Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Plexin B1 inhibits integrin‐dependent pp125FAK and Rho activity in melanoma

Semaphorins are secreted and membrane bound proteins that regulate axon guidance through receptors Plexins and neuropilins. Plexin B1, the Semaphorin 4D receptor, is a recently described tumor suppressor protein for melanoma. We recently showed that Plexin B1 abrogates activation of the oncogenic receptor, c‐Met, by its ligand, hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), in melanoma. We have now investigated the effect of Plexin B1 on integrin‐dependent pp125FAK activation, and the small GTP‐binding protein Rho, in melanoma. Integrin receptors and Rho play critical roles in melanoma progression, through regulation of migration, proliferation and apoptosis. We engineered two human melanoma cell lines expressing Plexin B1 and analyzed integrin‐dependent migration, integrin‐dependent pp125FAK activation, and Rho activity. Results show that Plexin B1 abrogates integrin‐dependent migration and activation of pp125FAK. We also show that Rho activity is significantly reduced in cells expressing Plexin B1, and that Plexin B1 suppresses HGF‐dependent Rho activation.
Dietary Na and ACE inhibition effects on renal tissue angiotensin I and II and ACE activity in rats.

This study was designed to improve and validate methods for the accurate and consistent quantitation of angiotensin (ANG) I and II levels in rat kidney and to determine the effects on renal ANG I and II of changes in dietary sodium intake and ANG-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibition. Kidneys from pentobarbital-anesthetized rats were rapidly removed and homogenized in methanol before extraction and purification of ANG peptides by solid-phase extraction and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Recoveries of 125I-ANG I and II were greater than 80%. Reversed-phase HPLC of the partially purified methanol extract showed that greater than 75% of the ANG I- and greater than 82% of the ANG II-like immunoreactivity coeluted with ANG I and II, respectively. Dietary sodium deprivation (0.003 meq/g) and excess (1.34 meq/g) for 7 days significantly (P less than 0.01) increased and decreased renal ANG I (296 +/- 30 and 82.6 +/- 15.8 vs. 161 +/- 18 fmol/g) and ANG II (216 +/- 16 and 45.6 +/- 11.8 vs. 98 +/- 16 fmol/g) contents, respectively. Plasma ANG I and II levels showed similar changes. ACE activity was significantly upregulated by sodium deprivation in both kidney (44% increase) and plasma (30% increase). In rats fed normal chow, infusion of enalaprilat for 1 h abolished plasma ACE activity but decreased renal ACE activity by only 58%. ACE inhibition increased renal and plasma ANG I levels 2.8- and 12-fold, respectively, and decreased renal and plasma ANG II levels 75-78%. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
On the epidemiology of running injuries

Using a survey questionnaire design, we investigated the incidence, site, and nature of jogging injuries among all participants of a popular 16 km race. The response rate was 83.6%. Of 4,358 male joggers, 45.8% had sustained jogging injuries during the 1 year study period, 14.2% had required medical care, and 2.3% had missed work because of jogging injuries. Occur rence of jogging injuries was independently associated with higher weekly mileage (P < 0.001), history of previous running injuries (P < 0.001), and competitive training motivation (P = 0.03). Higher mileage was also associated with more frequent medical consultations due entirely to jogging-related injuries. In 33 to 44 year olds (N = 1,757), the number of years of running was inversely related to incidence of injuries (P = 0.02). Injuries were not significantly related to race running speed, training surface, characteristics of running shoes, or relative weight. Achillodynia and calf muscle symptoms were the two most common overuse injuries and occurred significantly more often among older run ners with increased weekly mileage. We conclude that jogging injuries are frequent, that the number of firmly established etiologic factors is low, and that, in recom mending jogging, moderation should be the watchword.
Does Participation in 4‐H Improve Schooling Outcomes? Evidence from Florida

