Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Influence of PRKCH gene polymorphism on antihypertensive response to amlodipine and telmisartan

ABSTRACT This study aimed to evaluate the effect of PRKCH rs2230500 genetic polymorphism on efficacy of amlodipine and telmisartan for patients with hypertension. A total of 136 essential hypertension (EH) patients were treated with amlodipine (70 patients) or telmisartan (66 patients), respectively. Genetic polymorphism was genotyped by Sanger sequencing. Both baseline and post-treatment blood pressure (BP) and heart rate were measured to evaluate the influence of genetic polymorphism on the antihypertensive response. No significant difference in the absolute decrease in diastolic blood pressure (DBP),systolic blood pressure (SBP), and mean arterial pressure (MAP) was observed among PRKCH rs2230500 genotypes after 4-week amlodipine or telmisartan therapy (p > 0.05). However, when compared with carriers or GG genotype, the antihypertensive effect of PRKCH rs2230500 GA/AA carriers was superior in telmisartan treatment group. PRKCH rs2230500 gene polymorphism is significantly related to the efficiency in telmisartan therapy (p = 0.02). The PRKCH rs2230500 may influence the antihypertensive efficacy of telmisartan in Chinese EH patients, and further studies are needed to confirm these findings.
Factors That Affect Adherence to Bipolar Disorder Treatments: A Stated-Preference Approach

Background: Medication nonadherence is high among patients with bipolar disorder, and may lead to poor clinical outcomes, decreased quality of life, and increased resource utilization. Objective: To investigate the factors associated with nonadherence and to assess the effect of patient-stated preferences on stated adherence to hypothetical medications. Research Design: A choice-format stated-preference Web survey was administered. In each choice question, patients were asked to choose among 2 or 3 different hypothetical medications. Each choice question was followed by a question asking patients about their likely adherence to the selected medication alternative. Subjects: Patients (N = 469) with self-reported bipolar disorder completed the survey which was programmed and administered to members of a chronic-illness Web panel. Measures: Factors associated with stated adherence to current treatment were identified. The effects of socioeconomic characteristics and medication attributes on stated adherence to hypothetical medications were assessed. Results: Patient socioeconomic characteristics affect patients' adherence. Being white and having more education has a significant positive effect on adherence. Self-reported current adherence is a strong factor in predicting adherence for better medications. Medication outcome attributes, especially severity of depressive episodes, strongly influence patients' stated adherence to treatment. Weight gain and cognitive effects of a medication most significantly affected patients' likely adherence to medications for bipolar disorder. Conclusions: Patients are the final health care decision makers; their satisfaction with a medication is likely to affect whether or not they adhere to the medication prescribed by their physician. In the case of bipolar disorder, this study suggests patients are likely to be more adherent to medications that reduce the severity of depressive episodes and do not cause weight gain or cognitive side effects. By understanding the factors that improve adherence, health care providers can optimize prescribing patterns, which may ultimately lead to more effective management and improvement in the patient's condition.
International Comparison of Clinical, Bovine, and Environmental Escherichia coli O157 Isolates on the Basis of Shiga Toxin-Encoding Bacteriophage Insertion Site Genotypes

ABSTRACT Escherichia coli O157:H7 genotypes in the bovine reservoir may differ in virulence. The proportion of clinical genotypes among cattle isolates was weakly (P = 0.054) related to the international incidence of E. coli O157:H7-associated hemolytic-uremic syndrome, varied among clinical isolates internationally, and also differed along the putative cattle-hamburger-clinical case transmission chain.
DNA repair genes in Parkinson's disease.

