Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Cell-Sensory Bioscaffold of Biocompatible Titanate Nanofiber

To date, little has been reported in literature about turning a bioscaffold into an electrochemical sensor, because often the bioscaffolds are electrochemically inactive. An ideal cell-sensor criteria is to be simple, sensitive, reliable, directly adaptable to pathological clinic, and easily fabricated in a large scale at low-cost. For over a decade, the titanate nanowire has been proven as a bioscaffold of the new type for applications in the implants, cosmetic, and pharmaceutical fields. In the present work, the titanate nanofibers were first of all grown on top of an implantable titanium metal, and characterized by means of SEM, XRD, etc. In an aqueous phospate buffer saline (PBS), the as-made bioscaffold showed a characteristic electrochemical impedance spectrum as a baseline. After being incubated with the human breast cells, a new impedance spectrum was recoded, suggesting that upon binding onto the bioscaffold the cells have altered the surface charge-density across the nanofiber-bioscaffolds. This exciting and long-overdue change in the electrochemical signal has been realized for the first time on such a bioscaffold. This new method can be potentially used in various important applications in future cancer screening and monitoring in vitro and in vivo at ultralow-cost and in real-time, which seems promising and exciting.
A stealth emulsion based on natural rubber latex, core-shell ferrofluid/carbon black in the S and X bands

A lossy dielectric with an appropriate magnetic property is one of the requirements of a stealth material. The thickness of the absorber and the corresponding bandwidth of absorption are also other deciding factors that determine the choice of the material as microwave absorbers. A stable emulsion, which is lossy as well as magnetic, is promising, since it can be coated on surfaces with required thickness in the desired band. A magnetic nanofluidic emulsion serves the purpose. A microwave absorbing emulsion based on natural rubber latex with core–shell magnetic nanoparticles, based on superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs), was developed. The effect of additives like carbon black on the bandwidth of absorption was also studied as a function of weight percentage of carbon black. The complex dielectric permittivity and magnetic permeability were evaluated using a vector network analyser in the S and X bands. Furthermore, these results were modelled using surface impedance equations. These investigations revealed that the incorporation of carbon black enhances the bandwidth of absorption and an emulsion with the required dielectric permittivity and magnetic permeability can be tailored for stealth applications.
Metabolic costs of activities of daily living in persons with a lower limb amputation: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Objective To systematically review the literature on the metabolic costs of activities of daily living (ADL) in persons with a lower limb amputation (LLA). Data sources A literature search was undertaken in the Pubmed, Embase, CINAHL, CENTRAL, and PsycINFO databases using keywords and synonyms for LLA, metabolic costs, and ADL. The last search was performed on November 29th, 2017. Study selection Studies were included if they met the following 2 criteria: participants were adults with a (unilateral or bilateral) LLA and metabolic costs were measured while participants performed a physical activity or ADL. Data extraction and synthesis Data of 1,912 participants from 61 studies were included in the systematic review and meta-analysis. The studies used different terms to describe metabolic costs. Participants were recruited in different settings, relatively healthy, with few comorbidities. Limited data were available on metabolic costs of other activities than walking with a prosthesis. A linear mixed model analysis was performed based on the means reported, with study as unit of analysis and test results of different groups and measurement conditions as repeated measures within the unit of analysis. Predictors entered in the analysis were e.g. level and reason of amputation, age, weight, and height. During walking, oxygen consumption (ml O2/kg/min) and heart rate (beats/min) increased with a higher walking speed and a more proximal amputation. Additionally, oxygen consumption was determined by the interaction terms walking speed x amputation level and walking speed squared. Heart rate was determined by the interaction term walking speed squared. Conclusion During walking, oxygen consumption (ml O2/kg/min) and heart rate (beats/min) increased with a higher walking speed and a more proximal amputation. Data on metabolic costs of other activities were limited. The poor quality of the studies and the relatively healthy participants limited generalizability of the results of the meta-analysis.
Prolonged monitoring of postprandial lipid metabolism after a western meal rich in linoleic acid (LA) and carbohydrates.

Today, increased awareness has been raised regarding high consumption of n-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-6 PUFA) in western diets. A comprehensive analysis of total and individual postprandial fatty acid (FA) profiles would provide insights into metabolic turnover and related health effects. After an overnight fast, nine healthy adults consumed a mixed meal composed of 97 g carbohydrate and 45 g fat of which 26.4 g was linoleic acid (LA). Non-esterified fatty acids (NEFA), phospholipid fatty acids (PL-FA) and triacylglycerol fatty acids (TG-FA) were monitored in plasma samples, at baseline and hourly over 7 h postprandial. Total TG-FA concentration peaked at 2h postprandial followed by a constant decline. LA from TG18:2n-6 and behenic acid from TG22:0 showed the highest response among TG-FA, with a biphasic response detected for the former. PL-FA exhibited no change. Total NEFA initially decreased reaching nadir at 1h, then increased reaching its maximum value at 7h. The individual NEFA showed the same response curve except LA and some very long chain saturated fatty acids (VLCSFA, ≥ 20 carbon chain length) that markedly increased shortly after the meal intake. The similarities and dissimilarities in lipid profiles between study subjects at different time points were visualized using non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS). Overall, the results indicate that postprandial levels of LA and VLCSFA either as NEFA or TG were most affected by the test meal, which might provide an explanation for the health effects of this dietary lifestyle characterized by high intake of mixed meals rich in n-6 PUFA.
A Community Hospital NICU Developmental Care Partner Program