We examine the effect of participation in 4-H, the largest youth development program in the United States, on standardized test scores. We do this by utilizing grade-level longitudinal data on Florida's school districts from the Florida Department of Education combined with 4-H participation statistics from Florida 4-H. Specifically, we analyze the effect of the extent of 4-H participation for third through tenth grade on the mathematics and reading subtests of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT). We use a difference-in-difference-in-differences (DDD) approach to control for potential confounders of the causal relationship at the level of school districts, grades, and years. Our results indicate that the extent of 4-H participation at the district-grade-year level is positively and significantly related to several measures of performance on the FCAT test.
Comparison of magnetically induced elf fields in humans computed by FDTD and scalar potential FD codes

This paper presents a comparison of the magnetically induced low frequency electric and current density fields within an anatomically realistic model of the full human body, as computed using two different numerical techniques. The first method is a full wave quasi-static finite-difference time-domain method. The second method is based on a representation of the first-order internal electric field in terms of a scalar conduction potential plus a vector potential for the lowest-order applied magnetic field. Each code was used to calculate the fields, induced by three orthogonal uniform magnetic fields, in a 7.2 mm-resolution human full-body model. Three-dimensional correlation coefficients of better than 99.8% were observed between results computed by the two methods. Individual edge electric fields typically agree to 3 significant digits.
SERUM OSTEOCALCIN , BONE ALKALINE PHOSPHATASE AND CATHEPSIN K LEVELS OF PATIENTS WITH POSTMENOPAUSAL RA : CORRELATION WITH DISEASE ACTIVITY AND JOINT DAMAGE

Objective: To investigate serum levels of osteocalcin (OC), bone alkaline phosphatase (BALP) and cathepsin K in patients with postmenopausal rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and to evaluate the relationship between these markers and disease activity and radiological joint damage. Material and methods: Forty six postmenopausal women diagnosed with RA according to the criteria of American College of Rheumatology and 42 postmenopausal healthy women who have similar age range with the patient group were involved into the study. Disease activity was measured with Disease Activity Score (DAS 28). Furthermore, Larsen score was used to evaluate radiological damage. Results: OC and BALP levels were not different between postmenopausal patients with RA and control group (p >0.05). However, levels of cathepsin K were elevated in serum of the patients with postmenopausal RA when compared with that of the healthy control group (p<0.05). In addition, the elevated serum levels of cathepsin K were positively correlated with disease activity and joint destruction (p<0.05). No significant relationship was observed between OC and BALP levels and disease activity and joint destruction (p >0.05). Conclusions: Cathepsin K may be a valuable parameter to assess disease prognosis in postmenopausal RA.
Suitability of the Plant Root Simulator Probe for Use in the Mojave Desert

IEMs are left incontact with thesoil has been addressed by many due to the differences found with ion adsorp- To find a quick, relatively inexpensive measure for soil chemistry tion over time (Sibbesen, 1977; Tabatabai, 1982; van Raij in the Mojave Desert (MD), we evaluated the use of the ion-exchange Ion sorption onto the probes generally increased from Month 1 to 3, but the result was not linear. The sorption of some ions fluctuated tion process in which the counter-ions are added back during the three-month period, with ions desorbing and readsorbing onto the IEM surface. The probes used in this experi- or ion chemistry decreasing over the courseof the study.Soil moisture mentunderwentthisprocessatWesternAgInnovations and temperature did not appear to affect the probe's ability to detect (WAI) before implantation in the MD, however, Na ! differences across depths or season. Based on results from this experi- and HCO3 were used as counter-ions (WAI, Saskatoon, ment, we conclude that the burial time required for assessing relative SK, Canada; http://www.westernag.ca/innov/main.html; differences in ion chemistries at our sites is one month or less and verified 15 Apr. 2005). Sherrod et al. (2003) concluded that the PRS probe may be useful for detecting relative differences that only a single use is appropriate for IEMs in calcare- in ion chemistries among other soils in the MD. ous soils (similar to this study's site) due to a lack of desorption of soil ions from the membrane after mem- branes are eluted. Other authors have found IEM reuse I
Optimal bidding strategy of a plug-in electric vehicle aggregator in day-ahead electricity markets

