Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cellular internalization of cytolethal distending toxin: a new end to a known pathway

The cytolethal distending toxins (CDTs) are unique in their ability to induce DNA damage, activate checkpoint responses and cause cell cycle arrest or apoptosis in intoxicated cells. However, little is known about their cellular internalization pathway. We demonstrate that binding of the Haemophilus ducreyi CDT (HdCDT) on the plasma membrane of sensitive cells was abolished by cholesterol extraction with methyl‐β‐cyclodextrin. The toxin was internalized via the Golgi complex, and retrogradely transported to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), as assessed by N‐linked glycosylation. Further translocation from the ER did not require the ER‐associated degradation (ERAD) pathway, and was Derlin‐1 independent. The genotoxic activity of HdCDT was dependent on its internalization and its DNase activity, as induction of DNA double‐stranded breaks was prevented in Brefeldin A‐treated cells and in cells exposed to a catalytically inactive toxin. Our data contribute to a better understanding of the CDT mode of action and highlight two important aspects of the biology of this bacterial toxin family: (i) HdCDT translocation from the ER to the nucleus does not involve the classical pathways followed by other retrogradely transported toxins and (ii) toxin internalization is crucial for execution of its genotoxic activity.
Medicare payment for cognitive vs procedural care: minding the gap.

IMPORTANCE Health care costs in the United States are rising rapidly, and consensus exists that we are not achieving sufficient value for this investment. Historically, US physicians have been paid more for performing costly procedures that drive up spending and less for cognitive services that may conserve costs and promote population health. OBJECTIVE To quantify the Medicare payment gap between representative cognitive and procedural services, each requiring similar amounts of physician time. DESIGN Observational analytical study comparing the hourly revenue generated by a physician performing cognitive services (Current Procedural Terminology [CPT] code 99214) and billing by time with that generated by physicians performing screening colonoscopy (Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System code G0121) or cataract extraction (CPT code 66984) for Medicare beneficiaries. SETTING Outpatient medical practice. PARTICIPANTS Medical care providers of outpatient services. EXPOSURE Work relative-value unit assigned to physician services. MAIN OUTCOME AND MEASURES Payment for physician services. RESULTS The revenue for physician time spent on 2 common procedures (colonoscopy and cataract extraction) was 368% and 486%, respectively, of the revenue for a similar amount of physician time spent on cognitive care. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE Our analysis indicates that Medicare reimburses physicians 3 to 5 times more for common procedural care than for cognitive care and illustrates the financial pressures that may contribute to the US health care system’s emphasis on procedural care. We demonstrate that 2 common specialty procedures can generate more revenue in 1 to 2 hours of total time than a primary care physician receives for an entire day’s work.
Empirical study of schedule delay in Moroccan construction projects

Abstract As a chronic and a common problem worldwide, most construction projects suffer from schedule delay and construction projects in Morocco are not an exception. The aim of this study is to determine the critical causes affecting projects delays in Moroccan construction industry. Forty-nine causes of delay were identified from the literature review and redefined through interviews with Moroccan experts. These causes are classified according to nine categories: client, contractor, consultant/designer, finance, planning and scheduling, communication and contractual relationship, material, labours and equipment, and external. A questionnaire survey was conducted with public and private contractors and consultants in order to assess the relative importance of construction delay causes in Morocco. A total of 330 valid responses were collected. Statistical analysis of data collected from this survey study reveals that the top-10 delay causes are: delay of progress payment, lack of training for employees, lack of waste management strategy, unrealistic contract duration imposed by clients, rework due to the construction errors, excessive subcontracting, delay in obtaining permits from governmental agencies, ineffective planning and scheduling, lack of collective planning, and unskilled workforce. These findings can be helpful for construction project managers to guide efforts in improving the performance of the Moroccan construction industry.
Hierarchical Decision Making for Aggregated Energy Management of Distributed Resources