Supplemental Digital Content is Available in the Text. Background: Volunteers can provide staff-directed sensory inputs to infants hospitalized in the NICU, but research on volunteer programs is limited. Purpose: To evaluate the feasibility of a developmental care partner (DCP) program in a level III NICU and determine its relationship with provider burnout and infant infection rates. Methods: DCPs were trained to provide sensory input to infants, based on the behavioral cues observed by the occupational therapists and nursing staff, in medically stable infants. Feasibility was assessed by documenting the process of training and utilizing volunteers, as well as tracking duration and frequency of DCP visits. Staff burnout measures were assessed using the Maslach Burnout Inventory Human Services Survey (MBI-HSS) before and after implementation. Infant infection rates before and after the introduction of volunteers were compared. Results: Seventy-two volunteers were interested, and 25 (35%) completed the DCP competencies and provided sensory exposures to 54 neonates, who were visited an average of 8 times (range 1-15). Twelve (48%) DCPs did once-per-week visits, and 9 (36%) did at least 50 contact hours. MBI-HSS scores for staff emotional exhaustion (P < .001) and depersonalization (P < .006) were lower after DCP implementation. There were no differences in infant infection rates before and after DCP implementation (Fisher exact P = 1.000). Implications for Practice: Volunteer-based DCP programs may be feasible to implement in community hospitals and could help reduce staff emotional exhaustion and depersonalization without increasing the incidence of infant infections. Implications for Research: Future research on NICU volunteer programs with larger sample sizes and different infant populations is warranted.
Duplications in corneous beta protein genes and the evolution of gecko adhesion.

Corneous proteins are an important component of the tetrapod integument. Duplication and diversification of keratins and associated proteins are linked with the origin of most novel integumentary structures like mammalian hair, avian feathers, and scutes covering turtle shells. Accordingly, the loss of integumentary structures often coincides with the loss of genes encoding keratin and associated proteins. For example, many hair keratins in dolphins and whales have become pseudogenes. The adhesive setae of geckos and anoles are composed of both intermediate filament keratins (IF-keratins, formerly known as alpha-keratins) and corneous beta-proteins (CBPs, formerly known as beta-keratins) and recent whole genome assemblies of two gecko species and an anole uncovered duplications in seta-specific CBPs in each of these lineages. While anoles evolved adhesive toepads just once, there are two competing hypotheses about the origin(s) of digital adhesion in geckos involving either a single origin or multiple origins. Using data from three published gecko genomes, I examine CBP gene evolution in geckos and find support for a hypothesis where CBP gene duplications are associated with the repeated evolution of digital adhesion. Although these results are preliminary, I discuss how additional gecko genome assemblies, combined with phylogenies of keratin and associated protein genes and gene duplication models, can provide rigorous tests of several hypotheses related to gecko CBP evolution. This includes a taxon sampling strategy for sequencing and assembly of gecko genomes that could help resolve competing hypotheses surrounding the origin(s) of digital adhesion.
Growth factor stimulation promotes multivesicular endosome biogenesis by prolonging recruitment of the late-acting ESCRT machinery

