Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Toxicants, Health and Regulation since 1945

Depuis 1945, la mise en circulation de tres nombreuses substances chimiques dans des quantites toujours plus importantes a entraine une introduction continue de contaminants dans l'environnement et le developpement des situations d'expositions sanitaires et environnementales potentiellement dangereuses. Ces situations sont depuis longtemps au cœur d'un ensemble d'actions visant a caracteriser la toxicite des substances, a rendre visibles leurs effets, et a gerer les problemes environnementaux, sanitaires et sociaux qu'ils engendrent. Le XXeme siecle a ainsi connu le developpement d'un ensemble de regimes de regulation des substances chimiques toxiques, qui repondent a differents modes de regulation. Ces modes de regulation sont le resultat d'une sedimentation de travaux scientifiques, de mobilisations, de politiques publiques, de configurations et reconfigurations institutionnelles qui ont pris place a des echelles nationales, europeennes et internationales. Ce livre retrace le developpement des differents modes de regulation des contaminants chimiques au cours du XXeme siecle et analyse les transformations a l'œuvre actuellement. Il discute les raisons pour lesquelles les problemes engendres par les contaminants chimiques et leurs modalites de gestion restent des questions encore tres problematiques malgre de nombreuses initiatives scientifiques et institutionnelles. Pour cela, il retrace l'histoire de ces modes de regulation des substances carcinogenes, mutagenes, reprotoxiques, et des perturbateurs endocriniens, en s'interessant aux outils et instruments sur lesquels ces modes reposent (confinement, valeurs limites, risques, guidelines.).
Antibiotic Manipulation of Intestinal Microbiota To Identify Microbes Associated with Campylobacter jejuni Exclusion in Poultry

ABSTRACT The ability of various subsets of poultry intestinal microbiota to protect turkeys from colonization by Campylobacter jejuni was investigated. Community subsets were generated in vivo by inoculation of day-old poults with the cecal contents of a Campylobacter-free adult turkey, followed by treatment with one antimicrobial, either virginiamycin, enrofloxacin, neomycin, or vancomycin. The C. jejuni loads of the enrofloxacin-, neomycin-, and vancomycin-derived communities were decreased by 1 log, 2 logs, and 4 logs, respectively. Examination of the constituents of the derived communities via the array-based method oligonucleotide fingerprinting of rRNA genes detected a subtype of Megamonas hypermegale specific to the C. jejuni-suppressive treatments.
Scalable Nearest Neighbor Search based on kNN Graph

Nearest neighbor search is known as a challenging issue that has been studied for several decades. Recently, this issue becomes more and more imminent in viewing that the big data problem arises from various fields. In this paper, a scalable solution based on hill-climbing strategy with the support of k-nearest neighbor graph (kNN) is presented. Two major issues have been considered in the paper. Firstly, an efficient kNN graph construction method based on two means tree is presented. For the nearest neighbor search, an enhanced hill-climbing procedure is proposed, which sees considerable performance boost over original procedure. Furthermore, with the support of inverted indexing derived from residue vector quantization, our method achieves close to 100% recall with high speed efficiency in two state-of-the-art evaluation benchmarks. In addition, a comparative study on both the compressional and traditional nearest neighbor search methods is presented. We show that our method achieves the best trade-off between search quality, efficiency and memory complexity.
Identification and Functional Characterization of Inhibitor-3, a Regulatory Subunit of Protein Phosphatase 1 in Plants1[W][OA]