With a potential future large-scale introduction of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs), the introduction of a new entity, the PEV fleet aggregator, is envisaged. Among other tasks, the aggregator would be responsible for managing charging and for purchasing electricity on behalf of the vehicles. PEV load can be considered flexible since vehicles are typically used only intermittently and, therefore, their demand can be shifted in time. In this paper we consider the problem of an aggregator bidding into the day-ahead electricity market with the objective to minimize charging costs while satisfying PEVs' flexible demand. The available charging flexibility depends on vehicle driving patterns, which determine the arrival and departure times and trip energy consumption. To take driver end-use constraints into account the fleet is modeled as a virtual storage resource with power and energy characteristics that depend on vehicle behavior. The bidding strategy of the aggregator is modeled as a bilevel problem. The upper-level problem represents the charging cost minimization of the aggregator subject to the power and energy constraints of the fleet. The lower-level problem represents the market clearing where the bids of other market participants are not known ex ante. Mathematically this problem can be described as a mathematical problem with equilibrium constraints (MPEC), which is implemented in the form of a mixed-integer linear program. Results show that with flexible charging, costs can be significantly reduced compared to inflexible charging. Moreover, even with a simple mechanism to guess the bids of other market participants, results close to a perfect information benchmark can be achieved.
When Left Is “Right”

Right- and left-handers implicitly associate positive ideas like “goodness” and “honesty” more strongly with their dominant side of space, the side on which they can act more fluently, and negative ideas more strongly with their nondominant side. Here we show that right-handers’ tendency to associate “good” with “right” and “bad” with “left” can be reversed as a result of both long- and short-term changes in motor fluency. Among patients who were right-handed prior to unilateral stroke, those with disabled left hands associated “good” with “right,” but those with disabled right hands associated “good” with “left,” as natural left-handers do. A similar pattern was found in healthy right-handers whose right or left hand was temporarily handicapped in the laboratory. Even a few minutes of acting more fluently with the left hand can change right-handers’ implicit associations between space and emotional valence, causing a reversal of their usual judgments. Motor experience plays a causal role in shaping abstract thought.
Multi-time interval power system state estimation incorporating phasor measurements

Although much of today's power system remains steady, the integrations of wind power make a portion of the system become fluctuant. To monitor these fluctuations, we need to utilize phasor measurements and shorten the time interval for state estimation. On the other hand, however, this means huge increase in computation burden. As a tradeoff between accuracy and computation efficiency, a multi-time interval state estimation approach for power systems is proposed in this paper, in which fluctuant states are estimated with shorter interval and the rest steady states are estimated with longer interval. Their fusion forms the state estimates for entire power system.
Nest Protection during a Long-term Conservation Project as a Tool to Increase the Autochthonous Population of Emys orbicularis ( L . , 1758 ) in Austria

A long-term conservation project has identified nest depredation as a major risk for the survival of the only native, reproducing population of the threatened European Pond Turtle in Austria in the Donau-Auen National Park floodplain. Thus, in 2005–2016, we utilized five designs of nest protection grids (NPGs) at the key nesting locations. Generally, NPG designs are flat 30–50 cm metal square grids with mesh size of 3 cm, attached to the ground by metal pegs. The designs, beyond their anti-predator role, had to allow mowing over them for habitat maintenance, and remain inconspicuous to visitors. NPGs were placed upon 787 nests, allowing ca. 4,500 turtles to hatch and emerge successfully. Different NPG designs provided different levels of protection, which also changed with duration of continuous use; the improvements of the NPG designs overall increased their effectiveness against native mammalian predators. However, the introduced but still rare Raccoon might be unimpeded (or undeterred). Depredation rates on protected nests did not correlate significantly with the abundance of the Red Fox (Spearman R = -0.43, p = 0.22, n = 10) and the European Badger (R = 0.47, p = 0.17, n = 10). Learning and individual experience of predators likely have stronger influence than mere abundance. We suggest that the long-term use of the NPGs has successfully allowed the population to increase.
Stress Field Control during Large Caldera-Forming Eruptions

