Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Educational Health Disparities in Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors: Findings from Jamaica Health and Lifestyle Survey 2007–2008

Objectives Socioeconomic disparities in health have emerged as an important area in public health, but studies from Afro-Caribbean populations are uncommon. In this study, we report on educational health disparities in cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors (hypertension, diabetes mellitus, hypercholesterolemia, and obesity), among Jamaican adults. Methods We analyzed data from the Jamaica Health and Lifestyle Survey 2007–2008. Trained research staff administered questionnaires and obtained measurements of blood pressure, anthropometrics, glucose and cholesterol. CVD risk factors were defined by internationally accepted cut-points. Educational level was classified as primary or lower, junior secondary, full secondary, and post-secondary. Educational disparities were assessed using age-adjusted or age-specific prevalence ratios and prevalence differences obtained from Poisson regression models. Post-secondary education was used as the reference category for all comparisons. Analyses were weighted for complex survey design to yield nationally representative estimates. Results The sample included 678 men and 1,553 women with mean age of 39.4 years. The effect of education on CVD risk factors differed between men and women and by age group among women. Age-adjusted prevalence of diabetes mellitus was higher among men with less education, with prevalence differences ranging from 6.9 to 7.4 percentage points (p < 0.05 for each group). Prevalence ratios for diabetes among men ranged from 3.3 to 3.5 but were not statistically significant. Age-specific prevalence of hypertension was generally higher among the less educated women, with statistically significant prevalence differences ranging from 6.0 to 45.6 percentage points and prevalence ratios ranging from 2.5 to 4.3. Similarly, estimates for obesity and hypercholesterolemia suggested that prevalence was higher among the less educated younger women (25–39 years) and among more educated older women (40–59 and 60–74 years). There were no statistically significant associations for diabetes among women, or for hypertension, high cholesterol, or obesity among men. Conclusion Educational health disparities were demonstrated for diabetes mellitus among men, and for obesity, hypertension, and hypercholesterolemia among women in Jamaica. Prevalence of diabetes was higher among less educated men, while among younger women the prevalence of hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, and obesity was higher among those with less education.
Retarded electric and magnetic fields of a moving charge: Feynman's derivation of Li\'enard-Wiechert potentials revisited

Retarded electromagnetic potentials are derived from Maxwell's equations and the Lorenz condition. The difference found between these potentials and the conventional Li\'{e}nard-Wiechert ones is explained by neglect, for the latter, of the motion-dependence of the effective charge density. The corresponding retarded fields of a point-like charge in arbitary motion are compared with those given by the formulae of Heaviside, Feynman, Jefimenko and other authors. The fields of an accelerated charge given by the Feynman are the same as those derived from the Li\'{e}nard-Wiechert potentials but not those given by the Jefimenko formulae. A mathematical error concerning partial space and time derivatives in the derivation of the Jefimenko equations is pointed out.
Silencing of RASSF3 by DNA Hypermethylation Is Associated with Tumorigenesis in Somatotroph Adenomas

The pathogenic mechanisms underlying pituitary somatotroph adenoma formation, progression are poorly understood. To identify candidate tumor suppressor genes involved in pituitary somatotroph adenoma tumorigenesis, we used HG18 CpG plus Promoter Microarray in 27 human somatotroph adenomas and 4 normal human adenohypophyses. RASSF3 was found with frequent methylation of CpG island in its promoter region in somatotroph adenomas but rarely in adenohypophyses. This result was confirmed by pyrosequencing analysis. We also found that RASSF3 mRNA level correlated negatively to its gene promoter methylation level. RASSF3 hypermethylation and downregulation was also observed in rat GH3 and mouse GT1.1 somatotroph adenoma cell lines. 5-Aza-2′ deoxycytidine and trichostatin-A treatment induced RASSF3 promoter demethylation, and restored its expression in GH3 and GT1.1 cell lines. RASSF3 overexpression in GH3 and GT1.1 cells inhibited proliferation, induced apoptosis accompanied by increased Bax, p53, and caspase-3 protein and decreased Bcl-2 protein expression. We also found that the antitumor effect of RASSF3 was p53 dependent, and p53 knockdown blocked RASSF3-induced apoptosis and growth inhibition. Taken together, our results suggest that hypermethylation-induced RASSF3 silencing plays an important role in the tumorigenesis of pituitary somatotroph adenomas.
Evaluation of five gentamicin assay procedures for clinical microbiology laboratories