Protein phosphatase 1 (PP1) is a eukaryotic serine/threonine protein phosphatase, and mediates diverse cellular processes in animal systems via the association of a catalytic subunit (PP1c) with multiple regulatory subunits that determine the catalytic activity, the subcellular localization, and the substrate specificity. However, no regulatory subunit of PP1 has been identified in plants so far. In this study, we identified inhibitor-3 (Inh3) as a regulatory subunit of PP1 and characterized a functional role of Inh3 in Vicia faba and Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana). We found Inh3 as one of the proteins interacting with PP1c using a yeast two-hybrid system. Biochemical analyses demonstrated that Arabidopsis Inh3 (AtInh3) bound to PP1c via the RVxF motif of AtInh3, a consensus PP1c-binding sequence both in vitro and in vivo. AtInh3 inhibited the PP1c phosphatase activity in the nanomolar range in vitro. AtInh3 was localized in both the nucleus and cytoplasm, and it colocalized with Arabidopsis PP1c in these compartments. Disruption mutants of AtINH3 delayed the progression of early embryogenesis, arrested embryo development at the globular stage, and eventually caused embryo lethality. Furthermore, reduction of AtINH3 expression by RNA interference led to a decrease in fertility. Transformation of the lethal mutant of inh3 with wild-type AtINH3 restored the phenotype, whereas that with the AtINH3 gene having a mutation in the RVxF motif did not. These results define Inh3 as a regulatory subunit of PP1 in plants and suggest that Inh3 plays a crucial role in early embryogenesis in Arabidopsis.
Secure-Base Caregiving and Adult Attachment Development Within the Client-Psychotherapist Relationship

Secure-Base Caregiving and Adult Attachment Development Within the Client-Psychotherapist Relationship by Dennis A. Weeks EdS, Tennessee Technological University, 1996 MA, Pepperdine University, 1979 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy General Psychology
FOP Is a Centriolar Satellite Protein Involved in Ciliogenesis

Centriolar satellites are proteinaceous granules that are often clustered around the centrosome. Although centriolar satellites have been implicated in protein trafficking in relation to the centrosome and cilium, the details of their function and composition remain unknown. FOP (FGFR1 Oncogene Partner) is a known centrosome protein with homology to the centriolar satellite proteins FOR20 and OFD1. We find that FOP partially co-localizes with the satellite component PCM1 in a cell cycle-dependent manner, similarly to the satellite and cilium component BBS4. As for BBS4, FOP localization to satellites is cell cycle dependent, with few satellites labeled in G1, when FOP protein levels are lowest, and most labeled in G2. FOP-FGFR1, an oncogenic fusion that causes a form of leukemia called myeloproliferative neoplasm, also localizes to centriolar satellites where it increases tyrosine phosphorylation. Depletion of FOP strongly inhibits primary cilium formation in human RPE-1 cells. These results suggest that FOP is a centriolar satellite cargo protein and, as for several other satellite-associated proteins, is involved in ciliogenesis. Localization of the FOP-FGFR1 fusion kinase to centriolar satellites may be relevant to myeloproliferative neoplasm disease progression.
Weak lensing with COMBO-17: Estimation and removal of intrinsic alignments

We estimate and remove the contamination of weak gravitational lensing measurements by the intrinsic alignment of close pairs of galaxies. We do this by investigating both the aperture mass B mode statistic, and the shear correlations of close and distant pairs of galaxies. These can be used to quantify non-lensing effects in weak lensing surveys. We reanalyse the {COMBO-17} survey, and study published results from the Red-sequence Cluster Survey and the {VIRMOS-DESCART} survey, concluding that the intrinsic alignment effect is at the lower end of the range of theoretical predictions. We also revisit this theoretical issue, and show that misalignment of baryon and halo angular momenta may be an important effect which can reduce the intrinsic ellipticity correlations estimated from numerical simulations to the level that we and the {SuperCOSMOS} survey observe. We re-examine the cosmological parameter estimation from the {COMBO-17} survey, using the shear correlation function, and now marginalizing over the Hubble constant. Assuming no evolution in galaxy clustering, and marginalizing over the intrinsic alignment signal, we find the mass clustering amplitude is reduced by 0.03 to ? 8(? m/0.27)0.6= 0.71 +/- 0.11, where ? m is the matter density parameter. We consider the forthcoming {SuperNova/Acceleration} Probe {(SNAP)} wide weak lensing survey, and the {Canada-France-Hawaii} Telescope Legacy wide synoptic survey; we expect them to be contaminated on scales {\textgreater}1 arcmin by intrinsic alignments at the level of {\textasciitilde}1 and {\textasciitilde}2 per cent, respectively. Division of the {SNAP} survey for lensing tomography significantly increases the contamination in the lowest redshift bin to {\textasciitilde}7 per cent and possibly higher. Removal of the intrinsic alignment effect by the downweighting of nearby galaxy pairs will therefore be vital for {SNAP. }
Crystal structure of NirD, the small subunit of the nitrite reductase NirbD from Mycobacterium tuberculosis at 2.0 Å resolution

