Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antitumour activity of an inhibitor of miR-34a in liver cancer with β-catenin-mutations

Objective Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most prevalent primary tumour of the liver. About a third of these tumours presents activating mutations of the β-catenin gene. The molecular pathogenesis of HCC has been elucidated, but mortality remains high, and new therapeutic approaches, including treatments based on microRNAs, are required. We aimed to identify candidate microRNAs, regulated by β-catenin, potentially involved in liver tumorigenesis. Design We used a mouse model, in which β-catenin signalling was overactivated exclusively in the liver by the tamoxifen-inducible and Cre-Lox-mediated inactivation of the Apc gene. This model develops tumours with properties similar to human HCC. Results We found that miR-34a was regulated by β-catenin, and significantly induced by the overactivation of β-catenin signalling in mouse tumours and in patients with HCC. An inhibitor of miR-34a (locked nucleic acid, LNA-34a) exerted antiproliferative activity in primary cultures of hepatocyte. This inhibition of proliferation was associated with a decrease in cyclin D1 levels, orchestrated principally by HNF-4α, a target of miR-34a considered to act as a tumour suppressor in the liver. In vivo, LNA-34a approximately halved progression rates for tumours displaying β-catenin activation together with an activation of caspases 2 and 3. Conclusions This work demonstrates the key oncogenic role of miR-34a in liver tumours with β-catenin gene mutations. We suggest that patients diagnosed with HCC with β-catenin mutations could be treated with an inhibitor of miR-34a. The potential value of this strategy lies in the modulation of the tumour suppressor HNF-4α, which targets cyclin D1, and the induction of a proapoptotic programme.
Mechanical properties of LDPE/granular starch composites

The mechanical properties of composites of granular starch and low density polyethylene (PE) have been studied as functions of starch volume fraction ϕ, granule size, and presence of compatibilizer. Property–volume fraction relationships were interpreted using various theories of composite properties. The dependence of elongation (ϵ ∼ ϕ1/3) and tensile strength (σ ∼ ϕ2/3) agree with theoretical predictions, although the proportionality constants are less negative than theoretical values. The addition of compatibilzer (ethylene-co-acrylic acid copolymer, EAA) did not significantly affect the elongation or tensile strength, but significantly increased the composite tensile modulus. The cornstarch/PE moduli could be described by the Kerner or Halpin-Tsai equations. Analysis of the composite moduli data using the Halpin-Tsai equation allowed the estimation of the modulus of granular starch. The value obtained, 15 GPa, is considerably greater than most unfilled synthetic polymers of commercial importance, but significantly lower than the modulus of cellulose. It is also greater than a previously reported value of 2.7 GPa. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
The municipal solid waste management of La Paz (Bolivia): Challenges and opportunities for a sustainable development

Municipal solid waste management (MSWM) is considered an important public health, economic and environmental concern, especially in developing countries. This paper introduces the situation of MSWM in La Paz (Bolivia) in 2016, and is based on the Wasteaware indicators and waste flow analysis, useful tools for classifying and comparing waste treatment and management plans among other countries. Taking into account the lack of technology in waste treatment and the presence of a developed informal sector, the paper analyses the main strengths and weak points for implementing a sustainable MSWM. The research conducted revealed that the MSWM of La Paz is not efficient with regard to collection, recycling (8%), financial sustainability, and equity of the service. At the same time, local Government and stakeholders are interested in implementing new MSWM methods for improving the current sanitary state of the city and many efforts were made over the last ten years. In general terms, La Paz could be considered as a good study area for developing plans for waste valorization, becoming an example for a low–middle income developing big city of Latin America. The study provided a few considerations about the affordability of the methodology applied and critically analyzed the case study proposed.
Requirements Definition for Enterprise Information Portals: An Integrated Method for Specifying Quantitative and Qualitative Information Needs

Rational and funded management decisions require both quantitative and qualitative information from internal and external resources. New information system architectures like enterprise information portals provide a personalized single gateway to quantitative information, which is mainly provided by data warehouse and OLAP systems for analysis purposes, as well as to qualitative information, which can be administered by content management systems. As the engineering of enterprise information portals meeting managers’ special information needs is a complex process, there is a need for suitable approaches to support in particular the requirements definition. While graphical models like ER models, flow-chart-diagrams etc. are wide spread and accepted by executives as well as system developers for system requirements specification, an adequate modeling language for the domain of enterprise information portals is missing. This contribution proposes such a modeling language. Its specification is formalized in terms of a model: a meta-model. Therefore, we fall back on another approach for requirements specification of Management Information Systems, extending and adapting this for EIP’s special requirements.
Malnutrition in Acute Stroke Patients Stratified by Stroke Severity- A Hospital Based Study.

