many instances mitochondria appear to be key participants. This review describes our current understanding of the role of apoptosis in environmental toxicant-induced cell death, using dioxin, metals (cadmium and methylmercury), organotin compounds, dithiocarbamates, and benzene as specific examples. Finally, we conclude with a critical discussion of the current knowledge in this area and provide recommendations for future directions.
Trends in Serotype Distribution and Antimicrobial Susceptibility in Salmonella enterica Isolates from Humans in Belgium, 2009 to 2013

ABSTRACT The Belgian National Reference Centre for Salmonella received 16,544 human isolates of Salmonella enterica between January 2009 and December 2013. Although 377 different serotypes were identified, the landscape is dominated by S. enterica serovars Typhimurium (55%) and Enteritidis (19%) in a ratio which is inverse to European Union averages. With outbreaks of Salmonella serotypes Ohio, Stanley, and Paratyphi B variant Java as prime examples, 20 serotypes displayed significant fluctuations in this 5-year period. Typhoid strains account for 1.2% of Belgian salmonellosis cases. Large-scale antibiotic susceptibility analyses (n = 4,561; panel of 12 antibiotics) showed declining resistance levels in S. Enteritis and Typhimurium isolates for 8 and 3 tested agents, respectively. Despite low overall resistance to ciprofloxacin (4.4%) and cefotaxime (1.6%), we identified clonal lineages of Salmonella serotypes Kentucky and Infantis displaying rising resistance against these clinically important drugs. Quinolone resistance is mainly mediated by serotype-specific mutations in GyrA residues Ser83 and Asp87 (92.2% not wild type), while an additional ParC_Ser80Ile mutation leads to ciprofloxacin resistance in 95.5% S. Kentucky isolates, which exceeds European averages. Plasmid-mediated quinolone resistance (PMQR) alleles qnrA1 (n = 1), qnrS (n = 9), qnrD1 (n = 4), and qnrB (n = 4) were found in only 3.0% of 533 isolates resistant to nalidixic acid. In cefotaxime-resistant isolates, we identified a broad range of Ambler class A and C β-lactamase genes (e.g., blaSHV-12, blaTEM-52, blaCTX-M-14, and blaCTX-M-15) commonly associated with members of the family Enterobacteriaceae. In conclusion, resistance to fluoroquinolones and cefotaxime remains rare in human S. enterica, but clonal resistant serotypes arise, and continued (inter)national surveillance is mandatory to understand the origin and routes of dissemination thereof.
Multiple roles of the pilus biogenesis protein pilD: involvement of pilD in excretion of enzymes from Pseudomonas aeruginosa

In Pseudomonas aeruginosa, the genes pilB, pilC, and pilD encode proteins necessary for posttranslational modification and assembly of pilin monomers into pilus organelles (D. Nunn, S. Bergman, and S. Lory, J. Bacteriol. 172:2911-2919, 1990). We show that PilD, encoding a putative pilin-specific leader peptidase, also controls export of alkaline phosphatase, phospholipase C, elastase, and exotoxin A. pilD mutants accumulate these proteins in the periplasmic space, while secretion of periplasmic and outer membrane proteins appears to be normal. The periplasmic form of exotoxin A was fully mature in size, contained all cysteines in disulfide bonds, and was toxic in a tissue culture cytotoxicity assay, suggesting that in pilD mutants, exotoxin A was folded into its native conformation. The function of the other two accessory proteins, PilB and PilC, appears to be restricted to pilus biogenesis, and strains carrying mutations in their respective genes do not show an export defect. These studies show that in addition to cleaving the leader sequence from prepilin, PilD has an additional role in secretion of proteins that are released from P. aeruginosa into the surrounding media. PilD most likely functions as a protease that is involved in processing and assembly of one or more components of the membrane machinery necessary for the later stages of protein extracellular localization.
LA RESERVA ECOLOGICA SIERRA DE SAN JUAN A 23 AÑOS DEL DECRETO

The concept of biodiversity has permeated in the last two or three decades the discourse of a good part of society and consequently of governmental spheres. Although it does not have the social impact that global warming has achieved with the help of Oscares and Nobel Prizes, the loss of biodiversity as a reflection of the loss of natural, terrestrial and marine ecosystems (which constitute our natural capital) is at least Equal if not more important than climate change: the first is the demand for resources, especially food and fiber, the other of the energy demands we make the inhabitants of this planet. Each is one of the two sides of the same very expensive coin that is global environmental change. Sarukan (2009). Environmental problems and the preservation of ecosystems are acquiring an international dimension and will make it ever stronger in the future. We must be prepared for this new phase of international negotiations with a solid knowledge of our resources, with the implementation of best practices combining economic and social development, human well-being and conservation of our natural capital. Sarukan (2009).
Factors influencing older people's self reported use of dental services in the UK.

OBJECTIVES This study was designed to determine the use of dental services and factors associated with their use among the United Kingdoms' older population. DESIGN A national study involving 1,116 older people (aged 60 or older). SETTING Home Interviews were undertaken exploring the time and reason for last dental visit. In addition, socio-demographic characteristics and proxy oral health measures (self-reported number of teeth and edentulous status) of the respondents were collected. RESULTS Forty seven percent (528) claimed they visited the dentist within the past year, 10% (116) claimed that the reason for their last visit was because of a dental emergency, 43% (484) were classified as "regular attenders"--having attended the dentist within the past year for a non dental emergency. Bivariate analysis identified that regular dental attendance was associated with age (P < 0.01), social class (P < 0.01), income level (P < 0.01), educational attainment (P < 0.01), self-reported number of teeth possessed (P < 0.01) and edentulous status (P < 0.01). In regression analysis, self reported edentulous status and number of teeth possessed emerged as the most important factors in determining service utilisation. Possessing a full denture was associated with a 6-fold decrease, having accounted for other factors, in the likelihood of attending the dentist within the past year for a non dental-emergency (OR = 0.15, CI 0.10, 0.21). CONCLUSION Less than half of the sample population were "regular dental attenders", their attendance was associated with a number of socio-demographic and oral health factors. In particular, edentulous state was a major factor associated with their use of services.