Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Liking Product Landscape: Going Deeper into Understanding Consumers’ Hedonic Evaluations

The use of graphical mapping for understanding the comparison of products based on consumers’ perceptions is beneficial and easy to interpret. Internal preference mapping (IPM) and landscape segmentation analysis (LSA) have successfully been used for this propose. However, including all the consumers’ evaluations in one map, with products’ overall liking and attributes’ perceptions, is complicated; because data is in a high dimensional space some information can be lost. To provide as much information as possible, we propose the liking product landscape (LPL) methodology where several maps are used for representing the consumers’ distribution and evaluations. LPL shows the consumers’ distribution, like LSA, and also it superimposes the consumers’ evaluations. However, instead of superimposing the average overall liking in one map, this methodology uses different maps for each consumer’s evaluation. Two experiments were performed where LPL was used for understanding the consumers’ perceptions and compared with classic methodologies, IPM and cluster analysis, in order to validate the results. LPL can be successfully used for identifying consumers’ segments, consumers’ preferences, recognizing perception of product attributes by consumers’ segments and identifying the attributes that need to be optimized.
Single session high definition transcranial direct current stimulation to the cerebellum does not impact higher cognitive function

The prefrontal cortex is central to higher order cognitive function. However, the cerebellum, generally thought to be involved in motor control and learning, has also been implicated in higher order cognition. Recent work using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) provides some support for right cerebellar involvement in higher order cognition, though the results are mixed, and often contradictory. Here, we used cathodal high definition tDCS (HD-tDCS) over the right cerebellum to assess the impact of HD-tDCS on modulating cognitive performance. We predicted that stimulation would result in performance decreases, which would suggest that optimal cerebellar function is necessary for cognitive performance, much like the prefrontal cortex. That is, it is not simply a structure that lends support to complete difficult tasks. While the expected cognitive behavioral effects were present, we did not find effects of stimulation. This has broad implications for cerebellar tDCS research, particularly for those who are interested in using HD-tDCS as a way of examining cerebellar function. Further implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed with particular emphasis on why null findings might be critical in developing a clear picture of the effects of tDCS on the cerebellum.
NUSAP1 knockdown inhibits cell growth and metastasis of non‐small‐cell lung cancer through regulating BTG2/PI3K/Akt signaling

Non‐small‐cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the most common malignancy along with high mortality rate worldwide. Recently, nucleolar and spindle‐associated protein 1 (NUSAP1) has been reported to be involved in the malignant progression of several cancers. However, in NSCLC, the biological function of NUSAP1 and its molecular mechanism have not been reported. Here, our findings indicated that the NUSAP1 messenger RNA expression level was remarkably upregulated in NSCLC tissues compared with that of adjacent normal tissues. We also found that NUSAP1 gene expression was notably upregulated in NSCLC cell lines (A549, 95‐D, H358, and H1299) compared with that of normal human bronchial epithelial cell line (16HBE). Subsequently, the biological function of NUSAP1 was investigated in A549 and H358 cells transfected with NUSAP1 small interfering RNA (siRNA), respectively. Results showed that NUSAP1 knockdown inhibited NSCLC cell proliferation, and promoted cell apoptosis. Furthermore, the number of cell migration and invasion was significantly suppressed by NUSAP1 knockdown. In addition, our results indicated that NUSAP1 knockdown increased the gene expression of B‐cell translocation gene 2 (BTG2), but decreased the expression levels of phosphoinositide 3‐kinase (PI3K) and phosphorylated serine/threonine kinase (p‐AKT). BTG2 siRNA partly abrogates the effect of NUSAP1 knockdown on BTG2 gene expression. Fumonisin B1 (FB1), a AKT activator, reversed the effect of NUSAP1 knockdown on the biological function in NSCLC. Taken together, NUSAP1 knockdown promotes NSCLC cell apoptosis, and inhibits cell proliferation, cell migration, and invasion, which is associated with regulating BTG2/PI3K/Akt signal pathway. Our findings suggest that NUSAP1 is a promising molecular target for NSCLC treatment.
Firearm ownership in California: A latent class analysis