BACKGROUND Stroke results in high mortality with tremendous health care burden. Malnutrition is frequently observed in patients after stroke. This study was designed to explore the nutritional status in the acute stage of stroke aiming at exploring factors related to malnutrition after stroke. METHODS This was a hospital based, prospective, observational study recruiting cerebrovascular diseases patients hospitalized for acute management. Patients suffered from all kinds of cerebrovascular diseases hospitalized for management within 30 days after onset were consecutively recruited in the study hospitals. Stroke severity was evaluated by National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale, functional status by Barthel index, and global outcome by modified Rankin Scale. Cognitive function was evaluated by Mini-Mental State Examination. Nutritional status was assessed by Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA), stratified by 1) adequate nutritional status, MNA ≥ 24; 2) protein-calorie malnutrition, MNA less than 17; 3) at risk of malnutrition, MNA between 17 and 23.5. RESULTS There were 231 cerebral infarction patients recruited at 13.5 days (25-75%: 5.0-17.0) after stroke onset with mild stroke severity 71.4% and severe 10.4% with nasogastric tube insertion in 14%. Malnutrition was identified in 12.1% with 54.1% at risk of malnutrition. Factor related to malnutrition was severe stroke severity with dependency. Patients with old age, hypertension, and diabetes mellitus tended to have malnutrition or risk of malnutrition. CONCLUSION Nutritional status was poor in stroke patients across all stroke severities within weeks. Further longitudinal outcome studies to identify the poor outcome and the evolution of nutritional status are warranted.
An oncogenic role for sphingosine kinase 2

While both human sphingosine kinases (SK1 and SK2) catalyze the generation of the pleiotropic signaling lipid sphingosine 1-phosphate, these enzymes appear to be functionally distinct. SK1 has well described roles in promoting cell survival, proliferation and neoplastic transformation. The roles of SK2, and its contribution to cancer, however, are much less clear. Some studies have suggested an anti-proliferative/pro-apoptotic function for SK2, while others indicate it has a pro-survival role and its inhibition can have anti-cancer effects. Our analysis of gene expression data revealed that SK2 is upregulated in many human cancers, but only to a small extent (up to 2.5-fold over normal tissue). Based on these findings, we examined the effect of different levels of cellular SK2 and showed that high-level overexpression reduced cell proliferation and survival, and increased cellular ceramide levels. In contrast, however, low-level SK2 overexpression promoted cell survival and proliferation, and induced neoplastic transformation in vivo. These findings coincided with decreased nuclear localization and increased plasma membrane localization of SK2, as well as increases in extracellular S1P formation. Hence, we have shown for the first time that SK2 can have a direct role in promoting oncogenesis, supporting the use of SK2-specific inhibitors as anti-cancer agents.
Vital Signs: Asthma in Children — United States, 2001–2016

BACKGROUND Asthma is the most common chronic lung disease of childhood, affecting approximately 6 million children in the United States. Although asthma cannot be cured, most of the time, asthma symptoms can be controlled by avoiding or reducing exposure to asthma triggers (allergens and irritants) and by following recommendations for asthma education and appropriate medical care. METHODS CDC analyzed asthma data from the 2001-2016 National Health Interview Survey for children aged 0-17 years to examine trends and demographic differences in health outcomes and health care use. RESULTS Asthma was more prevalent among boys (9.2%) than among girls (7.4%), children aged ≥5 years (approximately 10%) than children aged <5 years (3.8%), non-Hispanic black (black) children (15.7%) and children of Puerto Rican descent (12.9%) than among non-Hispanic white (white) children (7.1%), and children living in low income families (10.5%) than among those living in families with income ≥250% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) (approximately 7%). Asthma prevalence among children increased from 8.7% in 2001 to 9.4% in 2010, and then decreased to 8.3% in 2016. Although not all changes were statistically significant, a similar pattern was observed among subdemographic groups studied, with the exception of Mexican/Mexican-American children, among whom asthma prevalence increased from 5.1% in 2001 to 6.5% in 2016. Among children with asthma, the percentage who had an asthma attack in the past 12 months declined significantly from 2001 to 2016. Whereas asthma prevalence was lower among children aged 0-4 years than among older children, the prevalence of asthma attacks (62.4%), emergency department or urgent care center (ED/UC) visits (31.1%), and hospitalization (10.4%) were higher among children with asthma aged 0-4 years than among those aged 12-17 years (44.8%, 9.6%, and 2.8%, respectively). During 2013, children with asthma aged 5-17 years missed 13.8 million days of school per year (2.6 days per child). Compared with 2003, in 2013, the prevalence of adverse health outcomes and health care use were significantly lower and the prevalence of having an action plan to manage asthma was higher. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR PUBLIC HEALTH PRACTICE Asthma remains an important public health and medical problem. The health of children with asthma can be improved by promoting asthma control strategies, including asthma trigger reduction, appropriate guidelines-based medical management, and asthma education for children, parents, and others involved in asthma care.
Complete and Consistent Annotation of WordNet using the Top Concept Ontology

