Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The transcription factor GATA4 promotes myocardial regeneration in neonatal mice

Heart failure is often the consequence of insufficient cardiac regeneration. Neonatal mice retain a certain capability of myocardial regeneration until postnatal day (P)7, although the underlying transcriptional mechanisms remain largely unknown. We demonstrate here that cardiac abundance of the transcription factor GATA4 was high at P1, but became strongly reduced at P7 in parallel with loss of regenerative capacity. Reconstitution of cardiac GATA4 levels by adenoviral gene transfer markedly improved cardiac regeneration after cryoinjury at P7. In contrast, the myocardial scar was larger in cardiomyocyte‐specific Gata4 knockout (CM‐G4‐KO) mice after cryoinjury at P0, indicative of impaired regeneration, which was accompanied by reduced cardiomyocyte proliferation and reduced myocardial angiogenesis in CM‐G4‐KO mice. Cardiomyocyte proliferation was also diminished in cardiac explants from CM‐G4‐KO mice and in isolated cardiomyocytes with reduced GATA4 expression. Mechanistically, decreased GATA4 levels caused the downregulation of several pro‐regenerative genes (among them interleukin‐13, Il13) in the myocardium. Interestingly, systemic administration of IL‐13 rescued defective heart regeneration in CM‐G4‐KO mice and could be evaluated as therapeutic strategy in the future.
The cytoskeleton regulates symmetry transitions in moving amoeboid cells

ABSTRACT Symmetry and symmetry breaking are essential in biology. Symmetry comes in different forms: rotational symmetry, mirror symmetry and alternating right–left symmetry (for example, gliding reflection symmetry). Especially the transitions between the different symmetry forms are important because they specify crucial points in cell biology, including gastrulation in development, formation of the cleavage furrow in cell division, or the front in cell polarity. However, the mechanisms of these symmetry transitions are not well understood. Here, we have investigated the fundamental properties of symmetry and symmetry transitions of the cytoskeleton during cell movement. Our data show that the dynamic shape changes of amoeboid cells are far from random, but are the consequence of refined symmetries and symmetry changes that are orchestrated by small G-proteins and the cytoskeleton, with local stimulation by F-actin and Scar, and local inhibition by IQGAP2 and myosin. Summary: Dynamic shape changes of amoeboid cells are far from random, but are the consequence of refined symmetries and symmetry changes that are orchestrated by small G-proteins and the cytoskeleton.
Multiple cortical brain abscesses due to Listeria monocytogenes in an immunocompetent patient

Listeria monocytogenes is an intracellular organism which is well recognised for its ability to cause meningeal infections in neonates, immunosuppressed, debilitated and elderly individuals. 1 Other less common central nervous system (CNS) infections caused by Listeria spp. include rhomboencephalitis, cerebritis and abscesses in the brain, brain stem and spinal cord. The neuroradiological appearance of Listeria brain abscesses is similar to other types and may also mimic primary or metastatic brain tumours.2,3 We report a case of Listeria brain abscesses in a patient who was being treated for atypical parkinsonism. A good clinical outcome was achieved after appropriate antimicrobial therapy.
Cumulative evidence for relationships between multiple variants in the VTI1A and TCF7L2 genes and cancer incidence