NirD is part of the nitrite reductase complex NirBD that catalyses the reduction of nitrite to NH3 in nitrate assimilation and anaerobic respiration. The crystal structure analysis of NirD from Mycobacterium tuberculosis shows a double β‐sandwich fold. NirD is related in three‐dimensional structure and sequence to the Rieske proteins; however, it does not contain any Fe–S cluster or other cofactors that might be involved in electron transfer. A cysteine residue at the protein surface, conserved in NirD homologues lacking the iron–sulfur cluster might be important for the interaction with NirB and possibly stabilize one of the Fe–S centers in this subunit. Proteins 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Phosphorylation of Titin Modulates Passive Stiffness of Cardiac Muscle in a Titin Isoform-dependent Manner

We investigated the effect of protein kinase A (PKA) on passive force in skinned cardiac tissues that express different isoforms of titin, i.e., stiff (N2B) and more compliant (N2BA) titins, at different levels. We used rat ventricular (RV), bovine left ventricular (BLV), and bovine left atrial (BLA) muscles (passive force: RV > BLV > BLA, with the ratio of N2B to N2BA titin, ∼90:10, ∼40:60, and ∼10:90%, respectively) and found that N2B and N2BA isoforms can both be phosphorylated by PKA. Under the relaxed condition, sarcomere length was increased and then held constant for 30 min and the peak passive force, stress-relaxation, and steady-state passive force were determined. Following PKA treatment, passive force was significantly decreased in all muscle types with the effect greatest in RV, lowest in BLA, and intermediate in BLV. Fitting the stress-relaxation data to the sum of three exponential decay functions revealed that PKA blunts the magnitude of stress-relaxation and accelerates its time constants. To investigate whether or not PKA-induced decreases in passive force result from possible alteration of titin–thin filament interaction (e.g., via troponin I phosphorylation), we conducted the same experiments using RV preparations that had been treated with gelsolin to extract thin filaments. PKA decreased passive force in gelsolin-treated RV preparations with a magnitude similar to that observed in control preparations. PKA was also found to decrease restoring force in skinned ventricular myocytes of the rat that had been shortened to below the slack length. Finally, we investigated the effect of the β-adrenergic receptor agonist isoprenaline on diastolic force in intact rat ventricular trabeculae. We found that isoprenaline phosphorylated titin and that it reduced diastolic force to a degree similar to that found in skinned RV preparations. Taken together, these results suggest that during β-adrenergic stimulation, PKA increases ventricular compliance in a titin isoform-dependent manner.
Counselling for burnout in Norwegian doctors: one year cohort study

Objective To investigate levels and predictors of change in dimensions of burnout after an intervention for stressed doctors. Design Cohort study followed by self reported assessment at one year. Setting Norwegian resource centre. Participants 227 doctors participating in counselling intervention, 2003-5. Interventions Counselling (lasting one day (individual) or one week (group based)) aimed at motivating reflection on and acknowledgement of the doctors’ situation and personal needs. Main outcome measures Levels of burnout (Maslach burnout inventory) and predictors of reduction in emotional exhaustion investigated by linear regression. Results 185 doctors (81%, 88 men, 97 women) completed one year follow-up. The mean level of emotional exhaustion (scale 1-5) was significantly reduced from 3.00 (SD 0.94) to 2.53 (SD 0.76) (t=6.76, P<0.001), similar to the level found in a representative sample of 390 Norwegian doctors. Participants had reduced their working hours by 1.6 hours/week (SD 11.4). There was a considerable reduction in the proportion of doctors on full time sick leave, from 35% (63/182) at baseline to 6% (10/182) at follow-up and a parallel increase in the proportion who had undergone psychotherapy, from 20% (36/182) to 53% (97/182). In the whole cohort, reduction in emotional exhaustion was independently associated with reduced number of work hours/week (β=0.17, P=0.03), adjusted for sex, age, and personality dimensions. Among men “satisfaction with the intervention” (β=0.25, P=0.04) independently predicted reduction in emotional exhaustion. Conclusions A short term counselling intervention could contribute to reduction in emotional exhaustion in doctors. This was associated with reduced working hours for the whole cohort and, in men, was predicted by satisfaction with the intervention.
New nutrients exert fundamental control on dissolved organic carbon accumulation in the surface Atlantic Ocean