Significance The formation of multivesicular endosomes (MVEs) enables the sequestration of numerous membrane-associated cargo molecules, including signaling receptors, to downregulate signal transduction pathways initiated by various stimuli. In this work, we demonstrate that the machinery responsible for MVE biogenesis responds to growth factor stimulation by extending its duration of action at endosomes. Specifically, we show that endosomal sorting complex required for transport-I (ESCRT-I) and Vps4 accumulation at MVEs is dramatically prolonged following growth factor stimulation. Additionally, we demonstrate that native ESCRT complexes exhibit an oscillatory behavior on endosomes, which is dependent on the sequential recruitment of downstream components. Our studies strongly suggest that components of the ESCRT machinery act cyclically and in a coordinated manner to enable a rapid response to changing environmental cues. The formation of multivesicular endosomes (MVEs) mediates the turnover of numerous integral membrane proteins and has been implicated in the down-regulation of growth factor signaling, thereby exhibiting properties of a tumor suppressor. The endosomal sorting complex required for transport (ESCRT) machinery plays a key role in MVE biogenesis, enabling cargo selection and intralumenal vesicle (ILV) budding. However, the spatiotemporal pattern of endogenous ESCRT complex assembly and disassembly in mammalian cells remains poorly defined. By combining CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing and live cell imaging using lattice light sheet microscopy (LLSM), we determined the native dynamics of both early- and late-acting ESCRT components at MVEs under multiple growth conditions. Specifically, our data indicate that ESCRT-0 accumulates quickly on endosomes, typically in less than 30 seconds, and its levels oscillate in a manner dependent on the downstream recruitment of ESCRT-I. Similarly, levels of the ESCRT-I complex also fluctuate on endosomes, but its average residency time is more than fivefold shorter compared with ESCRT-0. Vps4 accumulation is the most transient, however, suggesting that the completion of ILV formation occurs rapidly. Upon addition of epidermal growth factor (EGF), both ESCRT-I and Vps4 are retained at endosomes for dramatically extended periods of time, while ESCRT-0 dynamics are only modestly affected. Our findings are consistent with a model in which growth factor stimulation stabilizes late-acting components of the ESCRT machinery at endosomes to accelerate the rate of ILV biogenesis and attenuate signal transduction initiated by receptor activation.
Visualising the concept of metabolic regulation in bacteria: a simple laboratory experiment on polyhydroxybutyrate storage

ABSTRACT Regulation is a key concept for understanding the dynamics of metabolism in bacteria. This report outlines a simple laboratory experiment aimed at studying a key form of regulation in bacterial metabolism, exemplifying how microbes switch the flux of carbon towards alternative metabolic fates as a function of nutrient availability and according to their physiological status. The experiment involves the use of a Sinorhizobium meliloti wild-type strain and its isogenic derivative carrying a null mutation in the gene encoding the synthase that generates the storage polymer polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB). These strains serve to characterise the effects of growth phase and carbon availability at the end of balanced growth on the extent of PHB accumulation by rhizobia. The experimental set-up can be completed in a main 4-h laboratory session, followed by an additional 1-h session after an initial incubation for subsequent bacterial-colony counting (48 h), and requires equipment usually available at any university. The protocol described here is performed by the undergraduates of our biochemistry course. We consider this exercise to be a useful complementary tool for spotlighting the concept of metabolic regulation in bacteria and for promoting scientific thinking along with the development of students’ wet-bench laboratory skills.
Platform-independent approach for cancer detection from gene expression profiles of peripheral blood cells

Peripheral blood gene expression intensity-based methods for distinguishing healthy individuals from cancer patients are limited by sensitivity to batch effects and data normalization and variability between expression profiling assays. To improve the robustness and precision of blood gene expression-based tumour detection, it is necessary to perform molecular diagnostic tests using a more stable approach. Taking breast cancer as an example, we propose a machine learning-based framework that distinguishes breast cancer patients from healthy subjects by pairwise rank transformation of gene expression intensity in each sample. We showed the diagnostic potential of the method by performing RNA-seq for 37 peripheral blood samples from breast cancer patients and by collecting RNA-seq data from healthy donors in Genotype-Tissue Expression project and microarray mRNA expression datasets in Gene Expression Omnibus. The framework was insensitive to experimental batch effects and data normalization, and it can be simultaneously applied to new sample prediction.
Unconditional Cash Transfers and Women Empowerment: The Case of Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) in Pakistan

This study has explored the welfare impact of Benazir Income Support Program’s (BISP) unconditional cash transfers on women empowerment. The program was initiated in 2011 by the government of Pakistan. The impact has been computed by using two follow up rounds i.e, 2011 & 2016 where baseline was carried out in 2011 and follow-up round was carried out in 2016. Regression Discontinuity Design approach was used to measure casual effects of the BISP cash transfers on women empowerment by selecting target and control groups based on proxy means test. The overtime impact have been estimated by employing Difference in Difference (DiD) model on panel households from 2011-2016. The study observed that BISP led to improve socio-economic wellbeing of the beneficiary women. It has brought improvement in women mobility and women participation in voting. The important contribution is an improvement in the aspect of socio-economic and political empowerment and women mobility across time and overtime. This showed continues support for longer period brought desired results.
Cost-effectiveness of community-based gendered advisory services to farmers: Analysis in Mozambique and Tanzania