Objective To examine whether firearm ownership and ownership-related motivations and practices can be classified into reasonably distinct types. Methods Cross-sectional data on firearm owners (n=429) were obtained from the 2018 California Safety and Well-Being Survey, a state-representative web-based survey. We conducted a latent class analysis using six self-reported indicators of firearm ownership: (1) number of firearms owned, (2) types of firearms owned, (3) primary reason for firearm ownership, (4) firearm storage, (5) loaded handgun carrying and (6) high-capacity magazine ownership. Results We identified five markedly different classes of firearm ownership. There were two classes of single-firearm owners and three classes of multiple-firearm owners. Only members of one class (9% of owners) were likely to have carried a loaded handgun and to own high-capacity magazines or assault-type weapons. Members of this class were also likely to own 5+ firearms, own for protection against people, and store a firearm in the least secure manner (loaded and unlocked). Conclusion There were distinct classes of firearm ownership in California, and all higher-risk behaviours studied were exhibited disproportionately by members of a single class. This latent class structure, which may help identify higher-risk groups of firearm owners, could inform future research on risk assessment and on focused interventions to reduce firearm injury and death.
Improving the Activity of M-N4 Catalysts for the Oxygen Reduction Reaction by Electrolyte Adsorption.

Metal and nitrogen co-doped carbons (M-N/Cs) have emerged as promising alternatives to platinum-based catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). Here, density functional theory calculations are used to investigate the adsorption of anions and impurities from the electrolyte on the active site, modelled as an M-N 4 motif embedded in a planar carbon sheet (M= Cr , Mn, Fe , Co). The two-dimensional catalyst structure implies that each metal atom has two potential active sites, one on each side of the sheet. Adsorption of anions or impurities on both sites results in poisoning, but adsorption on one of the sites leads to a modified ORR activity on the remaining site. The calculated adsorption energies show that a number of species adsorb on one of the two sites only under realistic experimental conditions. A few of these adsorbates furthermore modify the adsorption energies of the ORR intermediates on the remaining site in such a way that the limiting potential is improved.
Differential Adaptation in Azimuth and Elevation to Acute Monaural Spatial Hearing after Training with Visual Feedback

Abstract Sound localization in the horizontal plane (azimuth) relies mainly on binaural difference cues in sound level and arrival time. Blocking one ear will perturb these cues, and may strongly affect azimuth performance of the listener. However, single-sided deaf listeners, as well as acutely single-sided plugged normal-hearing subjects, often use a combination of (ambiguous) monaural head-shadow cues, impoverished binaural level-difference cues, and (veridical, but limited) pinna- and head-related spectral cues to estimate source azimuth. To what extent listeners can adjust the relative contributions of these different cues is unknown, as the mechanisms underlying adaptive processes to acute monauralization are still unclear. By providing visual feedback during a brief training session with a high-pass (HP) filtered sound at a fixed sound level, we investigated the ability of listeners to adapt to their erroneous sound-localization percepts. We show that acutely plugged listeners rapidly adjusted the relative contributions of perceived sound level, and the spectral and distorted binaural cues, to improve their localization performance in azimuth also for different sound levels and locations than those experienced during training. Interestingly, our results also show that this acute cue-reweighting led to poorer localization performance in elevation, which was in line with the acoustic–spatial information provided during training. We conclude that the human auditory system rapidly readjusts the weighting of all relevant localization cues, to adequately respond to the demands of the current acoustic environment, even if the adjustments may hamper veridical localization performance in the real world.
Can Conformational Changes of Proteins Be Represented in Torsion Angle Space? A Study with Rescaled Ridge Regression

