Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A differentiation program induced by bone morphogenetic proteins 4 and 7 in endodermal epithelial cells provides the molecular basis for efficient nutrient transport by the chicken yolk sac

The mammalian yolk sac provides nutrients for the growing fetus during critical early developmental processes such as neural tube closure, which precedes the functional maturation of the placenta. In contrast, oviparous species such as the chicken rely solely on the yolk sac for transfer of nutrients from the yolk to the developing embryo. However, the molecular mechanisms that provide the yolk sac with nutrient transfer competence remain poorly understood.
Imputing missing time-dependent covariate values for the discrete time Cox model

We describe a procedure for imputing missing values of time-dependent covariates in a discrete time Cox model using the chained equations method. The procedure multiply imputes the missing values for each time-period in a time-sequential manner, using covariates from the current and previous time-periods as well as the survival outcome. The form of the outcome variable used in the imputation model depends on the functional form of the time-dependent covariate(s) and differs from the case of Cox regression with only baseline covariates. This time-sequential approach provides an approximation to a fully conditional approach. We illustrate the procedure with data on diabetics, evaluating the association of their glucose control with the risk of selected cancers. Using simulations we show that the suggested estimator performed well (in terms of bias and coverage) for completely missing at random, missing at random and moderate non-missing-at-random patterns. However, for very strong non-missing-at-random patterns, the estimator was seriously biased and the coverage was too low. The procedure can be implemented using multiple imputation with the Fully conditional Specification (FCS) method (MI procedure in SAS with FCS statement or similar packages in other software, e.g. MICE in R). For use with event times on a continuous scale, the events would need to be grouped into time-intervals.
Age-specific modifications in healthy adults’ knee joint position sense

Abstract Aim: Right-handed young adults perform target-matching tasks more accurately with the non-dominant (ND) compared to the dominant (D) limb, but it is unclear if age affects this disparity. We determined if age affects target-matching asymmetry in right-side dominant healthy adults. Method: Young (n = 12, age: 23.6 y, 6 females) and older (n = 12; age: 75.1 y, 7 females) adults performed a passive joint position-matching task with the D and ND leg in a randomized order. Result: Age affected absolute, constant, and variable knee JPS errors but, contrary to expectations, it did not affect target-matching asymmetries between the D and ND knees. However, older participants tended to underestimate while young subjects overestimated the target angles. Moreover, older as compared to young subjects performed the target-matching task with higher variability. Conclusion: Altogether, age seems to affect passive knee target-matching behaviour in right-side dominant healthy adults. The present data indicate that healthy aging produces age-specific modifications in passive joint position sense.
Investigating Variations in Adjective Use across Different Text Categories

Adjectives are an informative but understudied linguistic entity with good potentials in sentiment analysis, text classification and automatic genre detection. In this article, we report an investigation of the variations in adjective use across different text categories represented in a sizable corpus. In particular, we report the distribution of adjectives across a range of categories grouped together as academic prose in the British National Corpus. We shall measure inter-category similarity in the use of adjectives and demonstrate with empirical data that adjectives are an effective differentia of text categories or domains, at least in terms of arts and sciences as the two major sub-categories within academic prose.
WOMEN AND LABOR MARKET: WORK FAMILY CONFLICT AND CAREER SELF-MANAGEMENT

The objective of the present study is to discuss and analyse the relation between the present labour market configuration and women’s professional career management. Because this is such an extensive topic, our discussion will focus mainly on Work Family Conflict (WFC) and Self-efficacy perception during a career transition period. Previous studies have focused, although not extensively, on such relationships. We intend to provide some additional clarification regarding these associations. The Participants were employees working at a Professional Center in Abruzzo, Italy. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted to evaluate the influence of Work-family conflict (WFC) on how women manage their career; the relations found among the variables in study were generally small. Mostly, WFC doesn’t influence on the career transition management process. Self-efficacy perception plays a role as a mediator between readiness level and Career Self Management. Results are discussed based on previous literature in the field of gender, work-family conflict and Career Management. Limitations of the study are discussed as well as directions for future researches are provided.
Association of GSTM 1 Null Allele with Prostate Cancer Risk : Evidence from 36 Case-Control Studies