This paper presents a bilevel model for describing the interdependence of decisions between a retailer/aggregator and the distributed resources owners that the former serves and represents. Decision making is performed in a hierarchical fashion. The retailer performs the energy management of various resources indirectly; price signals are used as incentives for inducing the entities owning the distributed resources in a behavior that optimizes the operation and economic profit of the microgrid that they compose. The two-level interaction is formulated mathematically as a mathematical programming problem with complementarity constraints, while nonlinearities are replaced by equivalent linear expressions. The results of a characteristic case study indicate the efficiency and scalability of the proposed model.
Kinematic analysis and multi-objective optimization of a new reconfigurable parallel mechanism with high stiffness

SUMMARY This paper presents a novel reconfigurable parallel mechanism, which can serve as a machine tool. The proposed parallel mechanism can change its structure parameters by driving a bevel gear system fixed in the base platform. First, the forward and inverse kinematics of the proposed mechanism are investigated. Second, the reachable workspace and Jacobian matrix are conducted. Based on the Jacobian matrix, the stiffness model and dexterity of the end effector are developed in detail. Finally, a multi-objective optimization is performed by using the Genetic Algorithm, and the workspace and global performance indexes of stiffness as well as the dexterity are considered as the performance indices to improve the performance of the reconfigurable parallel mechanism. Finally, Pareto frontier figure and several tables are provided to illustrate the results of the optimization. The results showed the proposed method has improved the performance of the reconfigurable machine tool in terms of its stiffness and dexterity.
Context awareness of social group by topic mining on visiting logs of mobile users in two dimensions

Ubiquitous computing technologies have been developed fast and various decision support systems were proposed. Consecutively, in recently, people are working on an implicit service agent of mobile phone to make people to be provided useful services without paying attentions. However, when people want to buy some products or to go somewhere, people are still going to use Internet to get preference information of group of people. They should put queries and click one or more documents. In this sense, how the implicit services could be perfectly available by only mining on the contextual data obtainable from smart phones? In this paper, we propose a model providing group preference information implicitly through topic-mining on the data obtainable from smart phones. We would introduce developed context awareness model in smart phones and apply a topic model which automatically learns a hierarchy of topics to our server. We would also show our simple experimentation to ensure the effectiveness of topic-mining and of provided implicit group preference information.
Targeting Endogenous Transforming Growth Factor β Receptor Signaling in SMAD4-Deficient Human Pancreatic Carcinoma Cells Inhibits Their Invasive Phenotype 1

Transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) suppresses tumor formation by blocking cell cycle progression and maintaining tissue homeostasis. In pancreatic carcinomas, this tumor suppressive activity is often lost by inactivation of the TGF-β-signaling mediator, Smad4. We found that human pancreatic carcinoma cell lines that have undergone deletion of MADH4 constitutively expressed high endogenous levels of phosphorylated receptor-associated Smad proteins (pR-Smad2 and pR-Smad3), whereas Smad4-positive lines did not. These elevated pR-Smad levels could not be attributed to a decreased dephosphorylation rate nor to increased expression of TGF-β type I (TβR-I) or type II (TβR-II) receptors. Although minimal amounts of free bioactive TGF-β1 and TGF-β2 were detected in conditioned medium, treatment with a pan-specific (but not a TGF-β3 specific) TGF-β-neutralizing antibody and with anti-αVβ6 integrin antibody decreased steady-state pSmad2 levels and activation of a TGF-β-inducible reporter gene in neighboring cells, respectively. Thus, activation of TGF-β at the cell surface was responsible for the increased autocrine endogenous and paracrine signaling. Blocking TβR-I activity using a selective kinase inhibitor (SD-093) strongly decreased the in vitro motility and invasiveness of the pancreatic carcinoma cells without affecting their growth characteristics, morphology, or the subcellular distribution of E-cadherin and F-actin. Moreover, exogenous TGF-β strongly stimulated in vitro invasiveness of BxPC-3 cells, an effect that could also be blocked by SD-093. Thus, the motile and invasive properties of Smad4-deficient pancreatic cancer cells are at least partly driven by activation of endogenous TGF-β signaling. Therefore, targeting the TβR-I kinase represents a potentially powerful novel therapeutic approach for the treatment of this disease.
Regarding Some Short Forms of the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale

