Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Precise Characterization and Tracking of Stably Inherited Artificial Minichromosomes Made by Telomere-Mediated Chromosome Truncation in Brassica napus

Plant artificial minichromosomes are the next-generation technology for plant genetic engineering and represent an independent platform for expressing foreign genes and the tools for studying the structure and function of chromosomes. Minichromosomes have been successfully produced by telomere-mediated chromosome truncation in several plants. However, previous studies have primarily focused on the construction and rough characterization of minichromosomes, while the development of stably inherited minichromosomes and their precise characterization and tracking over different generations have rarely been demonstrated. In this study, a 0.35-kb direct repeat of the Arabidopsis telomeric sequence was transformed into Brassica napus to produce artificial minichromosomes, which were analyzed by multifluorescence in situ hybridization (multi-FISH), Southern hybridization, and primer extension telomere rapid amplification (PETRA). The stably inherited minichromosomes C2 and C4 were developed by crossing transgenic plants with wild-type plants and then selfing the hybrids. Notably, two truncation sites on chromosomes C2 and C4, respectively, were identified by resequencing; thus, the artificial minichromosomes were tracked over different generations with insertion site-specific PCR. This study provided two stably inherited minichromosomes in oilseed rape and describes approaches to precisely characterize the truncation position and track the minichromosomes in offspring through multi-FISH, genome resequencing, and insertion site-specific PCR.
Syndecan-1 Amplifies Ovalbumin-Induced Airway Remodeling by Strengthening TGFβ1/Smad3 Action

Syndecan-1 (SDC-1) is a transmembrane proteoglycan of heparin sulfate that can regulate various cell signal transduction pathways in the airway epithelial cells and fibroblasts. Airway epithelial cells and human bronchial fibroblasts are crucial in airway remodeling. However, the importance of SDC-1 in the remodeling of asthmatic airways has not been confirmed yet. The present study was the first to uncover SDC-1 overexpression in the airways of humans and mice with chronic asthma. This study also validated that an increase in SDC-1 expression was correlated with TGFβ1/Smad3-mediated airway remodeling in vivo and in vitro. A small interfering RNA targeting SDC-1 (SDC-1 siRNA) and homo-SDC-1 in pcDNA3.1 (pc-SDC-1) was designed to assess the effects of SDC-1 on TGFβ1/Smad3-mediated collagen I expression in Beas-2B (airway epithelial cells) and HLF-1 (fibroblasts) cells. Downregulation of the SDC-1 expression by SDC-1 siRNA remarkably attenuated TGFβ1-induced p-Smad3 levels and collagen I expression in Beas-2B and HLF-1 cells. In addition, SDC-1 overexpression with pc-SDC-1 enhanced TGFβ1-induced p-Smad3 level and collagen I expression in Beas-2B and HLF-1 cells. Furthermore, the levels of p-Smad3 and collagen I induced by TGFβ1 were slightly increased after the addition of the recombinant human SDC-1 protein to Beas-2B and HLF-1 cells. These findings in vitro were also confirmed in a mouse model. A short hairpin RNA targeting SDC-1 (SDC-1 shRNA) to interfere with SDC-1 expression considerably reduced the levels of p-Smad3 and remodeling protein (α-SMA, collagen I) in the airways induced by ovalbumin (OVA). Similarly, OVA-induced p-Smad3 and remodeling protein levels in airways increased after mice inhalation with the recombinant mouse SDC-1 protein. These results suggested that SDC-1 of airway epithelial cells and fibroblasts plays a key role in the development of airway remodeling in OVA-induced chronic asthma.
Problematic internet use and its association with anxiety among undergraduate students