Five gentamicin assay procedures (a bioassay, an enzyme immunoassay, a latex agglutination inhibition test, a fluorescence immunoassay, and a radioimmunoassay) were evaluated to determine which was optimal for our laboratory. The evaluation was based on recovery and precision studies and results of analyses of patient samples, as well as technical assay performance factors. The latex agglutination inhibition test appears useful for laboratories performing only occasional assays for gentamicin; however, the fact that some rheumatoid factor-positive sera, as well as some other sera for unknown reasons, may give falsely low values is a potential drawback to this procedure. Because of its accuracy, precision, rapid turn-around time, and relative simplicity of performance, we selected the enzyme immunoassay procedure for routine use for gentamicin assays in our laboratory.
Male-specific region of the bovine Y chromosome is gene rich with a high transcriptomic activity in testis development

The male-specific region of the mammalian Y chromosome (MSY) contains clusters of genes essential for male reproduction. The highly repetitive and degenerative nature of the Y chromosome impedes genomic and transcriptomic characterization. Although the Y chromosome sequence is available for the human, chimpanzee, and macaque, little is known about the annotation and transcriptome of nonprimate MSY. Here, we investigated the transcriptome of the MSY in cattle by direct testis cDNA selection and RNA-seq approaches. The bovine MSY differs radically from the primate Y chromosomes with respect to its structure, gene content, and density. Among the 28 protein-coding genes/families identified on the bovine MSY (12 single- and 16 multicopy genes), 16 are bovid specific. The 1,274 genes identified in this study made the bovine MSY gene density the highest in the genome; in comparison, primate MSYs have only 31–78 genes. Our results, along with the highly transcriptional activities observed from these Y-chromosome genes and 375 additional noncoding RNAs, challenge the widely accepted hypothesis that the MSY is gene poor and transcriptionally inert. The bovine MSY genes are predominantly expressed and are differentially regulated during the testicular development. Synonymous substitution rate analyses of the multicopy MSY genes indicated that two major periods of expansion occurred during the Miocene and Pliocene, contributing to the adaptive radiation of bovids. The massive amplification and vigorous transcription suggest that the MSY serves as a genomic niche regulating male reproduction during bovid expansion.
Community identification based on clustering coefficient

Researches show that numerous complex networks have clustering effect. It is an indispensable step to identify node clusters in network, namely community, in which nodes are closely related, in many applications such as identification of ringleaders in anti-criminal and anti-terrorist network, efficient storage of data in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). At present, most of community identification methods still require the specifications of the number or the scale of community by user and still can't handle boundary nodes. In an attempt to solve these problems, a network community identification method based on clustering coefficient is proposed. This method makes use of individual-centered theory for reference and can automatically determine the number of communities. It is shown through contrastive experiments that communities identified by this method have more reasonable size and closer structure than those obtained by other methods which are also based on the individual-centered theory. Finally, a research direction is proposed of network community identification method based on the individual-centered theory. Keywordscomplex network; individual-centered theory; clustering coefficient;community identification
Graphene nanoplatelets-based smart textile for kinesthetic monitoring

In this work we developed novel stretchable sensors constituted by a percolating network of graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) which has been deposited via spray coating over a polyester fabric and integrated in a biocompatible elastomer. The electromechanical response of the sensors is firstly investigated through quasi-static tensile tests. The measured resistance variation under the applied stress confirms the piezoresistive behavior of the fabricated sensors, having a maximum gauge factor of 90 at strain of 25%. Moreover, the piezoresistive GNP-based coating is deposited over a polyester technical t-shirt and the ability of the smart textile to detect shoulder movements and breathe is demonstrated.
The long-term effects of fluoxetine on stress-related behaviour and acute monoaminergic stress response in stress sensitive rats