Crustal stress field can have a significant influence on the way magma is channelled through the crust and erupted explosively at the surface. Large Caldera Forming Eruptions (LCFEs) can erupt hundreds to thousands of cubic kilometres of magma in a relatively short time along fissures under the control of a far-field extensional stress. The associated eruption intensities are estimated in the range 109 - 1011 kg/s. We analyse syn-eruptive dynamics of LCFEs, by simulating numerically explosive flow of magma through a shallow dyke conduit connected to a magma chamber that in turn is fed by a deeper magma reservoir, both under the action of an extensional far-field stress. Results indicate that huge amounts of high viscosity silicic magma can be erupted over timescales of a few to several hours. Our study provides answers to outstanding questions relating to the intensity and duration of catastrophic volcanic eruptions in the past. In addition, it presents far-reaching implications for the understanding of dynamics and intensity of large-magnitude volcanic eruptions on Earth and to highlight the necessity of a future research to advance our knowledge of these rare catastrophic events.
Recognition of corners of planar checkboard calibration pattern image

The recognition of the internal corners of a planar checkerboard calibration pattern image is very important to camera calibration. An effective approach is proposed to automatically recognize the internal corners of the planar checkerboard calibration pattern image based on the characteristics of local intensity and the grid line architecture of the planar checkerboard pattern image. The proposed procedure consists of the detection of image corners, the recognition of the corners at the intersections of black and white squares and the recognition of the corners at the intersections of two groups of grid lines. Experiments show that the proposed approach obviously reduces the time cost for camera calibration, speeds up calibration process and is especially adapted for automatic calibration based on multiple images.
Operation of Lorentz-Force MEMS Magnetometers With a Frequency Offset Between Driving Current and Mechanical Resonance

The paper discusses the operation of Lorentz-force-based microelectromechanical magnetometers at a driving-current frequency slightly lower than the device resonance frequency. Among the advantages with respect to operation at resonance, there are a higher achievable signal to noise ratio (thanks to the lower permitted pressure and damping coefficient, which have now no influence on the maximum sensing bandwidth) and the possibility of driving more magnetometers in series through a single current source, enabling the fabrication of low-power 3-axis magnetic field sensors. A partial drawback is represented by a loss in gain-factor. Experimental results obtained on a sample device confirm the trade-off between gain-factor decrease and bandwidth increase. Guidelines for an optimized design of Lorentz force magnetometers are given together with a comparison with other state-of-the-art technologies through the introduction of a figure of merit. In particular, it is shown how Lorentz force devices can reach better performance in terms of minimum detectable magnetic flux density per unit current consumption and bandwidth.
DIFFERENTIAL MECHANISM-BASED INHIBITION OF CYP3A4 AND CYP3A5 BY VERAPAMIL

The genetic basis for polymorphic expression of CYP3A5 has been recently identified, but the significance of CYP3A5 expression is unclear. The purpose of this study is to quantify the capability of verapamil, a mechanism-based inhibitor of CYP3A, and its metabolites to inhibit the activities of CYP3A4 and CYP3A5, and to determine whether CYP3A5 expression in human liver microsomes alters the inhibitory potency of verapamil. Testosterone 6β-hydroxylation or midazolam 1′-hydroxylation was used to quantify CYP3A activity. The possibility that verapamil and its metabolites form metabolic-intermediate complex (MIC) with CYP3A was assessed using dual beam spectrophotometry. Verapamil and N-desalkylverapamil (D617) were found to have little inhibitory effect on cDNA-expressed CYP3A5 activity and did not form a MIC with cDNA-expressed CYP3A5 as indicated by the appearance of the characteristic peak at 455 nm. At 50 μM, norverapamil showed time-dependent inhibition of CYP3A5 (30%), but to a much lesser extent compared with that of CYP3A4 (80%). The estimated values of the inactivation parameters kinact μM and KμMI μM of norverapamil were 4.53 μM and 0.07 min–1 for cDNA-expressed CYP3A5, and 10.3 μM and 0.30 min–1 for cDNA-expressed CYP3A4. Human liver microsomes that expressed CYP3A5 were less inhibited by both verapamil and norverapamil. The inactivation efficiency of verapamil and norverapamil was 30 times and 45 times lower, respectively, for CYP3A5-expressing microsomes compared with CYP3A5-non-expressing microsomes. These findings indicate that the presence of variable CYP3A5/CYP3A4 expression in the liver may contribute to the interindividual variability associated with verapamil-mediated drug interactions.
Improvement of bandwidth efficiency of UWB-IR and DS-UWB with frequency-domain equalization (FDE) based on cyclic prefix (CP) reconstruction