Background: Glutathione S-transferase M1 (GSTM1) is thought to be involved in detoxifying several carcinogens and may play a vital role in tumorigenesis. Numerous studies have evaluated the association between GSTM1 null/present polymorphism and risk of prostate cancer (PCa). However, the results remain inconsistent. To derive a more precise estimation, we performed a meta-analysis. Methodology/Principal Findings: A comprehensive search was conducted to identify all eligible case-control studies. We used odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) to assess the strength of the association. The overall association was significant (OR= 1.28, 95% CI: 1.11–1.48, P= 0.001). Moreover, subgroup analyses showed GSTM1 null genotype significantly associated with PCa risk among Asians (OR= 1.35, 95% CI: 1.03–1.78, P= 0.03) but not among Caucasians (OR= 1.12, 95% CI: 0.96–1.31, P= 0.16). In addition, we did not find that smoking modified the genotype effect on the risk of PCa. Conclusions/Significance: The present meta-analysis suggested that GSTM1 null allele was a low-penetrant risk factor for PCa among Asians. Citation: Wei B, Xu Z, Zhou Y, Ruan J, Cheng H, et al. (2012) Association of GSTM1 Null Allele with Prostate Cancer Risk: Evidence from 36 Case-Control Studies. PLoS ONE 7(10): e46982. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0046982 Editor: Olga Y. Gorlova, The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, United States of America Received April 21, 2012; Accepted September 7, 2012; Published October 10, 2012 Copyright: 2012 Wei et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: No current external funding sources for this study. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: xuzq@live.com . These authors contributed equally to this work.
Competitive Dimension of Outsourcing Relations in Global Networks

Over the past decades, outsourcing has been an important mechanism not only to reduce costs but also to organise both production and non-core activities of the company, in order to remain competitive and efficient on the market. The globalisation of the markets has radically changed competition rules. Companies must adapt their traditional strategies and policies to an ever changing and highly instable context characterised by a broad and complex environment. The solution adopted by big corporations is the creation of global business networks where companies work and interact with partners and stakeholders to enhance strengths and exploit opportunities. In this context, competitive outsourcing emerges as a new configuration of strategic alliance based on the network structure aimed at gaining shared advantages.
Evidence of genetic polymorphism in Aedes aegypti population from Delhi, India

Aedes aegypti is a domestic mosquito found mainly inside and around the house causes biting nuisance and also a vector of dengue, chikungunya and zika virus worldwide including India. Overall mosquitoborne diseases have re-emerged as a significant human health problem due to a number of factors, including the lack of progress in vaccine development, the emergence of drug resistance in pathogens and insecticides resistance in mosquitoes. An alternative strategy for vector control could be to exploit observed genetic variability in the vector populations. In the present study RAPD primers were used to understand the genetic polymorphism present in the Aedes aegypti populations collected from various locations in Delhi. A total of 50 RAPD primers were screened. Among these, the primer OPAK 12 was selected for further study on the basis of the clear, concrete and scorable fingerprint obtained by it. The statistical analysis was done with the help of POPGENE 1.31 using 17 bands or loci representing each population. The average genetic distances between the populations was 0.5624 ranging from 0.12521. 1015. The consensus tree generated using the software showed two clusters which are branched as per their geographical distances. In conclusion we propose that our results on RAPD profiles provide evidence that there are enough and significant variations in the genomes of field collected populations from distant locations and the genetic pattern obtained in its various forms appears to be a major differentiating and orienting force for molecular changes in DNA across different populations.
MiR‐92a regulates brown adipocytes differentiation, mitochondrial oxidative respiration, and heat generation by targeting SMAD7