Fluoxetine and escitalopram are the only antidepressants approved by the Food and Drug Administration of the United States of America (FDA) for treatment of major depression in children and adolescents. Both drugs are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). In recent years there has been a growing concern over the long-term developmental effects of early-life exposure to SSRIs. In the current study we examined the developmental effects of pre-pubertal fluoxetine (10 mg/kg/day) administration in Flinders Sensitive Line (FSL) rats on monoaminergic stress responses and behaviour. We found significant differences in monoamine concentrations between fluoxetine and saline (vehicle) control groups in response to an acute swim stress. The noradrenergic stress response appeared to be significantly supressed in fluoxetine treated FSL rats. The same trend, though not statistically significant, was visible for the serotonergic stress response. Prepubertal fluoxetine exposure increased baseline dopaminergic release significantly but no dopaminergic stress response was evident after exposure to an acute forced swim stress. A significant decrease in locomotor activity was observed in fluoxetine treated rats. This study therefore identified the dependence of the development of noradrenergic and dopaminergic systems on the serotonergic system. Furthermore, targets for future research to characterise the interactions between these neurotransmitter systems during development were identified, specifically serotonin receptor subtypes and monoamine transporter proteins.
ClearView: An Interactive Context Preserving Hotspot Visualization Technique

Volume rendered imagery often includes a barrage of 3D information like shape, appearance and topology of complex structures, and it thus quickly overwhelms the user. In particular, when focusing on a specific region a user cannot observe the relationship between various structures unless he has a mental picture of the entire data. In this paper we present ClearView, a GPU-based, interactive framework for texture-based volume ray-casting that allows users which do not have the visualization skills for this mental exercise to quickly obtain a picture of the data in a very intuitive and user-friendly way. ClearView is designed to enable the user to focus on particular areas in the data while preserving context information without visual clutter. ClearView does not require additional feature volumes as it derives any features in the data from image information only. A simple point-and-click interface enables the user to interactively highlight structures in the data. ClearView provides an easy to use interface to complex volumetric data as it only uses transparency in combination with a few specific shaders to convey focus and context information
APE1/Ref-1 facilitates recovery of gray and white matter and neurological function after mild stroke injury

Significance AP endonuclease-1 (APE1)/redox effector factor-1 (Ref-1) is an essential DNA repair enzyme that has been difficult to study mechanistically because of embryonic lethality in conventional knockout animals. Thus, we generated a conditional APE1 knockout model to examine the protective role of endogenous APE1 in experimental stroke. Induced APE1 knockout in adulthood greatly exacerbated neuron and oligodendrocyte loss after mild ischemic stroke and prevented the intrinsic, long-term recovery of sensorimotor function and spatial learning and memory. APE1 knockout also aggravated ischemia-induced destruction of myelin and impairment of axon conduction in white matter. We conclude that APE1 dictates fundamental life and death decisions in both gray and white matter and plays an indispensable role in intrinsic recovery after mild ischemic injury. A major hallmark of oxidative DNA damage after stroke is the induction of apurinic/apyrimidinic (AP) sites and strand breaks. To mitigate cell loss after oxidative DNA damage, ischemic cells rapidly engage the base excision-repair proteins, such as the AP site-repairing enzyme AP endonuclease-1 (APE1), also named redox effector factor-1 (Ref-1). Although forced overexpression of APE1 is known to protect against oxidative stress-induced neurodegeneration, there is no concrete evidence demonstrating a role for endogenous APE1 in the long-term recovery of gray and white matter following ischemic injury. To address this gap, we generated, to our knowledge, the first APE1 conditional knockout (cKO) mouse line under control of tamoxifen-dependent Cre recombinase. Using a well-established model of transient focal cerebral ischemia (tFCI), we show that induced deletion of APE1 dramatically enlarged infarct volume and impaired the recovery of sensorimotor and cognitive deficits. APE1 cKO markedly increased postischemic neuronal and oligodendrocyte degeneration, demonstrating that endogenous APE1 preserves both gray and white matter after tFCI. Because white matter repair is instrumental in behavioral recovery after stroke, we also examined the impact of APE1 cKO on demyelination and axonal conduction and discovered that APE1 cKO aggravated myelin loss and impaired neuronal communication following tFCI. Furthermore, APE1 cKO increased AP sites and activated the prodeath signaling proteins, PUMA and PARP1, after tFCI in topographically distinct manners. Our findings provide evidence that endogenous APE1 protects against ischemic infarction in both gray and white matter and facilitates the functional recovery of the central nervous system after mild stroke injury.
Combining automated on-line segmentation and incremental clustering for whole body motions