AIMS There is a growing interest in the understanding of a possible role of DNA repair systems in ageing and neurodegenerative diseases after DNA damage is observed in the brain of individuals affected by neurodegenerative diseases. In the light of these findings, we investigated whether DNA repair gene polymorphisms (XRCC1 Arg399Gln, XRCC3 Thr241Met XPD Lys751Gln, XPG Asp1104His, APE1 Asp148Glu, and HOGG1 Ser326Cys) account for an increased risk of Parkinson's disease (PD). METHODS The present analyses are based on 60 case subjects with PD and 108 unrelated healthy controls. Genotyping of DNA repair gene polymorphisms were detected by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism. RESULTS We, for the first time, demonstrated the positive association of APE1, XRCC1, and XRCC3 DNA repair gene variants with PD risk. In our study, the frequencies of Glu/Glu genotype in APE1, Gln+ genotype of XRCC1, and Thr+ genotype of XRCC3 are higher in patients than in controls (p=0.028, p=0.002 and p=0.046, respectively). CONCLUSIONS In conclusion, our findings have suggested that APE1, XRCC1, and XRCC3 genetic variants may be a risk factor by increasing oxidative stress that might cause the loss of dopaminergic cells in the substantiata nigra and locus caeruleus, leading to abnormal signal transmittion, and ultimately, the development of PD. In addition, generation of reactive oxygen species from dopamine might affect the other DNA repair pathway proteins that we did not examine in the current study. Further studies with larger sample groups are necessary to clarify the role of DNA repair genes and the development of PD.
A Simple Subnanosecond Light Pulser

An electronic circuit for generation of short light pulses is presented. The circuit uses low-cost, general-purpose electronic components and is simple in its structure. It is suitable for testing of the instruments and setups for the detection of light and adjusting correct timing and synchronization. The light pulses have a full width at half-maximum (FWHM) ranging from 0.9 to 2 ns for selected blue and red LEDs, and 250 ps for a red laser diode.
Are the “Customers” of Business Ethics Courses Satisfied? An Examination of One Source of Business Ethics Education Legitimacy

Though there are many factors that contribute to the perceived legitimacy of business ethics education, this research focuses on one factor that is given great attention both formally and informally in many business schools: student satisfaction with the course. To understand the nature of student satisfaction, the authors draw from multiple theories with central claims relating (met) expectations with satisfaction. The authors then compare student expectations of business ethics courses with instructor objectives and discover that business ethics courses are not necessarily designed to meet student expectations. The authors speculate that this general mismatch between student expectations and instructor objectives has material consequences. As one example, the authors analyze student evaluations from three business schools and identify a “business ethics course effect”: a negative association between business ethics courses and student evaluations. The authors discuss the implications for business ethics education of a situation where pedagogical objectives (“Educate! ”) and market prescriptions (“Satisfy! ”) point in different directions.
Protein exchange dynamics at chemoreceptor clusters in Escherichia coli

Signal processing in bacterial chemotaxis relies on large sensory complexes consisting of thousands of protein molecules. These clusters create a scaffold that increases the efficiency of pathway reactions and amplifies and integrates chemotactic signals. The cluster core in Escherichia coli comprises a ternary complex composed of receptors, kinase CheA, and adaptor protein CheW. All other chemotaxis proteins localize to clusters by binding either directly to receptors or to CheA. Here, we used fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) to investigate the turnover of chemotaxis proteins at the cluster and their mobility in the cytoplasm. We found that cluster exchange kinetics were protein-specific and took place on several characteristic time scales that correspond to excitation, adaptation, and cell division, respectively. We further applied analytical and numerical data fitting to analyze intracellular protein diffusion and to estimate the rate constants of cluster equilibration in vivo. Our results indicate that the rates of protein turnover at the cluster have evolved to ensure optimal performance of the chemotaxis pathway.
Localization and Expression of MreB in Vibrio parahaemolyticus under Different Stresses