Torsion angles are the natural degrees of freedom of protein structures. The ability to determine torsional variations corresponding to observed changes in Cartesian coordinates is highly valuable, notably to investigate the mechanisms of functional conformational changes, or to develop computational models of protein dynamics. This issue is far from trivial in practice, since the impact of modifying one torsion angle strongly depends on all other angles, and the compounding effects of small variations in bond lengths and valence angles can completely disrupt a protein fold. We demonstrate that naive strategies, such as directly comparing torsion angles between structures without correcting for variations in bond lengths and valence angles, or fitting torsional variations without a proper regularization scheme, fail at producing an adequate representation of conformational changes in internal coordinates. In contrast, Rescaled Ridge Regression (RRR), a method recently introduced to regularize multi-dimensional regressions with correlated explanatory variables, is shown to consistently identify a minimal set of torsion angles variations that closely reproduce changes in Cartesian coordinates. This torsional representation of conformational changes is shown to be robust to the choice of experimental structures. It also provides a better agreement with theoretical models of protein dynamics than the Cartesian representation, regarding notably the predominance of low frequency normal modes in functional motions, and the presence, in predicted equilibrium dynamics, of hints of natural selection for specific functional motions. The software is available at https://github.com/ugobas/tnm.
Quantification of muscle mass in the legs of patients with peripheral arterial occlusive disease: associations between volumetric and cross-sectional single-slice measurements for identification of atrophy and focal sarcopenia.

BACKGROUND Sarcopenia, commonly determined by measuring skeletal muscle mass index (SMI) at the third lumbar level, has been identified as a predictor of clinical outcome in a variety of diseases. For patients with PAOD, we hypothesized that lower extremity skeletal muscle mass index (LESMI) might be a more precise predictor of outcome and the extent of chronic ischemia than the systemic muscle mass at the L3 level. We investigated the association between complete muscle volume and muscle area derived with single-slice 2- dimensional measurements in the legs to identify at which level cross-sectional single-slice measurements are most representative of the muscle volume and investigated whether LESMI is associated with systemic sarcopenia and PAOD severity. METHODS Muscle volumes and areas were semiautomatically segmented from computed tomography (CT) scans of the affected and contralateral legs of 50 PAOD patients with Fontaine stage IIb and 50 PAOD patients with Fontaine stage IV. The muscle mass was determined for the complete volumes of the upper and lower legs and for cross-sectional slices at 40%, 50%, and 60% of the length of the femur and tibia. Patients were determined as sarcopenic based on sex-specific cutoff values at the L3 spinal segment. Two observers segmented 20 randomly selected patients to determine the interobserver reliability with the intraclass correlation coefficient. RESULTS The correlation between the LESMI of the complete muscle volume and the three cross-sectional slices in all 200 upper and 200 lower legs was moderately strong to strong. Interobserver reliability of cross- sectional slice segmentation was excellent. The LESMI, both measured volumetrically and cross-sectionally, were significantly lower in patients with sarcopenia compared to patients without sarcopenia. The LESMI was lower in patients with Fontaine stage IV compared with patients with Fontaine stage IIb for both volumetric and cross-sectional measurements. CONCLUSIONS Segmentation of skeletal muscle mass from cross-sectional single-slice CT in the upper and lower leg can accurately and precisely substitute complete volume segmentations. These findings warrant the use of measurements based on cross-sectional single-slice CT for assessing the LESMI. Patients with systemic sarcopenia are also at increased risk for muscle mass loss in the lower extremities. In the current study, LESMI was lower in patients with Fontaine class IV PAOD compared to patients with Fontaine classIIb PAOD. Future studies should assess the predictive value of the LESMI on clinical outcomes in PAOD patients.
National Trends in American Heart Association Revised Life's Simple 7 Metrics Associated With Risk of Mortality Among US Adults

Key Points Question Are the revised Life’s Simple 7 (LS7) metrics associated with reduced risk of all-cause, cancer, and cardiovascular disease mortality compared with the original American Heart Association LS7 metrics? Findings This cross-sectional study found that, compared with the original metrics, the revised LS7 metrics were associated with reduced cancer mortality. For participants with body mass index less than or equal to 29.9 but without central obesity, the revised metrics were independently associated with decreased risk of all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality, with blood pressure having the greatest association with all mortality outcomes. Meaning These findings indicate that modified criteria regarding weight, blood pressure, and diet in the revised LS7 provide additional information about factors associated with cancer mortality.
Treatment with roscovitine and butyrolactone I prior to in vitro maturation alters blastocyst production

