Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
RECENT ADVANCES IN BASIC SCIENCE PSYCHOLOGICAL STRESS IN IBD: NEW INSIGHTS INTO PATHOGENIC AND THERAPEUTIC IMPLICATIONS

Correspondence to: Professor D S Rampton, Endoscopy Unit, Royal London Hospital, London E1 1BB, UK; d.rampton@qmul.ac. uk _________________________ SUMMARY Psychological stress has long been reported anecdotally to increase disease activity in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and recent well designed studies have confirmed that adverse life events, chronic stress, and depression increase the likelihood of relapse in patients with quiescent IBD. This evidence is increasingly supported by studies of experimental stress in animal models of colitis. With the evolving concept of psychoneuroimmunology, the mechanisms by which the nervous system can affect immune function at both systemic and gut mucosal levels are gradually becoming apparent. Recent data suggest that stress induced alterations in gastrointestinal inflammation may be mediated through changes in hypothalamic-pituitaryadrenal (HPA) axis function and alterations in bacterial-mucosal interactions, and via mucosal mast cells and mediators such as corticotrophin releasing factor (CRF). To date, the therapeutic opportunities offered by stress reduction therapy remain largely unexplored, in part because of methodological difficulties of such studies. This paper reviews recent advances in our understanding of the pathogenic role of psychological stress in IBD and emphasises the need for controlled studies of the therapeutic potential of stress reduction.
Cervical 10 kHz spinal cord stimulation in the management of chronic, medically refractory migraine: A prospective, open‐label, exploratory study

A significant minority of chronic migraine (CM) subjects fail conventional medical treatment (rCM), becoming highly disabled. Implantation of an occipital nerve stimulator is a therapeutic option for these subjects. Paresthesia‐free cervical 10 kHz spinal cord stimulation (HF10 SCS) may provide an alternative. We report the results of a prospective, open‐label, exploratory study assessing the long‐term safety, tolerability and efficacy of cervical HF10 SCS in cohort of rCM subjects.
Nonstationary covariance models for global data

With the widespread availability of satellite-based instruments, many geophysical processes are measured on a global scale and they often show strong nonstationarity in the covariance structure. In this paper we present a flexible class of parametric covariance models that can capture the nonstationarity in global data, especially strong dependency of covariance structure on latitudes. We apply the Discrete Fourier Transform to data on regular grids, which enables us to calculate the exact likelihood for large data sets. Our covariance model is applied to global total column ozone level data on a given day. We discuss how our covariance model compares with some existing models.
Melanoma information on the Internet: often incomplete--a public health opportunity?

PURPOSE To assess the accuracy and completeness of information regarding melanoma on the Internet, retrieved by use of search engines. METHODS The first 30 uniform/universal resource locators (URLs) from each of eight search engines using the search term "melanoma" were retrieved for evaluation of accuracy and completeness using a 35-point checklist rating system instrument. Four reviewers independently rated each of 35 sites, and one reviewer rated all 74 assessable sites. Kappa statistics were used to evaluate interrater variability. RESULTS A total of 74 assessable Web sites were evaluated. The remainder were inaccessible, link pages only, or duplicates. Thirty-five Web sites were each independently rated by four reviewers. The remaining 39 Web sites were each rated by one reviewer. The mean kappa statistic for all variables and all rater pairs for which a kappa could be calculated was 0.824, indicating excellent overall inter-rater reliability. The majority of Web sites failed to include complete information on general information, risk factors, diagnosis, treatment, prevention, and prognosis. Ten Web sites (14%) contained a total of 13 inaccuracies, most relatively minor. CONCLUSION Medical information retrieved with the search term melanoma was likely to lack complete basic melanoma information and contained inaccuracies in 14% of sites. Health care providers can help patients by recommending comprehensive and accurate Web sites for patient review, by working to create accurate and thorough Web-based health information material, and by educating patients and the public about the variability in completeness and accuracy.
West Nile virus West Nile virus infection in American robins: New insights on dose response.