Genetic studies have linked the VTI1A‐TCF7L2 region with risk of multiple cancers. However, findings from these studies were generally inconclusive. We aimed to provide a synopsis of current understanding of associations between variants in the VTI1A‐TCF7L2 region and cancer susceptibility. We conducted a comprehensive research synopsis and meta‐analysis to evaluate associations between 17 variants in this region and risk of seven cancers using data from 32 eligible articles totaling 224,656 cancer cases and 324,845 controls. We graded cumulative evidence of significant associations using Venice criteria and false‐positive report probability tests. We also conducted analyses to evaluate potential function of these variants using data from the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) Project. Eight variants showed a nominally significant association with risk of individual cancer (p < 0.05). Cumulative epidemiological evidence of an association was graded as strong for rs7903146 [odds ratio (OR) = 1.05, p = 4.13 × 10−5] and rs7904519 (OR = 1.07, p = 2.02 × 10−14) in breast cancer, rs11196172 (OR = 1.11, p = 2.22 × 10−16), rs12241008 (OR = 1.13, p = 1.36 × 10−10) and rs10506868 (OR = 1.10, p = 3.98 × 10−9) in colorectal cancer, rs7086803 in lung cancer (OR = 1.30, p = 3.54 × 10−18) and rs11196067 (OR = 1.18, p = 3.59 × 10−13) in glioma, moderate for rs12255372 (OR = 1.12, p = 2.52 × 10−4) in breast cancer and weak for rs7903146 (OR = 1.11, p = 0.007) in colorectal cancer. Data from ENCODE suggested that seven variants with strong evidence and other correlated variants might fall within putative functional regions. Collectively, our study provides summary evidence that common variants in the VTI1A and TCF7L2 genes are associated with risk of breast, colorectal, lung cancer and glioma and highlights the significant role of the VTI1A‐TCF7L2 region in the pathogenesis of human cancers.
Study on flax fiber toughened poly (lactic acid) composites

Poly (lactic acid) (PLA) is a renewable and biodegradable polymer with high modulus, high strength but low toughness. Blending PLA with plant fiber has been believed an available strategy to improve the toughness of PLA. PLA/Flax composites were fabricated by extrusion and injection molding processes. The flax fiber surfaces were modified before blending to improve the compatibility, and the chemical structures of both untreated and treated fiber were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Results of mechanical test showed that the impact strength and elongation at break of PLA/Flax composites were remarkably higher than PLA. The impact fractures of PLA/Flax composites were also observed by scanning electron microscope. The results showed uniform dispersion of fibers in PLA matrix and good compatibility between treated fibers and PLA matrix. Moreover, it can be observed that crazing propagation was hindered by fibers and transcrystalline developed along fibers by polarized optical microscope. Differential scanning calorimetry analysis was carried out to study the crystallinity of PLA and it was found that incorporation of fiber improved the crystallinity of PLA. The toughening mechanism of PLA/Flax composites was discussed according to the results. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2015, 132, 42573.
Authentication of M14 melanoma cell line proves misidentification of MDA‐MB‐435 breast cancer cell line

A variety of analytical approaches have indicated that melanoma cell line UCLA‐SO‐M14 (M14) and breast carcinoma cell line MDA‐MB‐435 originate from a common donor. This indicates that at some point in the past, one of these cell lines became misidentified, meaning that it ceased to correspond to the reported donor and instead became falsely identified (through cross‐contamination or other means) as a cell line from a different donor. Initial studies concluded that MDA‐MB‐435 was the misidentified cell line and M14 was the authentic cell line, although contradictory evidence has been published, resulting in further confusion. To address this question, we obtained early samples of the melanoma cell line (M14), a lymphoblastoid cell line from the same donor (ML14), and donor serum preserved at the originator's institution. M14 samples were cryopreserved in December 1975, before MDA‐MB‐435 cells were established in culture. Through a series of molecular characterizations, including short tandem repeat (STR) profiling and cytogenetic analysis, we demonstrated that later samples of M14 and MDA‐MB‐435 correspond to samples of M14 frozen in 1975, to the lymphoblastoid cell line ML14, and to the melanoma donor's STR profile, sex and blood type. This work demonstrates conclusively that M14 is the authentic cell line and MDA‐MB‐435 is misidentified. With clear provenance information and authentication testing of early samples, it is possible to resolve debates regarding the origins of problematic cell lines that are widely used in cancer research.
Soluble antigens in plasma allow mismatched transfusion without hemolysis

Universal plasma is a scarce resource when a massive transfusion protocol has been initiated. Previous studies have reported success using group A plasma in place of the universal plasma, group AB. It is unclear why there are not more reports of hemolytic reactions occurring from this practice. One possible explanation is the presence of water‐soluble antigens in the patient plasma that bind to, and neutralize, the soluble antibodies present in the transfused plasma.
Chemoattractant activity of tris-(hydroxymethyl)aminomethane for Brugia pahangi infective third-stage larvae