This paper describes a novel approach for incremental learning of human motion pattern primitives through on-line observation of human motion. The observed motion time series data stream is first stochastically segmented into potential motion primitive segments, based on the assumption that data belonging to the same motion primitive will have the same underlying distribution. The motion segments are then abstracted into a stochastic model representation, and automatically clustered and organized. As new motion patterns are observed, they are incrementally grouped together based on their relative distance in the model space. The resulting representation of the knowledge domain is a tree structure, with specialized motions at the tree leaves, and generalized motions closer to the root. The tree leaves, which represent the most specialized learned motion primitives, are then passed back to the segmentation algorithm, so that as the number of known motion primitives increases, the accuracy of the segmentation can also be improved. The combined algorithm is tested on a sequence of continuous human motion data obtained through motion capture, and demonstrates the performance of the proposed approach.
The enhancing effects of alcoholic extract of Nigella sativa seed on fertility potential, plasma gonadotropins and testosterone in male rats

Background: The task force on plants for fertility regulation in men continued with its program to identify novel prototypes in plants alleged to have fertility regulating properties. Nigella Sativa seeds are frequently used in folk medicine in the Middle East and some Asian countries for the promotion of good health and treatment of many ailments. Objective: To evaluated the role of alcoholic extract of Nigella sativa on fertility potential, Pituitary-testicular axis hormones and Testosterone in male rats. Materials and Methods: 24 male rats were randomly divided into 3 groups; control, group A and group B, each group comprising of 8 rats. Animals in control group received 1 ml of normal saline and treatment groups (A and B) received (gavage) graded doses of 200 and 400 mg/kg body weight of alcoholic extract of Nigella sativa seeds on a daily basis for 60 days. At the end of treatment period, fertility parameters such as body and reproductive organs weight, sperm motility, viability and count, epididymal sperm reserve (ESR), daily sperm production (DSP), blood testosterone concentration, Gonadotropins levels and fertility index were measured. Results: There was a significant difference in testes and epididymidis weight, sperm count, ESR, DSP, blood testosterone concentration, LH and fertility index in both the lower dose group and the higher group as compared to the control group. Conclusion: The results of this study showed that alcoholic extract of Nigella sativa seed especially in higher doses could increase fertility potential, LH and testosterone concentration in male rats.
Hugo Chávez and the building of his self-image through metaphor

In the last decades metaphor has been much researched from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. One of the metaphor research lines has been the study of metaphor in specialized genres, including politics (Musolff, 2004). Political metaphor has been considerably researched within the cognitive framework and a few investigations have been concerned with the use of metaphor by political leaders (e.g. Semino & Masci, 1996; Charteris-Black, 2004, 2009). The present paper focuses on the use of metaphor in the public discourse of Hugo Chavez, the former Venezuelan president. Chavez was a captivating, if polarizing, leader whose hallmark was his oratory. We analyse a sample of Chavez’s speeches for evidence of its metaphorical content. We identify and explain the linguistic and conceptual metaphors that occur in his speeches with a view to demonstrating that they play a central role in the construction of Chavez’s self-image as both a political and religious leader for persuasive purposes
Exponential Lower Bounds for Polytopes in Combinatorial Optimization