Introduction: The Internet has become an essential part of our daily life, especially the lives of adolescents and youth. With the growth of Internet users, there is also a growing concern about whether the use of the Internet is excessive and if so, whether it amounts to addiction or not. The present study aimed to find the Internet addiction and anxiety effects among undergraduate students. Methods: It was a cross-sectional study conducted among undergraduate students of Bhilai Institute of Technology, Durg and Yugantar Institute of Technology and Management, Rajnandgoan, Chhattisgarh selected using purposive sampling. The total enumeration method was obtained to select students. A total of 854 students were selected for the study. Students were assessed with sociodemographic datasheet, The Internet addiction test, and Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale. Results: About 4.3% of the undergraduate students reported severe Internet addiction, 7.7% had moderate-to-severe level of anxiety. Internet addiction was found to have significant positive correlation with overall anxiety, psychic anxiety, and somatic anxiety symptoms. In regression analysis, anxiety contributes significantly to the prediction of Internet addiction among undergraduate students. Conclusion: Students are suffering from stress, anxiety, and depression may have a tendency to use the Internet excessively to relieve low mood, insomnia, fearfulness, feelings of guilt, and hopelessness.
A review of procedures of purification and chemical modification of carbon nanotubes with bromine

ABSTRACT In this paper, bromination methods of three morphological forms of carbon nanotubes (CNT): single-walled, double-walled and multi-walled, are reviewed along with their characteristics and purification protocols using liquid bromine. Different functionalization methods of the CNT with bromine in the liquid, gas and plasma phases, using electrochemical and electrothermal method, under microwave conditions in the presence of Lewis acids or radical precursors are also discussed.
Impact of salivary and pancreatic amylase gene copy numbers on diabetes, obesity, and functional profiles of microbiome in Northern Japanese population

Amylase genes reside in a structurally complex locus, and their copy numbers vary greatly, and several studies have reported their association with obesity. The mechanism of this effect was partially explained by changes in the oral and gut microbiome compositions; however, a detailed mechanism has been unclarified. In this study, we showed their association with diabetes in addition to obesity, and further discovered a plausible mechanism of this association based on the function of commensal bacteria. First, we confirmed that the amylase copy number in the population tends to be larger than that reported in other studies and that there is a positive association between obesity and diabetes (p = 1.89E–2 and 8.63E–3). Second, we identified that relative abundance of some genus level microbiome, Capnocytophaga, Dialister, and previously reported bacteria, were significantly associated with amylase copy numbers. Finally, through functional gene-set analysis using shotgun sequencing, we observed that the abundance of genes in the Acarbose pathway in the gut microbiome was significantly decreased with an increase in the amylase copy number (p-value = 5.80E–4). Our findings can partly explain the mechanism underlying obesity and diabetes in populations with high amylase copy numbers.
Improving vaccination coverage and offering vaccine to all school-age children allowed uninterrupted in-person schooling in King County, WA: Modeling analysis

Background: The mass rollout of COVID vaccination in early 2021 allowed local and state authorities to relax mobility and social interaction regulations in spring 2021 including lifting all restrictions for vaccinated people and restoring in-person schooling. However, the emergence and rapid spread of highly transmissible variants combined with slowing down the pace of vaccination created uncertainty around the future trajectory of the epidemic. In this study we analyze the expected benefits of offering vaccination to children age 5-11 under differing conditions for in-person schooling. Methods: We adapted a mathematical model of SARS-CoV-2 transmission, calibrated to data from King County, Washington, to handle multiple variants with increased transmissibility and virulence as well as differential vaccine efficacies against each variant. Reactive social distancing is implemented driven by fluctuations in the number of hospitalizations in the county. We simulate scenarios offering vaccination to children aged 5-11 with different starting dates and different proportions of physical interactions (PPI) in schools being restored. The impact of improving overall vaccination coverage among the eligible population is also explored. Cumulative hospitalizations, percentage reduction of hospitalizations and proportion of time at maximum social distancing over the 2021-2022 school year are reported. Findings: In the base-case scenario with 85% vaccination coverage of 12+ year-olds, our model projects 4945 (median, IQR 4622-5341) total COVID-19 hospitalizations and 325 (median, IQR 264-400) pediatric hospitalizations if physical contacts at schools are fully restored (100% PPI) for the entire school year compared to 3675 (median, IQR 2311-4725) and 163 (median, IQR 95-226) if schools remained closed. Reducing contacts in schools to 75% PPI or 50% PPI through masking, ventilation and distancing is expected to decrease the overall cumulative hospitalizations by 2% and 4% respectively and youth hospitalizations by 8% and 23% respectively. Offering early vaccination to children aged 5-11 with 75% PPI is expected to prevent 756 (median, IQR 301-1434) hospitalizations and cut hospitalizations in the youngest age group in half compared to no vaccination. It will largely reduce the need of additional social distancing over the school year. If, in addition, 90% overall vaccination coverage is reached, 60% of remaining hospitalizations will be averted and the need of extra mitigation measures almost certainly avoided. Conclusions: Our work highlights that in-person schooling is possible if reasonable precaution measures are taken at schools to reduced infectious contacts. Rapid vaccination of all school-aged children will provide meaningful reduction of the COVID health burden over this school year but only if implemented early. Finally, it remains critical to vaccinate as many people as possible to limit the morbidity and mortality associated with the current surge in Delta variant cases.
Natural convection in a liquid metal locally heated from above