Abstract Urocanic acid (UCA) is known as a major chemoattractant for Strongyloides stercoralis infective third-stage larvae (L3). Since Brugia pahangi is a skin-penetrating parasitic nematode similar to S. stercoralis, UCA was expected to be a chemoattractant for B. pahangi L3. Thus, the chemoattractant activity of UCA for B. pahangi L3 was assessed. The chemotactic responses of B. pahangi L3 to UCA or acetic acid (CH3COOH) dissolved in amine solutions were assessed using an agar-plate assay. A test solution of 200 mm UCA dissolved in aqueous 270 mm tris(hydroxymethyl)aminomethane (Tris) significantly attracted B. pahangi L3 compared with deionized water (DW), while neither a solution of 200 mm UCA dissolved in aqueous 230 mm ammonia (NH3) nor 290 mm triethylamine (TEA) significantly attracted L3. Similarly, a test solution of 200 mm CH3COOH dissolved with 200 mm Tris significantly attracted L3, but neither a test solution of 200 mm CH3COOH plus 200 mm NH3 nor 200 mm TEA attracted L3. Furthermore, L3 were significantly attracted to 200 mm Tris alone, compared with DW, but avoided 200 mm NH3 and 200 mm TEA. Moreover, the chemoattractant activity of Tris for L3 was observed even at a low concentration of 25 mm, and it was observed in a mild alkaline condition but not in an acidic condition. The present study reveals that Tris is a potential chemoattractant for B. pahangi L3 while UCA is not. This finding will contribute to an understanding of the mechanisms of skin-penetrating infection of filarial L3.
Two Phase 3 Trials of Adalimumab for Hidradenitis Suppurativa.

BACKGROUND Hidradenitis suppurativa is a painful, chronic inflammatory skin disease with few options for effective treatment. In a phase 2 trial, adalimumab, an antibody against tumor necrosis factor α, showed efficacy against hidradenitis suppurativa. METHODS PIONEER I and II were similarly designed, phase 3 multicenter trials of adalimumab for hidradenitis suppurativa, with two double-blind, placebo-controlled periods. In period 1, patients were randomly assigned in a 1:1 ratio to 40 mg of adalimumab weekly or matching placebo for 12 weeks. In period 2, patients were reassigned to adalimumab at a weekly or every-other-week dose or to placebo for 24 weeks. The primary end point was a clinical response, defined as at least a 50% reduction from baseline in the abscess and inflammatory-nodule count, with no increase in abscess or draining-fistula counts, at week 12. RESULTS We enrolled 307 patients in PIONEER I and 326 in PIONEER II. Clinical response rates at week 12 were significantly higher for the groups receiving adalimumab weekly than for the placebo groups: 41.8% versus 26.0% in PIONEER I (P=0.003) and 58.9% versus 27.6% in PIONEER II (P<0.001). Patients receiving adalimumab had significantly greater improvement than the placebo groups in rank-ordered secondary outcomes (lesions, pain, and the modified Sartorius score for disease severity) at week 12 in PIONEER II only. Serious adverse events in period 1 (excluding worsening of underlying disease) occurred in 1.3% of patients receiving adalimumab and 1.3% of those receiving placebo in PIONEER I and in 1.8% and 3.7% of patients, respectively, in PIONEER II. In period 2, the rates of serious adverse events were 4.6% or less in all the groups in both studies, with no significant between-group differences. CONCLUSIONS Treatment with adalimumab (40 mg weekly), as compared with placebo, resulted in significantly higher clinical response rates in both trials at 12 weeks; rates of serious adverse events were similar in the study groups. (Funded by AbbVie; ClinicalTrials.gov numbers, NCT01468207 and NCT01468233 for PIONEER I and PIONEER II, respectively.).
The Lived Experience of Midlife Women With Major Depression.