Summary This study evaluated the effects of oocyte meiosis inhibitors roscovitine (ROS) and butyrolactone I (BL-I) on in vitro production of bovine embryos. Bovine oocytes were maintained in pre in vitro maturation (pre-IVM) with 25 µM ROS or 100 µM BL-I for 24 h to delay meiosis and for 24 h in in vitro maturation (IVM). Following this treatment, the nuclear maturation index was evaluated. All embryos degenerated following this procedure. In the second set of experiments, oocytes were maintained for 6 or 12 h in pre-IVM with the following three treatments: ROS (25 µM or 12.5 µM), BL-I (100 µM or 50 µM) or a combination of both drugs (6.25 µM ROS and 12.5 µM BL-I). Oocytes were cultivated for 18 or 12 h in IVM. When a meiosis-inducing agent was used during pre-IVM for 24 h, more degenerated oocytes were observed at the end of the IVM period. This effect decreased when the meiotic blocking period was reduced to 6 or 12 h. No significant differences were observed in the blastocyst production rate of oocytes in pre-IVM for 6 h with ROS, BL-I, or ROS + BL-I compared with that of the control group (P > 0.05). However, inhibition of oocytes for 12 h resulted in decreased embryo production compared with that in the controls (P < 0.05). There was no difference in the post-vitrification embryo re-expansion rate between the study groups, showing that the meiotic inhibition for 6 or 12 h did not alter the embryo cryopreservation process.
In-exercise vascular shear rate during acute continuous and interval exercise: impact upon endothelial function and MiR-21.

BACKGROUND Endothelial cell phenotype and endothelial function are regulated by hemodynamic forces, particularly wall shear stress (WSS). During a single bout of exercise, the specific exercise protocol can affect in-exercise WSS patterns, and consequently endothelial function. MicroRNAs might provide a biomarker of in-exercise WSS pattern, to indicate whether a specific exercise bout will have a positive effect on endothelial function. We evaluated the effect of acute interval (IT) and continuous (CON) in-exercise WSS patterns upon post-exercise endothelial function and circulating miR-21 expression. METHODS AND RESULTS 13 participants performed CON and 3 different IT exercise protocols matched for duration and intensity, on separate days. Oxygen uptake, heart rate and brachial artery blood flow were recorded throughout exercise. Brachial artery flow mediated dilation (FMD) was performed pre and 15 min post exercise. Plasma samples were acquired pre and 6 hours post exercise to determine miR-21 expression. In-exercise shear-rate (SR) patterns (a surrogate of WSS) differed according to the CON or IT work rate profile. In-exercise anterograde SR was greater in CON than IT (P<0.05), retrograde SR was equivalent between exercise protocols (P>0.05). Oscillatory shear index was higher during IT versus CON (P<0.05). Post-exercise FMD increased (pre 7.08±2.95, post 10.54±4.24%, P<0.05), whilst miR-21 expression was unchanged (pre 12.0±20.7 %cel-miR-39, post 11.1±19.3 %cel-miR-39, P>0.05); with no effect of exercise protocol (P>0.05). CONCLUSIONS CON and IT exercise induced different SR patterns, but equivalent improvements in acute endothelial function. The absence of change in miR-21 expression suggests miR-21 is not a suitable biomarker of exercise-induced SR.
Circulating tumor cells exhibit metastatic tropism and reveal brain metastasis drivers.