A convective flow of liquid sodium generated nearby a hot round in the upper solid end face of a vertical cylinder has been studied experimentally and numerically. A developed turbulent flow is observed in the upper part of the cylinder. Strong velocity pulsations penetrate in the bulk of the metal up to a distance of about the diameter of the cylinder. Mean velocity fields reveal a toroidal vortex, which is localized in a narrow upper zone. Numerical simulations were done for two types of thermal boundary conditions (BCs): fixed temperature and fixed homogeneous heat flux on both heat exchangers. Experimental values of time-averaged velocity and temperature in the vortex are in good agreement with numerical data. The size and the intensity of the vortex weakly depend on BCs. The whole bulk of the metal is not involved in the motion. The temperature field depends much more on the BCs. Under fixed heat fluxes the temperature pulsations become much stronger and penetrate essentially deeper in the liquid metal, though the flow is slightly stronger under fixed boundary temperature. The considered flow is supposed to be a simplified model of the liquid magnesium flow in a reactor of metallothermic titanium reduction.
Foxd3 controls heterochromatin‐mediated repression of repeat elements and 2‐cell state transcription

Repeat element transcription plays a vital role in early embryonic development. The expression of repeats such as MERVL characterises mouse embryos at the 2‐cell stage and defines a 2‐cell‐like cell (2CLC) population in a mouse embryonic stem cell culture. Repeat element sequences contain binding sites for numerous transcription factors. We identify the forkhead domain transcription factor FOXD3 as a regulator of major satellite repeats and MERVL transcription in mouse embryonic stem cells. FOXD3 binds to and recruits the histone methyltransferase SUV39H1 to MERVL and major satellite repeats, consequentially repressing the transcription of these repeats by the establishment of the H3K9me3 heterochromatin modification. Notably, depletion of FOXD3 leads to the de‐repression of MERVL and major satellite repeats as well as a subset of genes expressed in the 2‐cell state, shifting the balance between the stem cell and 2‐cell‐like population in culture. Thus, FOXD3 acts as a negative regulator of repeat transcription, ascribing a novel function to this transcription factor.
Regulated splicing of large exons is linked to phase‐separation of vertebrate transcription factors

Although large exons cannot be readily recognized by the spliceosome, many are evolutionarily conserved and constitutively spliced for inclusion in the processed transcript. Furthermore, whether large exons may be enriched in a certain subset of proteins, or mediate specific functions, has remained unclear. Here, we identify a set of nearly 3,000 SRSF3‐dependent large constitutive exons (S3‐LCEs) in human and mouse cells. These exons are enriched for cytidine‐rich sequence motifs, which bind and recruit the splicing factors hnRNP K and SRSF3. We find that hnRNP K suppresses S3‐LCE splicing, an effect that is mitigated by SRSF3 to thus achieve constitutive splicing of S3‐LCEs. S3‐LCEs are enriched in genes for components of transcription machineries, including mediator and BAF complexes, and frequently contain intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs). In a subset of analyzed S3‐LCE‐containing transcription factors, SRSF3 depletion leads to deletion of the IDRs due to S3‐LCE exon skipping, thereby disrupting phase‐separated assemblies of these factors. Cytidine enrichment in large exons introduces proline/serine codon bias in intrinsically disordered regions and appears to have been evolutionarily acquired in vertebrates. We propose that layered splicing regulation by hnRNP K and SRSF3 ensures proper phase‐separation of these S3‐LCE‐containing transcription factors in vertebrates.
A Slippery Myth: How Learning Style Beliefs Shape Reasoning about Multimodal Instruction and Related Scientific Evidence