BACKGROUND Midlife, a significant developmental phase for women, is a period of biological, psychological, and social role changes. However, not all women transition smoothly into middle age, with those who experience depression typically bearing significantly greater physical and psychological discomforts in midlife. Despite the expanding body of research on women and depression, little is understood about how depressed women handle the midlife transition. PURPOSE The aim of this study was to gain a deeper understanding about the lived experience of middle-aged women with major depression. METHODS This study used a phenomenological design. Four women between 43 and 55 years old with a diagnosis of major depression were interviewed. There were seven transcripts in total. A 62-year-old depressed woman was also interviewed to verify the results. RESULTS After data analysis, "a harder life" emerged as the core of these women's experiences. Two themes with two respective subthemes were identified. The theme "struggling to redefine the self" was associated with the subthemes "taking pills in the dump" and "the inane life. " The theme "swinging to develop new social interactions" was associated with the subthemes "being alienated from former social contacts" and "starting new social interactions. " Results indicate that the participants encountered greater challenges in adapting to middle age than their nondepressed peers. CONCLUSIONS Much adaptation and help are needed for depressed women to experience a smooth transition into midlife. In caring for these women, their interpersonal relationships with others should be the main target. Meanwhile, nurses must understand what challenges depressed women typically encounter in midlife based on the developmental perspective and then assess how pharmaceutical treatments impact the view of self of women.
Do age-related word retrieval difficulties appear (or disappear) in connected speech?

ABSTRACT We conducted a comprehensive literature review of studies of word retrieval in connected speech in healthy aging and reviewed relevant aphasia research that could shed light on the aging literature. Four main hypotheses guided the review: (1) Significant retrieval difficulties would lead to reduced output in connected speech. (2) Significant retrieval difficulties would lead to a more limited lexical variety in connected speech. (3) Significant retrieval difficulties would lead to an increase in word substitution errors and in pronoun use as well as to greater dysfluency and hesitation in connected speech. (4) Retrieval difficulties on tests of single-word production would be associated with measures of word retrieval in connected speech. Studies on aging did not confirm these four hypotheses, unlike studies on aphasia that generally did. The review suggests that future research should investigate how context facilitates word production in old age.
Association of genetic variants of vit D binding protein (DBP/GC) and of the enzyme catalyzing its 25-hydroxylation (DCYP2R1) and serum vit D in postmenopausal women

OBJECTIVE: To determine if GC (group-specific component globulin) and CYP2R1 genetic variants have an association with serum 25-OHD3 levels, BMD or bone turnover markers in a population of Chinese postmenopausal women. DESIGN: We randomly selected 1494 postmenopausal women of the Han ethnic group from seven communities in Beijing. BMD was determined by dual energy X-ray absorptiometry; serum bone turnover markers and 25-OHD3 were measured by the automated Roche electrochemiluminescence system; genotypes of GC and CYP2R1 were detected by the TaqMan allelic discrimination assay. Multiple statistic methods were used to test the associations of SNP genotypes and vitamin D levels. RESULTS: In our sample, 89.6% women had vitamin D deficiency and another 9.8% had vitamin D insufficiency. The variants of rs2298849 (β=0.105, P < 0.001) in GC were significantly associated with serum 25-OHD3 levels. Allele G of rs2298849 might be protective for serum 25-OHD3 level. Among the haplotypes of rs222020-rs2298849, CG (β = 0.104, P=0.001) corresponded to increasing serum 25-OHD3 concentrations. CYP2R1 polymorphisms showed some significant association with serum β-CTX and P1NP levels. CONCLUSIONS: We found that GC variants had a significant association with serum 25-OHD3 levels among postmenopausal women of the Han ethnic group in Beijing, while CYP2R1 variants were not found to be significant.
FPGA placement and routing