West Nile virus (WNV) is a vector-borne pathogen that was first detected in the United States in 1999. The natural transmission cycle of WNV involves mosquito vectors and avian hosts, which vary in their competency to transmit the virus. American robins are an abundant backyard species in the United States and appear to have an important role in the amplification and dissemination of WNV. In this study we examine the response of American robins to infection with various WNV doses within the range of those administered by some natural mosquito vectors. Thirty American robins were assigned a WNV dosage treatment and needle inoculated with 100.95 PFU, 101.26 PFU, 102.15 PFU, or 103.15 PFU. Serum samples were tested for the presence of infectious WNV and/or antibodies, while oral swabs were tested for the presence of WNV RNA. Five of the 30 (17%) robins had neutralizing antibodies to WNV prior to the experiment and none developed viremia or shed WNV RNA. The proportion of WNV-seronegative birds that became viremic after WNV inoculation increased in a dose dependent manner. At the lowest dose, only 40% (2/5) of the inoculated birds developed productive infections while at the highest dose, 100% (7/7) of the birds became viremic. Oral shedding of WNV RNA followed a similar trend where robins inoculated with the lower two doses were less likely to shed viral RNA (25%) than robins inoculated with one of the higher doses (92%). Viremia titers and morbidity did not increase in a dose dependent manner; only two birds succumbed to infection and, interestingly, both were inoculated with the lowest dose of WNV. It is clear that the disease ecology of WNV is a complex interplay of hosts, vectors, and viral dose delivered. Citation: VanDalen KK, Hall JS, Clark L, McLean RG, Smeraski C (2013) West Nile Virus Infection in American Robins: New Insights on Dose Response. PLoS ONE 8(7): e68537. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0068537 Editor: Tian Wang, University of Texas Medical Branch, United States of America Received March 25, 2013; Accepted June 5, 2013; Published July 2, 2013 This is an open-access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Funding: This study was funded by the United States Department of Agriculture. The manuscript was reviewed for general policy statements committing the USDA to action, but otherwise the funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: Kaci.vandalen@aphis.usda. gov ¤ Current address: United States Department of the Interior, United States Geological Survey, National Wildlife Health Center, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America
Impact of Levodopa on Reduced Nerve Growth Factor Levels in Patients With Parkinson Disease

The author s found 6.5-fold reduced nerve growth factor (NGF) levels in the plasma of treated patients with Parkinson disease (PD) compared with healthy control subjects (P = 0.03). A significant positive correlation between levodopa and NGF plasma levels appeared after acute levodopa/benserazide administration. The data suggest that acute levodopa administration may contribute to an increase of NGF plasma concentrations, which are reduced in treated PD patients due to the ongoing disease process itself or chronic antiparkinsonian drug treatment.
\constrained Systems and Coding for Recording Channels," to Appear as Book Chapter in Handbook for Coding Theory, Symbolic Dynamics to Coding, Automata and System Theory 8. Symbolic Dynamics and System Theory