Significance Oceanic dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is, at 662 ± 32 petagrams of carbon (Pg C), one of Earth's major, exchangeable carbon reservoirs. With its large inventory and biologic turnover, the pool has been invoked as a principal source/sink of atmospheric CO2 driving paleoclimate variations. Controls on past source/sink functions remain unknown, but insights can be gleaned from the modern ocean. Here, we find that new nutrients introduced to the euphotic zone exert a fundamental and predictable control on the net production of DOC, in turn playing a large part in determining the surface distribution and concentrations of the pool. Climate-driven changes in surface ocean renewal of nutrients will ultimately control the source term, dictating the inventory of carbon residing in marine DOC. The inventories of carbon residing in organic matter dissolved in the ocean [dissolved organic carbon (DOC)] and in the atmosphere as CO2 are of the same order of magnitude, such that small changes in the DOC pool could have important consequences in atmospheric carbon and thus climate. DOC in the global ocean is largely formed in the sunlit euphotic zone, but identifying predictable controls on that production is an important yet unrealized goal. Here, we use a testable and causative correlation between the net production of DOC and the consumption of new nutrients in the euphotic zone of the Atlantic Ocean. We demonstrate that new nutrients introduced to the euphotic zone by upwelling in divergence zones and by winter convective overturn of the water column, and the primary production associated with those nutrients, are the ultimate driver of DOC distributions across the Atlantic basins. As new nutrient input will change with a changing climate, the role of DOC in the ocean’s biological pump should likewise be impacted.
The stroke impact scale version 2.0. Evaluation of reliability, validity, and sensitivity to change.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE To be useful for clinical research, an outcome measure must be feasible to administer and have sound psychometric attributes, including reliability, validity, and sensitivity to change. This study characterizes the psychometric properties of the Stroke Impact Scale (SIS) Version 2.0. METHODS Version 2.0 of the SIS is a self-report measure that includes 64 items and assesses 8 domains (strength, hand function, ADL/IADL, mobility, communication, emotion, memory and thinking, and participation). Subjects with mild and moderate strokes completed the SIS at 1 month (n=91), at 3 months (n=80), and at 6 months after stroke (n=69). Twenty-five subjects had a replicate administration of the SIS 1 week after the 3-month or 6-month test. We evaluated internal consistency and test-retest reliability. The validity of the SIS domains was examined by comparing the SIS to existing stroke measures and by comparing differences in SIS scores across Rankin scale levels. The mixed model procedure was used to evaluate responsiveness of the SIS domain scores to change. RESULTS Each of the 8 domains met or approached the standard of 0.9 alpha-coefficient for comparing the same patients across time. The intraclass correlation coefficients for test-retest reliability of SIS domains ranged from 0.70 to 0.92, except for the emotion domain (0.57). When the domains were compared with established outcome measures, the correlations were moderate to strong (0.44 to 0.84). The participation domain was most strongly associated with SF-36 social role function. SIS domain scores discriminated across 4 Rankin levels. SIS domains are responsive to change due to ongoing recovery. Responsiveness to change is affected by stroke severity and time since stroke. CONCLUSIONS This new, stroke-specific outcome measure is reliable, valid, and sensitive to change. We are optimistic about the utility of measure. More studies are required to evaluate the SIS in larger and more heterogeneous populations and to evaluate the feasibility and validity of proxy responses for the most severely impaired patients.
Using Events from UFO-B in an Ontology Collaborative Construction Environment