Rigorous impact evaluations on agricultural interventions in the developing world have proliferated in research of recent years. Whereas increased care in causal identification in such analyses is beneficial and has improved the quality of research in this field, much of the literature still fails to investigate the costs needed to achieve any benefits identified. Such understanding, however, would be crucial for drawing policy and programmatic conclusions from the research and for informing the allocation of public investments. Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) subjects both the cost side and the effects side of agricultural and rural interventions to technical scrutiny and unifies both sides in order to compare the relative cost-effectiveness of different modalities of a programme, of efforts to reach different target groups, or of efforts to achieve different outcomes. CEAs, while present in the health and education sectors, remain rare in agricultural and rural development research. This study contributes to filling the knowledge gap by conducting CEAs in a particular type of programmatic work in the agricultural sector—namely, interventions conducted as field experiments that bring a gender lens to community-based advisory services in African rural areas. Specifically, we consider two such programmes—one in Mozambique in which such advisory services aim to improve sustainable land management (SLM) practices in agricultural production, and the other in Tanzania to advise farmers on their land rights. Using CEA methods combined with econometric analysis based on randomised controlled trials, we find that the gendered modality is consistently more cost-effective than the basic modality when considering varied outcomes and target groups. However, for any given modality, it is more cost-effective to improve outcomes for men than for women. The structure of costs in the agricultural extension programme further allowed for a simulation of how cost-effectiveness would change if the programme were scaled up geographically. The results show that expansion of the basic modality of the SLM programme leads to improvements in cost-effectiveness, while the gendered modality displays nonlinear changes in cost-effectiveness along the expansion path, first worsening with initial scale-up and subsequently improving with further expansion.
Rotational spectra of isotopic species of methyl cyanide, CH3CN, in their v8 = 1 excited vibrational states

Methyl cyanide is an important trace molecule in space, especially in star-forming regions where it is one of the more common molecules used to derive kinetic temperatures. We want to obtain accurate spectroscopic parameters of minor isotopologs of methyl cyanide in their lowest excited $v_8 = 1$ vibrational states to support astronomical observations, in particular, with interferometers such as ALMA. The laboratory rotational spectrum of methyl cyanide in natural isotopic composition has been recorded from the millimeter to the terahertz regions. Transitions with good signal-to-noise ratios could be identified for the three isotopic species CH$_3^{13}$CN, $^{13}$CH$_3$CN, and CH$_3$C(15)N up to about 1.2 THz ($J'' \le 66$). Accurate spectroscopic parameters were obtained for all three species. The present data were already instrumental in identifying $v_8 = 1$ lines of methyl cyanide with one $^{13}$C in IRAM 30 m and ALMA data toward Sagittarius B2(N).
Role of spatial dispersion of repolarization in reentry around a functional core versus reentry around a fixed anatomical core

Successful initiation of spiral wave reentry in the neonatal rat ventricular myocyte (NRVM) monolayer implicitly assumes the presence of spatial dispersion of repolarization (DR), which is difficult to quantify. We recently introduced a NRVM monolayer that utilizes anthopleurin‐A to impart a prolonged plateau to the NRVM action potential. This was associated with a significant degree of spatial DR that lends itself to accurate quantification.
Delta-like protein 3 expression and therapeutic targeting in neuroendocrine prostate cancer

DLL3 is overexpressed in neuroendocrine prostate cancer and is a potential therapeutic target. Lessons from one tumor help with another Neuroendocrine prostate cancer is an aggressive tumor subtype that can arise late in the course of the disease and drive therapeutic resistance. Puca et al. demonstrate the feasibility of targeting it with an antibody-drug conjugate against delta-like protein 3 (DLL3), a recently identified therapeutic being tested in small cell lung cancer, another aggressive neuroendocrine tumor. The authors confirmed the presence of DLL3 in most neuroendocrine prostate cancers, but not in localized tumors or normal prostate, and showed its association with aggressive clinical features. They then demonstrated the effectiveness of targeting DLL3 in multiple mouse models as well as a human patient. Histologic transformation to small cell neuroendocrine prostate cancer occurs in a subset of patients with advanced prostate cancer as a mechanism of treatment resistance. Rovalpituzumab tesirine (SC16LD6.5) is an antibody-drug conjugate that targets delta-like protein 3 (DLL3) and was initially developed for small cell lung cancer. We found that DLL3 is expressed in most of the castration-resistant neuroendocrine prostate cancer (CRPC-NE) (36 of 47, 76.6%) and in a subset of castration-resistant prostate adenocarcinomas (7 of 56, 12.5%). It shows minimal to no expression in localized prostate cancer (1 of 194) and benign prostate (0 of 103). DLL3 expression correlates with neuroendocrine marker expression, RB1 loss, and aggressive clinical features. DLL3 in circulating tumor cells was concordant with matched metastatic biopsy (87%). Treatment of DLL3-expressing prostate cancer xenografts with a single dose of SC16LD6.5 resulted in complete and durable responses, whereas DLL3-negative models were insensitive. We highlight a patient with neuroendocrine prostate cancer with a meaningful clinical and radiologic response to SC16LD6.5 when treated on a phase 1 trial. Overall, our findings indicate that DLL3 is preferentially expressed in CRPC-NE and provide rationale for targeting DLL3 in patients with DLL3-positive metastatic prostate cancer.