Algorithms for sliding block codes | an application of symbolic dynamics to information theory, IEEE Trans. then (w; x)j (? 1;0) (w; x)j 0;1) 2 B s. The external behavior of a state realization is the system (Z; W; B) where B = fw : (w; x) 2 B s for some xg. The state realization may be regarded as a presentation of its external behavior, with the elements of X as states. A state realization of a system is closely related to a presentation of a sooc shift; in fact, any labeled graph may be regarded as a state realization. A realization of an external behavior is minimal if (roughly speaking) no other realization of the same external behavior can be obtained by \merging" states 47]. Willems characterized the time-invariant systems with unique minimal realization, using the notion of futures F(xj (? 1;0)) that we described in Section 4. We state this in Theorem 8.1 below. The past induced canonical realization of a time-invariant system (Z; W; B) is the state realization p = Likewise there is the notion of future induced canonical realization. Theorem 8.1 (Willems 47], and references therein). A time-invariant system has a unique minimal realization if and only if its future induced and past induced canonical realizations are equivalent in the sense that there is a bijection from states of one realization to states of the other that transforms one realization to the other. The unique minimal realization is the past induced canonical realization. Note how similar this result is to the characterization of irreducible sooc shifts with unique I-minimal presentation (Theorem 4.2 (1 , 2)). The Dictionary gives many concepts in system theory which are closely related to concepts in symbolic dynamics. For instance, an input-state-output system is deened to be a state realization (Z; U Y; X; B) subject to certain natural restrictions (see Deenition VI-1 in the Dictionary). Here, U; Y; and X play the role of input, output and state. Such systems are closely related to nite equivalences in symbolic dynamics and transducers in automata theory (as discussed in Section 7). Also, the notions of observability (Deenitions II-3 and II-4) are very similar to the idea of shift of nite type, and the notions of controllability (Deenitions II-7 and II-8) are very similar to the idea of irreducibility for sooc shifts; see the remarks in the Dictionary. We have given an introduction to …
Learning Bayesian Network Parameters with Prior Knowledge about Context-Specific Qualitative Influences

We present a method for learning the parameters of a Bayesian network with prior knowledge about the signs of influences between variables. Our method accommodates not just the standard signs, but provides for context-specific signs as well. We show how the various signs translate into order constraints on the network parameters and how isotonic regression can be used to compute order-constrained estimates from the available data. Our experimental results show that taking prior knowledge about the signs of influences into account leads to an improved fit of the true distribution, especially when only a small sample of data is available. Moreover, the computed estimates are guaranteed to be consistent with the specified signs, thereby resulting in a network that is more likely to be accepted by experts in its domain of application.
Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics: News July 2023

The anti-Clever-1 MAb bexmarilimab (Faron Pharma) combined with chemotherapy induced >50% objective response rate in 15 patients with myelodysplastic syndromes and relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia. The Phase 1/2 BEXMAB trial also investigated safety and tolerability at several dosage levels. Bexmarilimab targets the macrophage surface protein Clever-1, whose activity leads to immune suppression and tumor growth. By interfering with its function, bexmarilimab induces M2-to-M1 macrophage switch and sensitization to chemotherapy.
Using Constraint Programming and Local Search for Scheduling of Electricité de France Nuclear Power Plant Outages

The French nuclear park comprises 58 nuclear reactors distributed through the national territory on 19 geographical sites. They must be repeatedly stopped, for refuelling and maintenance. The scheduling of these outages has to comply with various constraints, regarding safety, maintenance logistic, and plant operation, whilst it must contribute to the producer profit maximization. We present in this paper a new approach for modelling and solving this problem. It combines three optimization techniques: constraint programming, local search and linear programming. Constraint programming and local search are combined to solve the problem in approximated way. They search, relatively to an heuristic cost criterion, a good outages schedule. The linear programming is used to precisely evaluate the quality of the solutions found and to produce marginal costs used for updating the heuristic cost in order to escape from the local optima. The effectiveness of the approach is tested on the simple heuristic cost criterion which consists to minimize the numbers of outages in winters. The experimental results are satisfactory.
Caffeine Regulates Alternative Splicing in a Subset of Cancer-Associated Genes: a Role for SC35