ABSTRACT MreB, the homolog of eukaryotic actin, may play a vital role when prokaryotes cope with stress by altering their spatial organization, including their morphology, subcellular architecture, and localization of macromolecules. This study investigates the behavior of MreB in Vibrio parahaemolyticus under various stresses. The behavior of MreB was probed using a yellow fluorescent protein-MreB conjugate in merodiploid strain SC9. Under normal growth conditions, MreB formed helical filaments in exponential-phase cells. The shape of starved or stationary-phase cells changed from rods to small spheroids. The cells differentiated into the viable but nonculturable (VBNC) state with small spherical cells via a “swelling-waning” process. In all cases, drastic remodeling of the MreB cytoskeleton was observed. MreB helices typically were loosened and fragmented into short filaments, arcs, and spots in bacteria under these stresses. The disintegrated MreB exhibited a strong tendency to attach to the cytoplasmic membrane. The expression of mreB generally declined in bacteria in the stationary phase and under starvation but was upregulated during the initial periods of cold shock and VBNC state differentiation and decreased afterwards. Our findings demonstrated the behavior of MreB in the morphological changes of V. parahaemolyticus under intrinsic or extrinsic stresses and may have important implications for studying the cellular stress response and aging.
Varied Responsiveness to Immigrant Community Growth among Local Governments

Immigration policy remains a hotly debated issue nationally in the United States, but the interaction of legislative gridlock on comprehensive reform and the actions of policy entrepreneurs push policy innovation into the arena of state and local governments. This article examines the intersection of immigration and local policy making, examining basic patterns of local responsiveness and apparent factors driving the response. Using the insights of existing research, including Rubaii-Barrett and Brenner, this article highlights political incorporation (e.g., Ramakrishnan and Gulasekaram) and bureaucratic incorporation (e.g., Marrow) as competing explanations in the literature. As an exploratory effort to evaluate the relative claims, this article reports the results of a document analysis of the local government Web sites for seventeen localities in the Richmond, VA, Metropolitan Statistical Area looking first at how localities are responding, second at indications of why and finally assessing whether initiative for responses occurs more at a bureaucratic or elected official level.
A simple over-the-air hardware calibration procedure in TDD systems

Accurate hardware calibration is necessary to achieve channel reciprocity and enable closed-loop MIMO operation in time-division-duplex mode. In this paper, a simple over-the-air procedure that efficiently estimates the base station (BS) hardware chains is presented. The procedure is to be performed between the BS and a dedicated user equipment (UE) experiencing a high signal-to-noise-ratio, and is based on a downlink (DL) and a following uplink (UL) signaling procedure. The UE first estimates the DL channel of each BS antenna and then sends, in the UL, normalized inverses of the estimated DL channels. In addition, the UE feeds back a set of normalization parameters to the BS. The obtained UL signals in addition to the normalization parameters allow for the estimation of the BS hardware chains and ensure channel reciprocity is achieved. Numerical results illustrate the performance of the proposed procedure when a zero-forcing precoder is used at the BS.
Genetic disorders of sheep in New Zealand: A review and perspective

Abstract Genetic disorders of sheep that have occurred in New Zealand are reviewed and discussed with regard to phenotype, inheritance and, where known, genotype. Inbreeding was a major factor in the emergence of some of them. The various disorders reflect a continuum, ranging from simple monogenic diseases or malformations due to dysfunctional gene products, those monogenic disorders dependant on environmental interactions, malformations due to homeotic gene dysfunctions, and multifactorial diseases for which genetic factors are associated with disease susceptibility. Chromosomal aberrations, although of limited importance, have contributed to an understanding of the physical chromosome map and derivative linkage map of sheep.
morphMan: Automated manipulation of vascular geometries

Cardiovascular diseases are overwhelming the healthcare systems, and the costs are anticipated to increase in the years to come (Murray & Lopez, 1997), not to the mention the personal tragedy for those affected (Gage, Cardinalli, & Owens, 1996). Systemic risk factors are well known to correlate with cardiovascular diseases in general, but, for instance, arterial plaques and brain aneurysms are focalized, highlighting the role of local hemodynamics. Furthermore, blood-flow induced wall shear stress (WSS) is known to contribute to vessel wall adaption and remodeling (A. M. Malek, Alper, & Izumo, 1999; Morbiducci et al., 2016), but is challenging to measure in-vivo. On the other hand, medical images are routinely available and have been extensively used in combination with computational fluid dynamics to study the initiation, progression, and outcome of vascular pathologies (Taylor & Steinman, 2010).
Cystic dystrophy of the duodenal wall: A rare but need-to-know disease