FPGAs have emerged as a popular style for modern circuit designs, due mainly to their non-recurring costs, in-field reprogrammability, short turn-around time, etc. A modern FPGA consists of an array of heterogeneous logic components, surrounded by routing resources and bounded by I/O cells. Compared to an ASIC, an FPGA has more limited logic and routing resources, diverse architectures, strict design constraints, etc.; as a result, FPGA placement and routing problems become much more challenging. With growing complexity, diverse design objectives, high heterogeneity, and evolving technologies, further, modern FPGA placement and routing bring up many emerging research opportunities. In this paper, we introduce basic architectures of FPGAs, describe the placement and routing problems for FPGAs, and explain key techniques to solve the problems (including three major placement paradigms: partitioning, simulated annealing, and analytical placement; two routing paradigms: sequential and concurrent routing, and simultaneous placement and routing). Finally, we provide some future research directions for FPGA placement and routing.
Dependent rounding for knapsack/partition constraints and facility location

We develop a new dependent rounding algorithm targeting systems with a mixture of knapsack and partition constraints. Such constraint systems arise in a number of facility location problems, and we study two in particular: multi-knapsack median and multi-knapsack center. Our rounding algorithms gives new approximation and pseudo-approximation algorithms for these problems. The new dependent rounding process has two main technical advantages over previous ones. First, it gives substantial "near-independence" properties among the variables being rounded. These are critical for facility location problems with highly non-linear objective functions. Second, the rounding process lends itself to a new type of pseudo-approximation guarantee, which has an "additive" violation of the knapsack constraints. This is in contrast to previous algorithms which typically give $(1+\epsilon)$--multiplicative violations of these constraints. This additive violation is different from additive error; it is a more flexible notion which can be used as a technical tool to achieve new and more efficient multiplicative pseudo-approximations and even true approximation algorithms. One key technical tool we develop, which may be of independent interest, is a new tail bound analogous to Feige (2006) for sums of random variables with unbounded variances.
Bootstrapping to test for nonzero population correlation coefficients using univariate sampling.

This article proposes 2 new approaches to test a nonzero population correlation (rho): the hypothesis-imposed univariate sampling bootstrap (HI) and the observed-imposed univariate sampling bootstrap (OI). The authors simulated correlated populations with various combinations of normal and skewed variates. With alpha set=. 05, N> or =10, and rho< or =0.4, empirical Type I error rates of the parametric r and the conventional bivariate sampling bootstrap reached . 168 and . 081, respectively, whereas the largest error rates of the HI and the OI were . 079 and . 062. On the basis of these results, the authors suggest that the OI is preferable in alpha control to parametric approaches if the researcher believes the population is nonnormal and wishes to test for nonzero rhos of moderate size.
Nano-time intervals in bio-systems - Their relevance to nano-bio-science and nano-bio-technology

The nature and structure of time and time-intervals in physical, chemical and biological systems will be elucidated. The relation and dependence among time, energy and taking place of natural processes will be critically analyzed. The bio-processes taking place in nano-time intervals will be identified. Their relevance to nano-bio-science and nano-bio-technology will be developed and nano-time interval-aspect of nano-sciences and nano-technology will be advanced.
Cloud-Based Lightweight RFID Healthcare Privacy Protection Protocol

Researchers and engineers have paid more attention to cloud-based application systems, whose features are virtualization and services provisioning. Fortunately the technology can be just right to healthcare. Meanwhile, security has also become more challenging. Although many cloud-based RFID authentication protocols have been proposed, some of them only improve the function and performance without considering security and privacy, and most of them are heavyweight. It is not appropriate in the field of healthcare, because improving the trustworthiness of anonymous virtual computing services should be the primary consideration. So we propose a lightweight privacy protection authentication scheme which can be applied in the cloud environment, in the scheme, service providers could be anonymous or unknown to the application consumer. Assuming many hospitals build a cloud platform together, the information of patient and his physician will be stored anonymously in the cloud. Patient can go to a doctor in any one hospital with a unique RFID tag. Reader may be fixed or mobile; Readers read tags and upload collected data to the cloud for further processing in real time. Compared with some traditional schemes, our scheme is lightweight, cost-efficient, elastic scalability, real-time, and easy to against synchronization attack.