In recent years, an Ultra Wideband (UWB) has attracted much attention in short range high speed wireless communications. Meanwhile, the single-carrier transmission with frequency domain equalization (SC-FDE) has also recently at- tracted much attention. It is reported that the SC-FDE sys- tem obtains an excellent performance as well as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), because the SC-FDE system has the advantage of frequency diversity gain even in strong frequency selective channels. However, in the SC-FDE system, the cyclic extension reduces the bandwidth efficiency. Thus, in the SC-FDE system, various methods to improve the bandwidth efficiency are reported. In this paper, we evaluate the improvement of bandwidth efficiency based on cyclic prefix (CP) reconstruction as a method of improving bandwidth efficiency of Ultra Wideband-Impulse Radio (UWB-IR) and Direct Sequence- Ultra Wideband (DS-UWB).
A Comparison of Students Who Chose a Traditional or a Problem-Based Learning Curriculum After Failing Year 2 in the Traditional Curriculum: A Unique Case Study at the Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine

Purpose: To canvas perceptions and experiences of students who had failed Year 2 of a traditional medical program and who chose to remain in the conventional program (n = 6) or had swapped to Curriculum 2001 (C2001), a problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum (n = 14). Methods: A year after their decision regarding curriculum choice, students were canvassed (largely open-ended survey) about this decision and about their perceptions of their curricular experiences. Results: C2001 students were positive about their PBL experiences. Overwhelmingly, their decision to swap streams had been a good one. They identified PBL features as supporting their learning. Repeating traditional curriculum students were, however, more circumspect in their opinions. Conclusions: C2001 students had clearly embraced PBL. They were now medical students, largely because of PBL activities underpinned by a sound educational philosophy. This unique case study has provided additional evidence that PBL students are generally more content with their studies than their conventional curriculum counterparts.
The formulation of the essential oil of Piper aduncum Linnaeus (Piperales: Piperaceae) increases its efficacy as an insect repellent

Abstract The essential oil (EO) of Piper aduncum Linnaeus, known as ‘sireh lada’ to locals Malaysian, has the potential to be used as an alternative to synthetic insect repellents such as N,N-diethyl-meta-toluamide. However, the EO's efficacy as a repellent decreases after application due to the high volatility of its active ingredients. A number of studies have showed that optimizing the formulation of plant-based EOs can improve their efficacy as repellents. The present study sought to evaluate the effectiveness of 10% P. aduncum EO in ethanol and in three different semisolid formulations: ointment, cream and gel. These formulations were tested on Aedes aegypti under laboratory conditions. Each formulation was applied to the subject's hands, which were then inserted into a cage containing 25 nulliparous A. aegypti. The number of mosquitoes landing on or biting each subject's hand was recorded, and the repellency percentage, landing/biting percentage and protection time for each of the formulations were compared. There were no statistically significant differences between the semisolid EO formulations with regards to the repellency percentage and the landing/biting percentage at 4 h post-application. All three semisolid EO formulations were able to repel >65% of the A. aegypti at 4 h post-application. The EO ointment formulation provided a protection time (182.5 ± 16.01 min) that was statistically significantly longer than that associated with the EO gel formulation (97.5 ± 14.93 min). Meanwhile, the EO cream formulation provided a protection time of 162.5 ± 6.29 min. As the EO cream and ointment formulations displayed better repellent properties than the EO gel formulation, they appear to be the most promising P. aduncum EO formulations to be developed and commercialized as alternatives to synthetic repellents.