The learning style myth is a commonly held myth that matching instruction to a student's "learning style" will result in improved learning, while providing mismatched instruction will result in suboptimal learning. The present study used a short online reasoning exercise about the efficacy of multimodal instruction to investigate the nature of learning styles beliefs. We aimed to: understand how learning style beliefs interact with beliefs about multimodal learning; characterize the potential complexity of learning style beliefs and understand how this short exercise might influence endorsements of learning styles. Many participants who believed in the learning style myth supported the efficacy of multimodal learning, and many were willing to revise their belief in the myth after the exercise. Personal experiences and worldviews were commonly cited as reasons for maintaining beliefs in learning styles. Findings reveal the complexity of learning style beliefs, and how they interact with evidence in previously undocumented ways.
PEMURNIAN MONO-DIASILGLISEROL HASIL ESTERIFIKASI PALM FATTY ACID DISTILLATE DAN GLISEROL DENGAN EKSTRAKSI PELARUT-SAPONIFIKASI DAN DISTILASI MOLEKULER

Mono-diacylglycerol (M-DAG) is one of potential palm oil derived products to be developed. Palm Fatty Acid Distillate (PFAD) and glycerol esterification using Methyl Ester Sulfonic Acid (MESA) catalyst produced M-DAG that consist of Free Fatty Acid (FFA) and Triacylglycerol (TAG) fractions. FFA and TAG fractions can reduce the M-DAG emulsifier quality. Therefore, purification process is needed to eliminate FFA and TAG fractions. The purpose of this research was to improve the M-DAG emulsifier quality by purification process. The purification was performed in two ways: solvent extraction - saponification and molecular distillation. Solvent extraction - saponification was done with the addition of 0, 10, 15 and 20% (w/w) NaHCO 3 . The result showed that the addition of 20% (w/w) NaHCO 3 was the best treatment. It was able to produce 43.52% yield of M-DAGconsisted of 44.48% Thin-Layer Chromatography (TLC) in FFA+TAG composition, 31.05% MAG, 24.47% DAG, melting point of 44.83 o C, free fatty acid level of 19.43%, pH value of 6, emulsion stability of 51.21% for 12 hours, has a white color, dry texture, and odorless. The molecular distillation at temperature of 100-180 o C on purification process was carried out to separatethe FFA. Molecular distillation had produced distillate and residue. Molecular distillation was an effective process to separate the FFA from M-DAG whereas produced 96.09% of FFA from distillation flow. Keywords : glycerol, molecular distillation, palm fatty acid distillate, purification, saponification
Prediction of RNA secondary structure including pseudoknots for long sequences

Abstract RNA structural elements called pseudoknots are involved in various biological phenomena including ribosomal frameshifts. Because it is infeasible to construct an efficiently computable secondary structure model including pseudoknots, secondary structure prediction methods considering pseudoknots are not yet widely available. We developed IPknot, which uses heuristics to speed up computations, but it has remained difficult to apply it to long sequences, such as messenger RNA and viral RNA, because it requires cubic computational time with respect to sequence length and has threshold parameters that need to be manually adjusted. Here, we propose an improvement of IPknot that enables calculation in linear time by employing the LinearPartition model and automatically selects the optimal threshold parameters based on the pseudo-expected accuracy. In addition, IPknot showed favorable prediction accuracy across a wide range of conditions in our exhaustive benchmarking, not only for single sequences but also for multiple alignments.
Effect of a Social Networking Site Training on Cognitive Performance in Healthy Older People and Role of Personality Traits. Results from the Randomized Controlled Trial Ageing in a Networked Society-Social Experiment (ANS-SE) Study