A program of Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale research is described, focusing on the distinction between positively keyed and negatively keyed items. Balanced short forms exist for the measurement of an overall social desirability construct, but evidence suggests the use as well of separate subscales. These subscales are seen to correlate differentially with the substantive personality variable neuroticism, with content-free measures of semantic style, and with self-peer agreement. A simple procedure for the concomitant measurement of possible tendency to acquiesce is also described.
Retention predictors of a smoking treatment provided by a public psychosocial unit in Brazil

Abstract Psychosocial units in Brazil (CAPS) provide access to mental health and addiction patients, who are not routinely treated for nicotine dependence. The present study analysed predictors of retention of a 6-week treatment provided by a CAPS unit to 367 smokers with a high rate of psychiatric disorders and addictions for the period 2007–2010. Several baseline variables were collected. Retention was defined as the presence of the individual in all four medical consultations and six group sessions. Multivariate discrete time Cox survival regression models were used to test for the outcome of interest. Timetables were used to explore in which moment of the treatment each predictor was important. Time to smoking the first cigarette (TTFC) 5 min or later after waking and nicotine patch use (nicotine replacement therapy, NRT) were associated with retention. The present study supports the importance of the variables TTFC and NRT when used in treatment retention for a sample with a high rate of psychiatric and alcohol disorders. NRT seems to be very important in the beginning of the treatment, probably because of withdrawal symptoms. Individuals currently undergoing psychiatric treatment and with alcohol problems had good retention rates comparable to the other individuals.
Individual adaptation to endurance training guided by heart rate variability

Ida Heikura (2015). Individual adaptation to endurance training guided by heart rate variability. Department of Biology of Physical Activity, University of Jyvaskyla, Master’s Thesis in Exercise Physiology. 65 pp. Heart rate variability (HRV) reflects the function of the cardiac autonomic system. Therefore, planning daily endurance training based on HRV has been suggested to be a potential training method compared to preprogrammed training. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of an individualized training program based on 7-day rolling averaged HRV on endurance training adaptation. Methods. A total of 40 recreational endurance runners, 20 women (age 34.0 ± 7.8 yr, VO2max 48.6 ± 4.4 ml/kg/min) and 20 men (age 35.4 ± 6.6 yr, VO2max 55.5 ± 5.3 ml/kg/min) volunteered for the study. For the final analysis, 31 subjects were included. All subjects trained similarly during the first 4-week training period, after which they were matched for age, sex, endurance performance and HRV into two training groups (HRV and TRAD) for the eight-week long second training period. HRV group trained according to a 7-day rolling averaged morning RMSSD (RMSSDrollavg), whereas TRAD trained based on a predetermined training program. HRV trained at high intensity on days when the RMSSDrollavg was within the individually determined smallest worthwhile change (SWC) and when the RMSSD was outside this area subjects did low intensity training. TRAD did 50 % of the training at high intensity during the second period. Individual training frequency was kept unchanged throughout the study in all groups. Endurance performance was measured with a maximal incremental running test on a treadmill and a field 3000 m running test. HRV group measured real-time morning RMSSD with Omegawave. Nightly HRV was measured with Garmin HR monitor and analyzed with Firstbeat SPORTS software. Results. The velocity in the 3000 m run improved in HRV (2.1 %, p = 0.004) but not in TRAD. In contrast, VO2max increased in both HRV (3.7 %, p = 0.027) and TRAD (5.0 %, p = 0.002). Maximum velocity (2.6 %, p = 0.005; 2.1 %, p < 0.001) and velocities at LT2 (2.6 %, p = 0.025; 1.9 %, p = 0.004) and LT1 (2.8 %, p = 0.028) on a treadmill increased significantly in HRV and all but VLT1 in TRAD, respectively. RMSSDday (-25.3 %) and RMSSDrollavg (-8.3 %) decreased from pre to post. The CV for the mean RMSSDday was 14.5 %, whereas for the RMSSDrollavg it was 6.7 %. Conclusion. The change in the 3000m run velocity improved in HRV but not in TRAD even though HRV did less HIT. RMSSDrollavg provides a more reliable method to assess the response to training compared to RMSSDday which has more day-to-day variability. Future studies should further investigate HRV guided training and aim to find a reliable protocol for field practice. Based on the results of the current study, the use of HRV in planning daily endurance training to optimize training adaptation is highly recommended.
Protein antigens of Plasmodium knowlesi clones of different variant antigen phenotype