ABSTRACT Alternative splicing of pre-mRNA contributes significantly to human proteomic complexity, playing a key role in development, gene expression and, when aberrant, human disease onset. Many of the factors involved in alternative splicing have been identified, but little is known about their regulation. Here we report that caffeine regulates alternative splicing of a subset of cancer-associated genes, including the tumor suppressor KLF6. This regulation is at the level of splice site selection, occurs rapidly and reversibly, and is concentration dependent. We have recapitulated caffeine-induced alternative splicing of KLF6 using a cell-based minigene assay and identified a “caffeine response element” within the KLF6 intronic sequence. Significantly, a chimeric minigene splicing assay demonstrated that this caffeine response element is functional in a heterologous context; similar elements exist within close proximity to caffeine-regulated exons of other genes in the subset. Furthermore, the SR splicing factor, SC35, was shown to be required for induction of the alternatively spliced KLF6 transcript. Importantly, SC35 is markedly induced by caffeine, and overexpression of SC35 is sufficient to mimic the effect of caffeine on KLF6 alternative splicing. Taken together, our data implicate SC35 as a key player in caffeine-mediated splicing regulation. This novel effect of caffeine provides a valuable tool for dissecting the regulation of alternative splicing of a large gene subset and may have implications with respect to splice variants associated with disease states.
Taking Articulation Work Seriously - an Activity Theoretical Approach

All work needs to be articulated in terms of "Who should do what, how, when and where", and this becomes more complicated as more actors are involved. The use of computers in cooperative work implies new needs for articulations due to the individual''s dynamic and changing situation in respect to collective and individual aspects. The computers should mediate both categories of activities, without hampering the alternation between them. In the conceptualisation of articulation work, the paper presents a framework that is aimed at exploring and analysing this complexity of articulation. Basic principles from activity theory constitute an appropriate approach in this respect.
A case series of chronic haemodialysis patients: mortality, sudden death, and QT interval.

AIMS A high prevalence of prolonged QT interval duration has been observed among haemodialysis (HD) patients. The aim of this cases series was to describe the association of various risk factors with total mortality and sudden cardiac death (SCD) in this population. METHODS AND RESULTS One hundred and twenty-two patients undergoing HD, [median: age 71.3 years [interquartile ratio (IQR) 62.9-76.6], HD duration 3.0 years (IQR 1.3-7.8) and 64.8% male], of which 37.7% with ischaemic cardiac disease, 41.8% with dilated cardiomyopathy (DC), 84.4% with hypertension, and 27.1% with diabetes, were studied. Median left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) was 60.0% (IQR 52-64) and left ventricular mass index (LVMI) was 147.3 g/m(2) (IQR 128.0-179.9). QT interval duration corrected for heart rate (QTc) was measured by electrocardiogram Holter recording and considered prolonged when longer than 450 ms in men and 460 ms in women. Forty-four patients (36.0%) had a prolonged QTc. Female gender (P < 0.001) and DC (P = 0.018) were associated with a longer QTc, while LVEF (P = 0.012) was inversely related. During the study period (median follow-up 3.9 years), 51 patients died (41.8%), of whom 12 died for SCD. In multivariate analysis age at recruitment [HR = 1.07, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.03-1.11, P < 0.001], prolonged QTc (HR = 2.16, 95% CI: 1.20-3.91, P = 0.011) and presence of DC (HR = 3.75, 95% CI: 1.01-7.00, P < 0.001) were independently associated with total mortality, while only a prolonged QTc (HR = 8.33, 95% CI: 1.71-40.48, P = 0.009) and increasing LVMI (HR = 1.01, 95% CI: 1.00-1.02, P = 0.022) were associated with SCD. CONCLUSIONS In a case series of HD patients, QTc was associated with total mortality and SCD. Further studies to test this hypothesis in a larger population are necessary.
The effect of a second runner on pacing strategy and RPE during a running time trial.