ABSTRACT Objectives The study aimed to evaluate the short-term efficacy of social network sites (SNSs) training on cognitive performance in cognitively healthy older individuals, and to explore the influence of personality traits on cognitive benefits of SNSs training. Methods The Aging in a Networked Society-Social Experiment study was a randomized controlled trial with three arms: intervention group (course on SNSs use), active control group (lifestyle education) and waiting list. Among the 180 eligible participants, 144 participated, 115 completed the study. The assessment comprised: Stroop Color and Word Test, Wechsler tests (Digit span, Symbol search, Coding), and Eysenck Personality Questionnaire- Revised- Short Form. Results There was no significant cognitive improvement for treatment group versus the control groups. Time interference significantly worsened in lifestyle education group compared to the waiting list, after controlling for baseline test scores and personality traits. Conclusion The present study does not support the usefulness of SNSs training with healthy older adults. The educational content of lifestyle education is not an inert condition among individuals with high levels of neuroticism and socially desirable responding. There is a need to design experimental conditions in the control groups which do not influence participant’s outcomes.
Development and Evaluation of an Online Toolkit for Managers of 9-1-1 Emergency Communications Centers to Reduce Occupational Stress

This article describes the development and evaluation of an online workplace stress reduction toolkit for use by managers of 9-1-1 emergency communication centers (ECCs). A three-step process for development and testing of digital learning resources was used: (1) establishing need and focus through ECC manager stakeholder engagement, (2) pretesting of the toolkit with the target ECC manager audience, and (3) toolkit utilization and evaluation. The toolkit was developed in close partnership with stakeholders throughout the entire process. Toolkit usage was documented via registration data. The evaluation utilized an online survey that included closed and open-ended questions, which were analyzed using descriptive statistics and qualitative thematic analysis. Over a 20-month period, 274 people registered for the toolkit and, of those, 184 (67%) accessed the content. Respondents to the evaluation survey (N = 156) scored the toolkit highly on satisfaction, self-efficacy, and perceived utility measures. Survey respondents reported intent to apply toolkit content through the following: providing organizational resources to help workers take better care of themselves (41%); creating a lower stress worksite environment (35%) and sharing resources with staff to (1) reduce stress (19%), (2) support conflict resolution (21%), and (3) prevent and/or stop bullying (17%). In delivering actionable content to ECC managers, the toolkit shows promise in addressing and mitigating occupational stress in ECCs. Further research needs to determine the relationship of this strategy for reducing ECC stress.
Arcuate Fasciculus Subsegment Impairments Distinctly Associated with Memory and Language Deficits in Acute Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Patients.

In acute mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), the injury-related axonal swelling leads to white matter fiber bundle impairments, closely related to the memory and language deficits commonly shown in the patients. The arcuate fasciculus (AF) plays a central role in verbal learning and language function but could be functionally heterogeneous along the fiber tract. In this study, 25 acute mTBI patients (< 48h after trauma) and thirty-three age- and sex-matched healthy controls were included. Impaired verbal memory and language functions were shown in the patients group compared to the healthy controls. Combined diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was applied to investigate the altered diffusion measure profiles of the AF tracts and the associated functional features. The fractional anisotropy (FA) in right AF temporal subsegment of the mTBI group was negatively associated with the patient verbal memory function, whereas a positive correlation was found in the healthy control (HC) group. On the other hand, the correlation between the FA in right AF frontal subsegment and the language function in HCs diminished in the patients group. Moreover, the functional connectivity between the inferior frontal gyrus and the middle occipital gyrus decreased and its correlation with language function in HCs was absent in the mTBI patients. Our work provides new insights into the understanding of the structural and functional heterogeneity of the AF tracts as well as the distinct associations of its subsegment impairments with verbal memory and language function deficits in acute mTBI patients.