In previous works, it was introduced an approach to support collaborative construction and evolution of domain ontologies based on UFO-A. However, there are areas of knowledge, like in the petroleum geology, where we need to represent some natural/geological phenomena which aren’t possible to be well represented by UFO-A constructs, by the fact that this concepts are treated as events that occur during time. Thus, this paper presents the results of the study to support events from UFO-B in an ontology collaborative construction environment, which initially was designed to maintain a collaboration record from a domain ontology based on UFO-A.
Research Paper: Individual and Joint Expert Judgments as Reference Standards in Artifact Detection

OBJECTIVE To investigate the agreement among clinical experts in their judgments of monitoring data with respect to artifacts, and to examine the effect of reference standards that consist of individual and joint expert judgments on the performance of artifact filters. DESIGN Individual judgments of four physicians, a majority vote judgment, and a consensus judgment were obtained for 30 time series of three monitoring variables: mean arterial blood pressure (ABPm), central venous pressure (CVP), and heart rate (HR). The individual and joint judgments were used to tune three existing automated filtering methods and to evaluate the performance of the resulting filters. MEASUREMENTS The interrater agreement was calculated in terms of positive specific agreement (PSA). The performance of the artifact filters was quantified in terms of sensitivity and positive predictive value (PPV). RESULTS PSA values between 0.33 and 0.85 were observed among clinical experts in their selection of artifacts, with relatively high values for CVP data. Artifact filters developed using judgments of individual experts were found to moderately generalize to new time series and other experts; sensitivity values ranged from 0.40 to 0.60 for ABPm and HR filters (PPV: 0.57-0.84), and from 0.63 to 0.80 for CVP filters (PPV: 0.71-0.86). A higher performance value for the filters was found for the three variable types when joint judgments were used for tuning the filtering methods. CONCLUSION Given the disagreement among experts in their individual judgment of monitoring data with respect to artifacts, the use of joint reference standards obtained from multiple experts is recommended for development of automatic artifact filters.
- Original Investigation -

Background: Microscopic studies in newborns and animal models indicate impaired myelination after premature birth, particularly for cortical myelination; however, it remains unclear whether such myelination impairments last into adulthood and – if so – are relevant for impaired cognitive performance. It has been suggested that the ratio of T1w and T2w MRI signal intensity (T1w/T2w ratio) is a proxy for myelin content. We hypothesized altered grey matter (GM) T1w/T2w ratio in premature-born adults, which is associated with lower cognitive performance after premature birth. Methods: We analyzed GM T1w/T2w ratio in 101 very premature-born adults (<32 weeks of gestation and/or birthweight <1500g, VP/VLBW) and 109 full-term controls at 26 years of age, controlled for voxel-wise volume alterations. Cognitive performance was assessed by verbal, performance, and full-scale intelligence quotient (IQ) using the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. Results: Significantly higher T1w/T2w ratio in VP/VLBW subjects was found bilaterally in widespread cortical areas, particularly in frontal, parietal and temporal cortices, and in putamen and pallidum. In these areas, T1w/T2w ratio was not related to birth variables such as gestational age, or IQ scores. In contrast, significantly lower T1w/T2w ratio in VP/VLBW subjects was found in bilateral clusters in superior temporal gyrus which was associated with birth weight in the VP/VLBW group. Furthermore, lower T1w/T2w ratio in left superior temporal gyrus was associated with lower full-scale and verbal IQ. Conclusions: Results demonstrate GM T1w/T2w ratio alterations in premature-born adults and suggest altered GM myelination development after premature birth with lasting and functionally relevant effects into early adulthood.
A Word-Order Constraint on Phonological Activation

Word-order rules impose major constraints on linguistic behavior. For example, adjectives appear before nouns in English, and after nouns in French. This means that constraints on word order must be language-specific properties upheld on-line by the language system. Despite the importance of these rules, little is known about how they operate. We report an influence of word order on the activation of phonological representations. Participants were presented with colored objects and asked to name either the colors or the objects; the phonological similarity between the object and color names was manipulated. French speakers showed a phonological congruency effect in color naming, but not in object naming. English participants yielded the opposite pattern: a phonological effect in object naming, but not in color naming. Differences in the typical order of nouns and adjectives in French and English provide a plausible account for this cross-linguistic contrast. More generally, these results provide direct evidence for the operation of word-order constraints during language production.