Brown adipocytes are rich in mitochondria and linked to the body's blood fat levels and obesity. MiR‐92a is negatively correlated with the activity of brown adipocytes. This study aimed to explore the mechanism of miR‐92a on brown adipocytes. The expression of miR‐92a in C2C12 cell was detected by a quantitative real‐time‐polymerase chain reaction (qRT‐PCR). C2C12 cells were induced to brown adipocytes. The direct target gene of miR‐92a was determined using the dual‐luciferase reporter assay. Brown adipocytes were treated with isoprenaline (Iso) and transfected by miR‐92a inhibitor and siSMAD7. The expression of heat‐producing genes and adipose differentiation genes related to brown adipocytes were detected by qRT‐PCR and Western blot analysis. The expression of SMAD7, p‐SMAD2, and p‐SMAD3 were detected using Western blot analysis. The mitochondrial content was measured by mitotracker fluorescent staining. MiR‐92a inhibitor significantly decreased the expression of miR‐92a in C2C12 cells. MiR‐92a inhibitor could upregulate the expression of Ucp1, Cox7a1, Elovl3, Ppargc1α, PPARγ, and FABP4, and its effect on Ucp1 was increased after the treatment of isoprenaline. Moreover, miR‐92a inhibitor increased mitochondrial content, oxygen consumption rate (OCR) and the expression of SMAD7 and suppressed the expressions of p‐SMAD2 and p‐SMAD3, whereas miR‐92a directly targeted SMAD7 to exert its inhibitory effects. SiSMAD7 reversed the effects of the inhibitor on heat‐producing genes, mitochondrial content, OCR and the expressions of SMAD7, p‐SMAD2, and p‐SMAD3 in brown adipocytes. Blocking miR‐92a might promote brown adipocytes differentiation, mitochondrial oxidative respiration, and thermogenesis by targeting SMAD7 to inhibit the expressions of p‐SMAD2 and p‐SMAD3.
Does male factor infertility impact on self‐esteem and sexual relationship?

Nonsomatic factors play a significant role in erectile dysfunction. We assessed the impact on men suffering from male factor infertility by employing the validated Self‐Esteem and Relationship questionnaire (SEAR) and compared the scores with controls. Men with primary infertility were asked to fill SEAR questionnaire. Normal fertile men visiting clinic for unrelated problem or normal male accompanying infertile patients constitute the control group. Transformed score of each domain and total score of SEAR questionnaire and means were compared. Data were analysed by R version 5.2. Univariate and multivariate analyses were done to determine factors predicting self‐esteem and total relationship score. There were 45 men each in the study and control groups. The mean transformed self‐esteem score and total score of infertile men were significantly lower as compared to controls (74.44 versus 95.83) and (73.54 versus 95.86) p‐value of <. 0001. Longer duration of infertility, advanced age, diabetes and higher education were factors significantly lowering the scores on univariate analysis, and on multivariate analysis, diabetes was the only significant predictor of total SEAR score in infertile men. Infertility leads to lower self‐esteem, sexual performance and confidence among infertile men as compared to controls. The relationship score worsens with increasing duration of infertility.
Efficient Estimation of Marker Effects in Plant Breeding

The evaluation of prediction machines is an important step for a successful implementation of genomic-enabled selection in plant breeding. Computation time and predictive ability constitute key metrics to determine the methodology utilized for the consolidation of genomic prediction pipeline. This study introduces two methods designed to couple high prediction accuracy with efficient computational performance: 1) a non-MCMC method to estimate marker effects with a Laplace prior; and 2) an iterative framework that allows solving whole-genome regression within mixed models with replicated observations in a single-stage. The investigation provides insights on predictive ability and marker effect estimates. Various genomic prediction techniques are compared based on cross-validation, assessing predictions across and within family. Properties of quantitative trait loci detection and single-stage method were evaluated on simulated plot-level data from unbalanced data structures. Estimation of marker effects by the new model is compared to a genome-wide association analysis and whole-genome regression methods. The single-stage approach is compared to a GBLUP fitted via restricted maximum likelihood, and a two-stages approaches where genetic values fit a whole-genome regression. The proposed framework provided high computational efficiency, robust prediction across datasets, and accurate estimation of marker effects.
Analysis of the Impact of Changes in Flight Speed and Altitude on Emission Indexes of Pollutants in Jet Engine Exhausts