SUMMARY Mature asexual stages of the malaria parasite Plasmodium knowlesi synthesize proteins of Mr 180 000–225 000 that are expressed on the outer membrane of infected erythrocytes and which vary antigenically such that different parasite clones are specifically agglutinated with homologous antibody. Other non-agglutinable clones have been prepared which fail to express variant antigen on infected cells. Two agglutinable clones of different variant antigen phenotypes and a non-agglutinable clone were examined to determine the proportion of total malarial proteins represented by variant antigens. Malarial proteins were labelled with various radioactive amino acids and the sodium dodecyl sulphate—polyacrylamide gel patterns for the three clones compared by fluorography. The patterns were indistinguishable, the variant antigens being undetectable in analyses of total malarial proteins. Furthermore, these antigens were not detected by Coomassie Blue-staining of total cellular proteins after electrophoresis. Sodium dodecyl sulphate and Triton X-100 extracts of labelled cells were immunoprecipitated using a panel of sera of defined agglutination specificity. The variant antigens could not be detected in the fluorographic patterns of total malarial antigens immuno-precipitated by these sera. In contrast, after lactoperoxidase catalysed radio-iodination of intact schizont-infected cells, the 125 I-variant antigens on the cell surface were identified by demonstrating their accessibility both to antibody and to trypsin with intact cells. Thus, the variant antigens are quantitatively very minor malarial proteins that can only be detected by methods which selectively analyse the subset of proteins on the erythrocyte surface.
TRICHOME BIREFRINGENCE-LIKE 27 Affects Aluminum Sensitivity by Modulating the O-Acetylation of Xyloglucan and Aluminum-Binding Capacity in Arabidopsis 1 [ W ] [ OPEN ]

State Key Laboratory of Plant Physiology and Biochemistry, College of Life Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China (X.F.Z., Y.S, J.X.W., Y.L., Z.W.W., S.J.Z.); State Key Laboratory of Plant Genomics, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China (B.C.Z., Y.H.Z); Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, California, 94720 (N.M.); and Department of Plant Physiology and Nutrition, Tea Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, The Key Laboratory of Tea Chemical Engineering, Ministry of Agriculture, Hangzhou 310008, China (Y.Z.S.).
Frequency offsets compensation for multiuser interference cancellation in OFDMA uplink systems

In this paper, we propose a multiuser interference cancellation scheme for orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) uplink systems. In the scheme, two steps of compensation and cancellation in time and frequency domains, respectively, are applied. In the frequency domain, we only consider the interference from both adjacent sides of the band to reduce the computation complexity and parallel interference cancellation is employed. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method reveals improved performance.
Exchange energy of H2+ calculated from polarization perturbation theory and the Holstein-Herring method.