PURPOSE The aim of this study was to examine performance, pacing strategy and perception of effort during a 5 km time trial while running with or without the presence of another athlete. METHODS Eleven nonelite male athletes participated in five 5 km time trials: two self-paced, maximal effort trials performed at the start and end of the study, and three trials performed in the presence of a second runner. In the three trials, the second runner ran either in front of the subject, behind the subject, or next to the subject. Performance times, heart rate, RPE, and a subjective assessment of the effect of the second runner on the athlete's performance were recorded during each of the trials. RESULTS There was no significant difference in performance times, heart rate or RPE between any of the five trials. Running speed declined from the 1st to the 4th kilometer and then increased for the last kilometer in all five trials. Following the completion of all trials, 9 of the 11 subjects perceived it to be easier to complete the 5 km time trial with another runner in comparison with running alone. CONCLUSIONS While the athletes perceived their performance to be improved by the presence of another runner, their pacing strategy, running speed, heart rate and RPE were not significantly altered. These findings indicate that an athlete's subconscious pacing strategy is robust and is not altered by the presence of another runner.
A mediational model of workplace flexibility, work–family conflict, and perceived stress among caregivers of older adults

As an increasing number of employees become caregivers, the role of workplace resources in supporting caregivers has attracted the attention of researchers, employers, and policy-makers. Workplace flexibility is one type of resource that has attracted particular interest, with research exploring whether flexibility (that is, giving employees some control over when and/or where work gets done) is related to important outcomes for both employees and employers. This investigation develops and tests a mediational model explicating the process through which workplace flexibility – operationalized in three distinct ways – impacts caregiver stress among US employees. Using a sample of 211 caregivers from the National Study of the Changing Workforce (2008), results show that work-to-family conflict mediates the relationship between perceived workplace flexibility and caregiver stress as well as the relationship between access to flexible work options and caregivers stress. However, the mediational model is not supported when flexibility is operationalized as respondents’ formal use of flexible work options. Implications for employers and future research are discussed.
NEW CONODONTS AND ZONATION, LADINIAN-CARNIAN BOUNDARY BEDS, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA

Conodonts from the Ladinian-Carnian boundary interval in British Columbia are described. The study interval embraces the upper Ladinian/lower Carnian Maclearni, Sutherlandi, Desatoyense, Obesum, and Nanseni ammonoid zones. The following new species are described: Metapolygnathus acuminatus, Metapolygnathus inter- medius, Metapolygnathus lobatus, Metapolygnathus zonneveldi, Neogondolella liardensis, Paragondolella willistonensis, and Paragondolella? sulcata. Based on the distribution of these and other conodont taxa, the following new faunal intervals are defined, from the oldest: sulcata Subzone, acuminatus Subzone, intermedius Zone, and tadpole Zone. The sulcata Zone is equivalent to the upper Maclearni Zone, and probably part of the lower Sutherlandi Zone wherein the acuminatus Zone is defined. The appearance of Daxatina within Sutherlandi Zone faunas may be coincident with the base of the intermedius Zone. The tadpole Zone extends from high in the Sutherlandi Zone through the Obesum and Nanseni zones. The Sutherlandi and Desatoyense zones appear partly equivalent.
Exogenous Valine Reduces Conversion of Leucine to 3-Methyl-1-Butanol in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Mutant strains of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae that require branched-chain amino acids must be supplemented with large concentrations (up to 10 mM) of these amino acids to satisfy their nutritional requirement. The utilization of one branched-chain amino acid, leucine, was examined in several leul strains of yeast grown aerobically in a glucose-ammonium salts minimal medium containing a limiting concentration (0.2 mM) of leucine. In this medium, the leucine requirement of the auxotrophic strains could be reduced by valine, another branched-chain amino acid. Increasing the valine concentration increased the cell yields of cultures and also reduced the levels of 3-methyl-1-butanol detected in the medium by gas chromatography. The concentration of 3-methyl-1-butanol was reduced from 122.0 to 48.9 μM when 5.0 mM valine was supplemented to limiting-leucine cultures. The amino acids isoleucine, threonine, norleucine, norvaline, α-amino-butyrate, alanine, and glycine also spared the leucine requirement of leucine auxotrophs, most likely because they resembled leucine and competed for its uptake. We propose that leucine analogs restrict the entry and degradation of leucine and thus reduce its conversion to 3-methyl-1-butanol, a major component of fusel oil.