Abstract In currently implemented international aviation strategies and programs, including those realised under the European Union policy, such as Clean Sky, SES, SESAR and, CORSIA, the environmental aspect is particularly prominent – reducing the emission of all gaseous pollutants, and from 2020 also particulate matter. Therefore, it is important to know how the change in flight parameters (altitude, speed) affects the emission of pollutants in jet engine exhausts. Such information will enable to adjust the flight altitude of the aircraft when ecological aspect is taken into consideration. In addition to the operating condition (altitude, flight speed, range of power or thrust), the amount and type of pollutants emitted depends on the type of aircraft, its aerodynamic characteristics, engine type and as well as on the type of fuel used. The impact of changes in aircraft flight parameters (speed and altitude) on the performance of a bypass jet engine and the emission of pollutants in its exhausts is analysed in the paper. For this purpose, the speed-altitude characteristics of such an engine were determined. Next, the emission indexes (EI) for the LTO phase taken from the ICAO database were used to determine the emission indexes corresponding to given parameters of both the engine operation and the aircraft flight. For selected speeds and cruising altitudes, the value of thrust required for the flight of the aircraft was determined and to this value, the engine operation range was assigned as well the corresponding pollutant emission indexes. This allowed to calculate the mass of pollutants emitted per unit of time for given flight parameters. The results obtained are presented in the graphs and discussed.
Learning Towards Transportation Network Equilibrium: A Model Comparison Study

As an interdisciplinary topic, human travel-choice behavior has attracted the interests of transportation managers, theoretical computer science researchers and economists. Recent studies on tacit coordination in iterated route choice games (i.e., a large number of subjects could achieve the transportation network equilibrium in limited rounds) have been driven by two questions. (1) Will learning behavior promote tacit coordination in route choice games? (2) Which learning model can best account for these choices/behaviors? To answer the first question, we choose a set of learning models and conduct extensive simulations to determine their success in accounting for major behavioral patterns. To answer the second question, we compare these models to one another by competitively testing their predictions on four different datasets. Although all the selected models account reasonably well for the slow convergence of the mean route choice to equilibrium, they account only moderately well for the mean frequencies of the round-to-round switches from one route to another and fail to appropriately account for substantial individual differences. The implications of these findings for model construction and testing are briefly discussed.
Effects of single ingestion of rice cracker and cooked rice with high resistant starch on postprandial glucose and insulin responses in healthy adults: two randomized, single-blind, cross-over trials

ABSTRACT Rice with double mutation of starch synthase IIIa and branching enzyme IIb (ss3a/be2b) has much higher amounts of apparent amylose and resistant starch (RS) than usual varieties. In this study, we conducted two randomized, single-blind, crossover trials to investigate the effect of single ingestion of two processed foods composed of ss3a/be2b mutant rice on postprandial blood glucose and insulin response in healthy adults, compared to those of usual cultivar. In trial 1, of ingestion of rice crackers, the incremental area under the curves of glucose (IAUCglc) and insulin (IAUCins) in RS group was significantly lower than in the control group. In trial 2, of the ingestion of cooked rice, IAUCglc in the RS group was significantly lower than in the control group. These results showed that the ss3a/be2b-mutant rice cracker and cooked rice having high RS can attenuate postprandial blood glucose and insulin response. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT Rice cracker and cooked rice having high resistant starch attenuate postprandial blood glucose
The Na/Ca Exchange as a Target for Antitumor Effect of 4Hz Pulsing Magnetic Field