We solve a 20-year old problem posed by Yannakakis and prove that no polynomial-size linear program (LP) exists whose associated polytope projects to the traveling salesman polytope, even if the LP is not required to be symmetric. Moreover, we prove that this holds also for the cut polytope and the stable set polytope. These results were discovered through a new connection that we make between one-way quantum communication protocols and semidefinite programming reformulations of LPs.
The relationship between migratory behaviour, memory and the hippocampus: an intraspecific comparison

It has been hypothesized that memory-demanding ecological conditions might result in enhanced memory and an enlarged hippocampus, an area of the brain involved in memory processing, either via extensive memory experience or through evolutionary changes. Avian migration appears to represent one of such memory-demanding ecological conditions. We compared two subspecies of the white-crowned sparrow: migratory Zonotrichia leucophrys gambelii and non-migratory Z. l. nuttalli. Compared to non-migratory Z. l. nuttalli, migratory Z. l. gambelii showed better memory performance on spatial one-trial associative learning tasks and had more hippocampal neurons. Migratory subspecies also had larger hippocampi relative to the remainder of the telencephalon but not relative to body mass. In adults, the differences between migratory and non-migratory sparrows were especially pronounced in the right hippocampus. Juvenile migratory Z. l. gambelii had relatively larger hippocampal volume compared to juvenile non-migratory Z. l. nuttalli. Adult migratory Z. l. gambelii had more neurons in their right hippocampus compared to juveniles but such differences were not found in non-migratory Z. l. nuttalli. Our results suggest that migratory behaviour might be related to enhanced spatial memory and an enlarged hippocampus with more neurons, and that differences in the hippocampus between migratory and non-migratory sparrows might be experience-dependent. Furthermore, for the first time our results suggest that the right hippocampus, which encodes global spatial information, might be involved in migratory behaviour.
H-Ras Mediates the Inhibitory Effect of Epidermal Growth Factor on the Epithelial Na+ Channel

The present study investigates the role of small G-proteins of the Ras family in the epidermal growth factor (EGF)-activated cellular signalling pathway that downregulates activity of the epithelial Na+ channel (ENaC). We found that H-Ras is a key component of this EGF-activated cellular signalling mechanism in M1 mouse collecting duct cells. Expression of a constitutively active H-Ras mutant inhibited the amiloride-sensitive current. The H-Ras-mediated signalling pathway that inhibits activity of ENaC involves c-Raf, and that the inhibitory effect of H-Ras on ENaC is abolished by the MEK1/2 inhibitor, PD98059. The inhibitory effect of H-Ras is not mediated by Nedd4-2, a ubiquitin protein ligase that regulates the abundance of ENaC at the cell surface membrane, or by a negative effect of H-Ras on proteolytic activation of the channel. The inhibitory effects of EGF and H-Ras on ENaC, however, were not observed in cells in which expression of caveolin-1 (Cav-1) had been knocked down by siRNA. These findings suggest that the inhibitory effect of EGF on ENaC-dependent Na+ absorption is mediated via the H-Ras/c-Raf, MEK/ERK signalling pathway, and that Cav-1 is an essential component of this EGF-activated signalling mechanism. Taken together with reports that mice expressing a constitutive mutant of H-Ras develop renal cysts, our findings suggest that H-Ras may play a key role in the regulation of renal ion transport and renal development.
Mechanisms and Clinical Implications of Post-exercise Hypotension in Humans

HALLIWILL, J.R. Mechanisms and clinical implications of post-exercise hypotension in humans. Exerc. Sports Sci. Rev., Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 65-70, 2001. Post-exercise hypotension is common after moderate-intensity dynamic exercise. It results from persistent reductions in vascular resistance mediated by the autonomic nervous system and vasodilator substances. These effects appear more pronounced and last longer in hypertensive individuals. Post-exercise hypotension may also play an important role in plasma volume recovery after exercise.