Hematogenous metastasis is initiated by a subset of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) shed from primary or metastatic tumors into the blood circulation. Thus, CTCs provide a unique patient biopsy resource to decipher the cellular subpopulations that initiate metastasis and their molecular properties. However, one crucial question is whether CTCs derived and expanded ex vivo from patients recapitulate human metastatic disease in an animal model. Here, we show that CTC lines established from breast cancer patients are capable of generating metastases in mice with a pattern recapitulating most major organs from corresponding patients. Genome-wide sequencing analyses of metastatic variants identified semaphorin 4D (SEMA4D) as a regulator of tumor cell transmigration through the blood-brain-barrier and MYC as a crucial regulator for the adaptation of disseminated tumor cells to the activated brain microenvironment. These data provide the direct experimental evidence of the promising role of CTCs as a prognostic factor for site-specific metastasis.
The Ras switch in structural and historical perspective

Abstract Since its discovery as an oncogene more than 40 years ago, Ras has been and still is in the focus of many academic and pharmaceutical labs around the world. A huge amount of work has accumulated on its biology. However, many questions about the role of the different Ras isoforms in health and disease still exist and a full understanding will require more intensive work in the future. Here we try to survey some of the structural findings in a historical perspective and how it has influenced our understanding of structure-function and mechanistic relationships of Ras and its interactions. The structures show that Ras is a stable molecular machine that uses the dynamics of its switch regions for the interaction with all regulators and effectors. This conformational flexibility has been used to create small molecule drug candidates against this important oncoprotein.
Measuring patient activation in Chinese patients with hypertension and/or diabetes: reliability and validity of the PAM13

Objective Patient activation is important in the management of chronic diseases (CDs), especially hypertension and diabetes. The 13-item short form Patient Activation Measure (PAM13) is widely used, but data are lacking for China. The study aim was to assess the reliability and validity of the PAM13 in Chinese patients with hypertension and/or diabetes in a community management setting. Methods A cross-sectional survey was conducted at four community health centres in Kunming (Yunnan province, China) Participants were patients (n = 519) with hypertension and/or type 2 diabetes mellitus being managed at the community health centres. Patient activation was measured using the Chinese version of the PAM13. Reliability and validity were tested using Cronbach’s α and confirmatory factor analysis. Results The male to female ratio was 1:1.65. In total, 307 (60.3%) patients had ≤9 years of education and 213 (41.8%) had a low household income (≤5000 RMB/month). Cronbach’s α was 0.920 and item–total correlations ranged from 0.535 to 0.714. Confirmatory factor analysis showed a good fit to the data. Conclusions The PAM13 shows good reliability and validity for measuring patient activation in Chinese patients with CDs (hypertension and/or diabetes).
Association between dietary insulin index and load and psychological disorders

Abstract The present study was carried out to determine whether the dietary insulin index (DII) and dietary insulin load (DIL) are related to psychological disorders in a cross-sectional study among adults. A total of 3172 Iranian adults (age range of 18–55 years) were included. Data on dietary intakes were collected using a validated dish-based 106-item semi-quantitative FFQ. DII and DIL were calculated using food insulin index values published earlier. To assess depression and anxiety, an Iranian validated version of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale was used. Furthermore, psychological distress was examined using the General Health Questionnaire. Among women, a significant positive association was seen; such that women in the highest quartile of DIL had higher odds of depression than those in the lowest quartile (OR 1·84; 95 % CI 1·14, 2·96). In terms of DII, in the fully adjusted model, women in the top quartile of DII were more likely to be depressed compared with those in the bottom quartile (OR 1·65; 95 % CI 1·05, 2·58). In conclusion, we found a significant positive association between DIL and DII and odds of depression among women, but not in men. However, such findings were not seen for anxiety and psychological distress.
Draft Whole-Genome Sequence of a Novel Chryseobacterium viscerum Strain Isolated from Fresh Water at Dripping Springs, New Mexico

We sequenced the genome of a bacterial species recently isolated from fresh water at Dripping Springs, NM, and identified it as Chryseobacterium viscerum. This species had previously been isolated only from dead or diseased fish. This report shows that C. viscerum can be found in nature as a free-living species not associated with diseased fish. ABSTRACT We sequenced the genome of a bacterial species recently isolated from fresh water at Dripping Springs, NM, and identified it as Chryseobacterium viscerum. This species had previously been isolated only from dead or diseased fish. This report shows that C. viscerum can be found in nature as a free-living species not associated with diseased fish.