ABSTRACT The correlation between cell hydration and proliferation is one of the controversial subjects in the present cancer research because the detailed mechanism(s) of correlation between these two cell parameters are not evaluated yet. The fact that magnetic fields have antitumor effects and our previous data that the effect of 4 Hz pulsing magnetic field (PMF) is realized by the activation of Cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP)-dependent Na/Ca exchange allow us to suggest that through the study of PMF effects on cell hydration and proliferation in soft tissues of sarcoma-180 tumor-carrying mice compared with those of healthy ones will be possible to evaluate the character of correlation between cell hydration and proliferation in norm and pathology. The daily 30-min PMF (0.2 mT) exposed on tumor-carrying mice has lifetime prolongation, time-dependent depression of tumor growth, decrease of thermal threshold, and lactate concentration in blood. In the initial (6 days) period tumorigenesis PMF leads to dehydration in spleen cells, which is accompanied by the activation of cell proliferation, while in late periods of tumorigenesis it leads to cell hydration accompanied with proliferation. We are suggesting that PMF-induced overhydration and the increase of cell proliferation in cancer tissue as a consequence of high [Ca]i-induced activation of Ca-calmoduline-NO-cGMP pathway leads to the activation of FNa/Ca exchange, while its antitumor effect expressed in initial period of tumorigenesis is due to the activation of cGMP-dependent FNa/Ca, where because of low [Ca]i, it brings to cell dehydration as a result of reactivation of Na/K pump.
No Evidence of Mosquito Involvement in the Transmission of Equine Hepacivirus (Flaviviridae) in an Epidemiological Survey of Austrian Horses

Prevalence studies have demonstrated a global distribution of equine hepacivirus (EqHV), a member of the family Flaviviridae. However, apart from a single case of vertical transmission, natural routes of EqHV transmission remain elusive. Many known flaviviruses are horizontally transmitted between hematophagous arthropods and vertebrate hosts. This study represents the first investigation of potential EqHV transmission by mosquitoes. More than 5000 mosquitoes were collected across Austria and analyzed for EqHV ribonucleic acid (RNA) by reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). Concurrently, 386 serum samples from horses in eastern Austria were analyzed for EqHV-specific antibodies by luciferase immunoprecipitation system (LIPS) and for EqHV RNA by RT-qPCR. Additionally, liver-specific biochemistry parameters were compared between EqHV RNA-positive horses and EqHV RNA-negative horses. Phylogenetic analysis was conducted in comparison to previously published sequences from various origins. No EqHV RNA was detected in mosquito pools. Serum samples yielded an EqHV antibody prevalence of 45.9% (177/386) and RNA prevalence of 4.15% (16/386). EqHV RNA-positive horses had significantly higher glutamate dehydrogenase (GLDH) levels (p = 0.013) than control horses. Phylogenetic analysis showed high similarity between nucleotide sequences of EqHV in Austrian horses and EqHV circulating in other regions. Despite frequently detected evidence of EqHV infection in Austrian horses, no viral RNA was found in mosquitoes. It is therefore unlikely that mosquitoes are vectors of this flavivirus.
High Acceleration Motions generated from the 2011 Pacific coast off Tohoku , Japan Earthquake

(10 pt) Strong motion records in near-source area from the 2011 Tohoku earthquake show several isolated wave-packets arriving from different origins on the source fault. The source model is estimated from the forward modeling, comparing short-period ground motions simulated using the empirical Green’s functions with those observed. The final model has five strong motion generation areas (SMGAs) located west of the hypocenter and along the down-dip edge of the source fault. Impulsive waves with high acceleration are seen on observed seismograms near the source fault. The impulsive waves are well simulated using a heterogeneous models with higher stress parameter in a small subarea inside the SMGA. Attenuation-distance relationship of peak ground velocity (PGV) from this earthquake was virtually equivalent to a conventional empirical-equation with Mw 8.0 class. Another cause of ground motions with extremely high-accelerations can be explained by nonlinear site responses due to surface geology with decreased S wave velocities.