Tang, Toennies, and Yiu have shown that unsymmetrized Rayleigh-Schroedinger perturbation theory can be used to calculate the leading terms in the ground-state exchange energy of H{sub 2}{sup +} using the method of Holstein and Herring. We clarify this seemingly puzzling result by showing that their approximation to the polarization wave function is {ital exactly} he leading term of the Herring-Holstein function. We also show that a generalization of their method yields the leading asymptotic exchange energy terms for excited states, thereby suggesting the existence of a general underlying property and the applicability of the method to many-electron systems.
Neuroprotective effect of the marine macroalga Gelidiella acerosa: identification of active compounds through bioactivity-guided fractionation

Abstract Context Gelidiella acerosa (Forsskål) Feldmann & G. Hamel (Rhodophyta-Gelidiales) is a marine red macroalga. Our previous work found that a benzene extract of G. acerosa possesses noticeable neuroprotective activity, when evaluated through in vitro and in vivo systems. Objective Bioactive-guided fractionation and identification of active compounds by column chromatography using solvents of varying polarity. Materials and methods Fractionation was done by column chromatography, antioxidant and anticholinesterase activity was assessed by DPPH and cholinesterase inhibition assays (50–200 μg/ml), compound identification was done by LC-MS analysis, the mode of interaction of active compound was analyzed through docking studies and quantification was done by high-performance thin-layer chromatography (HPTLC) analysis. Results The results suggest that fractions F9–F13 exhibited significant (p < 0.05) antioxidant and anticholinesterase activities. Hence, these fractions were pooled together and verified for neuroprotective activity. The pooled fraction was subjected to LC-MS analysis and among all the compounds, phytol was previously reported to possess excellent neuroprotective potential. Hence, the neuroprotective potential of phytol was assessed. The results suggest that phytol showed significant (p < 0.05) antioxidant activities (25–125 μg/ml) with an IC50 value of 95.27 ± 1.65 μg/ml and cholinesterase inhibitory potential (5–25 μg/ml) with IC50 values of 2.704 ± 0.07 and 5.798 ± 0.72 μg/ml for AChE and BuChE, respectively. Molecular docking studies suggest that phytol interacts with cholinesterase through the arginine residue of the enzyme. HPTLC quantification showed that about 6.266 μg of phytol was present per mg of pooled fraction. Conclusion The study suggests that phytol might act as the key compound in contributing to the neuroprotective potential of G. acerosa.
Explanted Glomeruli: Utility and Limitations

Ex vivo incubation of isolated glomeruli has been used for many years to investigate biochemical properties of glomeruli. However, little has been understood about whether and how isolation and explanation per se affect the structure and function of the glomerulus. We recently reported that ex vivo incubation of isolated normal glomeruli results in severe apoptosis of podocytes, activation of the family of mitogen-activated protein kinase and expression of several genes regulated by activator protein 1. In this article, we summarize our current findings and discuss the utility and limitations of explanted glomeruli.
Low Delay and Interference Aware Data Gathering Scheme for Battery-Free Wireless Sensor Networks

In Battery-Free Wireless Sensor Network (BF-WSN), nodes are powered by the energy harvested from ambience instead of batteries. The nodes may frequently suffer from insufficient energy so that they need to alternate normal operation (such as transmitting/receiving, etc.) with harvesting energy. This brings in extra packet delay for the nodes to deliver data to the sink(s). Therefore, delivering data with shorter delay is a critical concern for BF-WSN nodes. In this paper, we first define the weight of wireless link that takes into account interference among links, balancing data load among the subtrees of the data gathering tree, and energy harvesting rate (EHR) of the nodes. Then, using the defined weight, we present the heuristic algorithm to build data gathering tree by letting the wireless link with a smaller weight join the tree prior to the ones with greater weights so that the wireless links either tending towards interference with the other ones, bringing in unbalance data load in the subtrees, or having smaller EHR are deferred to join the tree, thus reducing packet delay. Simulation results show the proposed data gathering scheme outperforms the existing scheme in terms of the delay per packet reaching the sink.
Market area selection and data development for Medicare fee-for-service reform, final report

This project was funded by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services under contract no. 500-00-0022. The statements contained in this report are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. RTI assumes responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of the information contained in this report. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Linda Andrews should receive special recognition for her contributions to this project and report. Her conscientious attention to detail and careful work in constructing and populating the database are commendable. In addition, the technical chapters of this report could not have been written without her help. Her outstanding work has contributed immensely to the database and its documentation.