Cystic dystrophy of the duodenal wall (CDDW) is a serious but uncommon complication of heterotopic pancreatic tissue characterized by increased duodenal wall thickness associated with intraparietal cystic lesions. It is mainly observed in middle-aged male patients with alcoholic chronic pancreatitis. Clinical symptoms are usually nonspecific and it is important to take them into account in patients with the abovementioned history. Imaging techniques have been useful for diagnosis, especially endoscopic ultrasound (EUS), to visualize cystic lesions in the wall. There is some controversy regarding treatment, because although good results have been obtained with surgical techniques, the recent emergence of EUS-guided drainages has also achieved acceptable results and they are suggested as a good alternative to traditional surgery. Following is our experience in the diagnosis and treatment of four patients with CDDWs; all of whom had a history of alcoholism and smoking, and were studied due to clinical signs of abdominal pain and vomiting. EUS was particularly useful in reaching the final diagnosis.
Information-theoretic database building and querying for mobile augmented reality applications

Recently, there has been tremendous interest in the area of mobile Augmented Reality (AR) with applications including navigation, social networking, gaming and education. Current generation mobile phones are equipped with camera, GPS and other sensors, e.g., magnetic compass, accelerometer, gyro in addition to having ever increasing computing/graphics capabilities and memory storage. Mobile AR applications process the output of one or more sensors to augment the real world view with useful information. This paper's focus is on the camera sensor output, and describes the building blocks for a vision-based AR system. We present information-theoretic techniques to build and maintain an image (feature) database based on reference images, and for querying the captured input images against this database. Performance results using standard image sets are provided demonstrating superior recognition performance even with dramatic reductions in feature database size.
Does Microcredit Empower Women or Is It a New Form of Discipline? The Case of Microcredit Self-Help Groups in India

Does microcredit empower women, or does it just discipline and control them in a new way? This paper draws on the case of self-help groups (SHG) in rural India to shed light on microcredit’s various contradictory effects. By adopting the rules of patronage, SHGs renew the domination of women while giving them the opportunity to participate more fully in local networks of power and influence. This raises the question of what ‘empowerment’ can mean in an environment where social relationships – and the dependency they imply – are instrumental to accessing resources. It also highlights the ambiguity of ‘empowering’ development projects, which both have to adopt the established order in order to establish legitimacy, and at the same time contest it.
2,4-Dimethylphenyl benzoate

The crystal structure of the title compound (24DMPBA), C15H14O2, resembles those of 4-methylphenyl benzoate, 2,3-dimethylphenyl benzoate and other aryl benzoates, with similar bond parameters. The central –O—C—O– group in 24DMPBA makes dihedral angles of 85.81 (5) and 5.71 (13)°, respectively, with the benzoyl and phenyl rings, while the two aromatic rings form a dihedral angle of 80.25 (5)°. The molecules are packed with their axes parallel to the a-axis direction.
Structural and Functional Characterization of an Essential RTX Subdomain of Bordetella pertussis Adenylate Cyclase Toxin*

The adenylate cyclase toxin (CyaA) is one of the major virulence factors of Bordetella pertussis, the causative agent of whooping cough. CyaA is able to invade eukaryotic cells by a unique mechanism that consists in a calcium-dependent, direct translocation of the CyaA catalytic domain across the plasma membrane of the target cells. CyaA possesses a series of a glycine- and aspartate-rich nonapeptide repeats (residues 1006–1613) of the prototype GGXG(N/D)DX(L/I/F)X (where X represents any amino acid) that are characteristic of the RTX (repeat in toxin) family of bacterial cytolysins. These repeats are arranged in a tandem fashion and may fold into a characteristic parallel β-helix or β-roll motif that constitutes a novel type of calcium binding structure, as revealed by the three-dimensional structure of the Pseudomonas aeruginosa alkaline protease. Here we have characterized the structure-function relationships of various fragments from the CyaA RTX subdomain. Our results indicate that the RTX functional unit includes both the tandem repeated nonapeptide motifs and the adjacent polypeptide segments, which are essential for the folding and calcium responsiveness of the RTX module. Upon calcium binding to the RTX repeats, a conformational rearrangement of the adjacent non-RTX sequences may act as a critical molecular switch to trigger the CyaA entry into target cells.
OMIP‐023: 10‐Color, 13 antibody panel for in‐depth phenotyping of human peripheral blood leukocytes