This paper presents the complete and consistent ontological annotation of the nominal part of WordNet. The annotation has been carried out using the semantic features defined in the EuroWordNet Top Concept Ontology and made available to the NLP community. Up to now only an initial core set of 1,024 synsets, the so-called Base Concepts, was ontologized in such a way. The work has been achieved by following a methodology based on an iterative and incremental expansion of the initial labeling through the hierarchy while setting inheritance blockage points. Since this labeling has been set on the EuroWordNets Interlingual Index (ILI), it can be also used to populate any other wordnet linked to it through a simple porting process. This feature-annotated WordNet is intended to be useful for a large number of semantic NLP tasks and for testing for the first time componential analysis on real environments. Moreover, the quantitative analysis of the work shows that more than 40% of the nominal part of WordNet is involved in structure errors or inadequacies.
Diacylglycerol Kinase β Knockout Mice Exhibit Attention-Deficit Behavior and an Abnormal Response on Methylphenidate-Induced Hyperactivity

Background Diacylglycerol kinase (DGK) is an enzyme that phosphorylates diacylglycerol to produce phosphatidic acid. DGKβ is one of the subtypes of the DGK family and regulates many intracellular signaling pathways in the central nervous system. Previously, we demonstrated that DGKβ knockout (KO) mice showed various dysfunctions of higher brain function, such as cognitive impairment (with lower spine density), hyperactivity, reduced anxiety, and careless behavior. In the present study, we conducted further tests on DGKβ KO mice in order to investigate the function of DGKβ in the central nervous system, especially in the pathophysiology of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Methodology/Principal Findings DGKβ KO mice showed attention-deficit behavior in the object-based attention test and it was ameliorated by methylphenidate (MPH, 30 mg/kg, i.p.). In the open field test, DGKβ KO mice displayed a decreased response to the locomotor stimulating effects of MPH (30 mg/kg, i.p.), but showed a similar response to an N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist, MK-801 (0.3 mg/kg, i.p.), when compared to WT mice. Examination of the phosphorylation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK), which is involved in regulation of locomotor activity, indicated that ERK1/2 activation induced by MPH treatment was defective in the striatum of DGKβ KO mice. Conclusions/Significance These findings suggest that DGKβ KO mice showed attention-deficit and hyperactive phenotype, similar to ADHD. Furthermore, the hyporesponsiveness of DGKβ KO mice to MPH was due to dysregulation of ERK phosphorylation, and that DGKβ has a pivotal involvement in ERK regulation in the striatum.
Real-time walkthrough of outdoor scenes using TRI-view morphing

In this paper, an image-based walkthrough system is presented for navigating real-world outdoor scenes based on only three uncalibrated images without reconstructing 3D model. An image-based rendering operation is performed on these sample images and generates photorealistic in-between views in real time. We extend the traditional two-step view morphing to real-time tri-view morphing based on epipolar constraint. Compared with other tri-view morphing methods, our scheme copes well with both complex outdoor scenes and wide baseline scenes, which also poses a qualified alternative to state-of-the-art dense 3D reconstruction. Putting on a head mount display (HMD) like Oculus Rift, user can experience realistic and immersive exploration of real-world scenes.
Thermal Conductive Properties of Wood, Green or Dry, from -40 deg to +100 deg C: A Literature Review.

Abstract : This literature review was conducted in connection with a study on heat transfer in frozen logs. A combination of data by two researchers on specific heat and thermal conductivity and diffusivity in the radial direction of wood, at various temperatures and moisture contents, is discussed and compared with data from other sources. Limited information found for the tangential and longitudinal directions is also included in the report. In addition, a data set of average thermal diffusivities in the radial direction of wood is provided for temperature intervals involving complete thawing. (Author)
Potential Medications or Compounds Acting on Toll-like Receptors in Cerebral Ischemia

Background: Toll-like receptors play an integral role in the process of inflammatory response after ischemic in-jury. The therapeutic potential acting on TLRs is worth of evaluations. The aim of this review was to introduce readers some potential medications or compounds which could alleviate the ischemic damage via TLRs. Methods: Research articles online on TLRs were reviewed. Categorizations were listed according to the follows, methods acting on TLRs directly, modulations of MyD88 or TRIF signaling pathway, and the ischemic tolerance induced by the pre-conditioning or postconditioning with TLR ligands or minor cerebral ischemia via acting on TLRs. Results: There are only a few studies concerning on direct effects. Anti-TLR4 or anti-TLR2 therapies may serve as promis-ing strategies in acute events. Approaches targeting on inhibiting NF-κB signaling pathway and enhancing interferon regu-latory factor dependent signaling have attracted great interests. Not only drugs but compounds extracted from traditional Chinese medicine have been used to identify their neuroprotective effects against cerebral ischemia. In addition, many re-searchers have reported the positive therapeutic effects of preconditioning with agonists of TLR2, 3, 4, 7 and 9. Several trails have also explored the potential of postconditioning, which provide a new idea in ischemic treatments. Considering all the evidence above, many drugs and new compounds may have great potential to reduce ischemic insults. Conclusion: This review will focus on promising therapies which exerting neuroprotective effects against ischemic injury by acting on TLRs.
Dynamic landscape of pancreatic carcinogenesis reveals early molecular networks of malignancy