THIS panel was developed and optimized to determine the phenotype and activation of 15 different leukocyte subtypes in one run. Leukocytes are identified by expression of CD45 (leu-1) pan leukocyte antigen. Neutrophil (CD16), monocyte (CD14), T(CD3), B-lymphocyte (CD19), and NK-cell (CD16 and CD56) markers are employed. Special gating strategy is used for subtyping of granulocytes (e.g., eosinophils, neutrophils, basophils). For further T-cell phenotyping, CD4/CD8 markers are used for differentiation of four T-cell subtypes, CD25/CD127 for regulatory T cell identification and CD3/CD16/CD56 for NKT-cells, additionally. Special gating strategies have been developed for B-cell, NK-cell, and monocyte subtyping. For detection and analysis of activation also further activation markers (HLA-DR, CD38, CD25, CD127, and CD69) are analyzed. This panel has been established for analysis of human RBC-lysed EDTAtreated whole blood samples and for cord blood (Table 1). Since the starting material is fresh EDTA-treated blood, dead cells are probably not an issue. Thus to save one channel for specific staining the vitality staining was not used in the panel.
Analysis of abrB Mutations, Mutant Proteins, and Why abrB Does Not Utilize a Perfect Consensus in the −35 Region of Its σA Promoter (*)

The Bacillus subtilis global regulator AbrB is a DNA-binding protein composed of six identical monomers of 96 amino acids that shows specificity to the promoter regions of its target genes including its own. We have sequenced thirteen previously uncharacterized abrB mutations. Four mutant AbrB proteins were purified, and their DNA-binding properties and multimeric structures were examined. AbrB23 (R25S) had no appreciable DNA binding activity but retained a hexameric structure, indicating that Arg25 is important in DNA interactions. Three other mutant proteins, AbrB1 (C56Y), AbrB19 (Gln83 → termination codon), and AbrB100 (L69P), showed decreased DNA binding and altered multimeric interactions. Analysis of the expression and AbrB binding affinities of mutant abrB promoters demonstrated that a consensus −35 region is incompatible with proper autoregulation of the abrB gene.
Reliable object handover through tactile force sensing and effort control in the Shadow Robot hand

A fundamental problem in cooperative HumanRobot Interaction is object handover. Existing works in this area assume the human can reliably grasp the object from the robot hand. However, in some situations the human can produce perturbing forces in the object that are not meant to end in a handover. These perturbations can result in the object being dropped or the robot hand being damaged. This paper addresses this problem and presents a mechanism for reliable robot to human object handover implemented in a Shadow Robot hand endowed with tactile sensing. Given a stable grasping configuration, using BioTAC sensors we are able to estimate the contact forces applied to the object, and provide a feedback signal to a joint effort controller to maintain grasp forces despite perturbations. Our system is able to identify between object pulling forces which should result in an object handover, and other disturbances. Experimental results show that the hand releases the object only when the object is pulled, validating the proposed algorithm.
Digital Craftsmanship: HCI Takes on Technology as an Expressive Medium

Traditional HCI goals like efficiency and ease-of-use, while important, are not sufficient for digital technology to function as an expressive medium. This digital craftsmanship also requires diversity, risk, personal taste, mastery, and respect for materials. We discuss how digital tools can support expressive practices and highlight multiple strands of relevant HCI research. This workshop brings together tool developers, practitioners, ethnographers, and others engaged with digital technology as an expressive medium. It highlights digital craftsmanship as a distinct domain for HCI research and seeks to distill insights and best practices for the HCI community.