Objective The initial steps of pancreatic regeneration versus carcinogenesis are insufficiently understood. Although a combination of oncogenic Kras and inflammation has been shown to induce malignancy, molecular networks of early carcinogenesis remain poorly defined. Design We compared early events during inflammation, regeneration and carcinogenesis on histological and transcriptional levels with a high temporal resolution using a well-established mouse model of pancreatitis and of inflammation-accelerated KrasG12D-driven pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Quantitative expression data were analysed and extensively modelled in silico. Results We defined three distinctive phases—termed inflammation, regeneration and refinement—following induction of moderate acute pancreatitis in wild-type mice. These corresponded to different waves of proliferation of mesenchymal, progenitor-like and acinar cells. Pancreas regeneration required a coordinated transition of proliferation between progenitor-like and acinar cells. In mice harbouring an oncogenic Kras mutation and challenged with pancreatitis, there was an extended inflammatory phase and a parallel, continuous proliferation of mesenchymal, progenitor-like and acinar cells. Analysis of high-resolution transcriptional data from wild-type animals revealed that organ regeneration relied on a complex interaction of a gene network that normally governs acinar cell homeostasis, exocrine specification and intercellular signalling. In mice with oncogenic Kras, a specific carcinogenic signature was found, which was preserved in full-blown mouse pancreas cancer. Conclusions These data define a transcriptional signature of early pancreatic carcinogenesis and a molecular network driving formation of preneoplastic lesions, which allows for more targeted biomarker development in order to detect cancer earlier in patients with pancreatitis.
A new approach to the quantitative estimation of nitrogen metabolic pathways in the rumen

Rumen nitrogen metabolism values were estimated by the use of a single injection of 15(NH4)2SO4 into the rumen of sheep and consecutive 15N enrichment measurements in the rumen ammonia pool, rumen non-NH3-N (NAN) pool, rumen purine pool and blood urea-N (BUN) pool for a period of 24 h. Synthesis and degradation of N compounds in the rumen and passage of N to and from the rumen were evaluated on a chemical rather than a microbial basis; microbial fractions were not separated. This model was examined in two experiments. In Expt 1 a ram (55 kg) was given a semi-synthetic diet (1067 g dry matter (DM), 22.8 g N) in which soya-bean meal provided over 90% of the N. In Expt 2, two rams (45 kg) were given in three consecutive periods a semi-synthetic basal diet containing: (1) roasted soya-bean meal (SBM, 725 g DM, 14.8 g N/d); or (2) fishmeal (FM, 728 g DM, 15.5 g N/d); or (3) raw soya-bean meal (RSBM, 724 g DM, 13.8 g N/d). In all these rations, the main protein source provided over 90% of the N. In Expt 1, 68.3% of N intake was degraded directly to NH3 in the rumen, 21.2% escaped rumen degradation and 10.5% was incorporated into stable N compounds in the rumen. Net NH3 transfer to the blood was 30.4%, NH3 flow from the rumen was 6.6% and rumen NAN output was 63% of N intake. In Expt 2, rumen NAN output was larger (7.67, 14.36 and 8.89 g N/d for diets containing SBM, FM and RSBM respectively; P < 0.05) and net NH3 loss to the blood was smaller (6.1, 0.39 and 4.17 g N/d for diets SBM, FM and RSBM respectively; P < 0.05) for diet FM as compared with the soya-bean diets. The percentage of rumen NAN that was synthesized from NH3 was larger for diet RSBM (36.4, 40.3 and 49.1 for diets SBM, FM and RSBM respectively; P < 0.05) than for the other two rations. NH3 pool sizes (g N) were 0.463, 0.385 and 0.301 for diets SBM, FM and RSBM respectively (P < 0.05), while their hourly turnover rates were 15.8, 26.1 and 5.12 for diets SBM, FM and RSBM respectively (P < 0.01), indicating no correlation between pool size and its turnover rate. The existence of a small and rapidly turning over NAN pool to which NH3 is first bound (SNAN1) was indicated by the difference in the shape of the NAN and purines 15N-enrichment curves in the first 3 h after label injection. The fact that the rate of NH3 initial binding to SNAN1 pool was related neither to ammonia pool size nor to SNAN1 pool size suggests the existence of an unknown control mechanism at this site.