Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Adenovirus E1A Protein Targets the SAGA but Not the ADA Transcriptional Regulatory Complex through Multiple Independent Domains*

Expression of the adenovirus E1A protein in the simple eukaryote Saccharomyces cerevisiaeinhibits growth. We tested four regions of E1A that alter growth and transcription in mammalian cells for their effects in yeast when expressed as fusions to the Gal4p DNA binding domain. Expression of the N-terminal/conserved region (CR) 1 or CR3, but not of the CR2 or the C-terminal portion of E1A, inhibited yeast growth. Growth inhibition was relieved by deletion of the genes encoding the yGcn5p, Ngg1p, or Spt7p components of the SAGA transcriptional regulatory complex, but not the Ahc1p component of the related ADA complex, indicating that the N-terminal/CR1 and CR3 regions of E1A target the SAGA complex independently. Expression of the pCAF acetyltransferase, a mammalian homologue of yGcn5p, also suppressed growth inhibition by either portion of E1A. Furthermore, the N-terminal 29 residues and the CR3 portion of E1A interacted independently with yGcn5p and pCAF in vitro. Thus, two separate regions of E1A target the yGcn5p component of the SAGA transcriptional activation complex. A subregion of the N-terminal/CR1 fragment spanning residues 30–69 within CR1 also inhibited yeast growth in a SAGA-dependent fashion. However, this region did not interact with yGcn5p or pCAF, suggesting that it makes a third contact with another SAGA component. Our results provide a new model system to elucidate mechanisms by which E1A and the SAGA complex regulate transcription and growth.
Modulation of the Selectivity in Anions Recognition Processes by Combining Hydrogen- and Halogen-Bonding Interactions

Most of the halogen bonding receptors for anions described use halogen bonding binding sites solely in the anion recognition process; only a few examples report the study of anion receptors in which the halogen bonding interaction has been used in combination with any other non-covalent interaction. With the aims to extend the knowledge in the behaviour of this kind of mixed receptors, we report here the synthesis and the anion recognition and sensing properties of a new halogen- and hydrogen- bonding receptor which binds anions by the cooperation of both non-covalent interactions. Fluorescence studies showed that the behaviour observed in the anion recognition sensing is similar to the one previously described for the halogen analogue and is quite different to the hydrogen one. On the other hand, the association constants obtained by 1H-NMR data demonstrate that the mixed halogen- and hydrogen-bonding receptor is more selective for SO42− anion than the halogen or hydrogen analogues.
A Multiplicative Calderon Preconditioner for the Electric Field Integral Equation

In this paper, a new technique for preconditioning electric field integral equations (EFIEs) by leveraging Calderon identities is presented. In contrast to all previous Calderon preconditioners, the proposed preconditioner is purely multiplicative in nature, applicable to open and closed structures, straightforward to implement, and easily interfaced with existing method of moments (MoM) code. Numerical results demonstrate that the MoM EFIE system obtained using the proposed preconditioning converges rapidly, independently of the discretization density.
Isolated ventricular non-compaction of the myocardium in adults

Isolated ventricular non-compaction (IVNC) in adults is a genetic cardiac disease of emerging importance with a distinct clinical and pathophysiological presentation. The body of evidence for the underlying genetic basis of the disease has also grown. Prognosis remains poor for patients with impaired systolic left ventricular function, as treatment options are very limited. The diagnosis of IVNC, however, is often missed, most often as a consequence of ignorance of the condition. The relevant clinical issues and the emerging concepts of the aetiology of IVNC are summarised.
Minimally invasive thermotherapy method for tumor treatment based on an exothermic chemical reaction

In tumor thermotherapy treatment, it is very difficult to achieve the objective of exactly killing the tumor while minimizing the injury of healthy tissues or organs surrounding the tumor. In this study, we describe a new minimally invasive thermotherapy protocol for tumor treatment using heat released from an exothermic chemical reaction, which can safely deliver a totally localized and uniform heating to exactly kill the tumor. Both in vitro and in vivo experiments were performed to test the feasibility of this thermotherapy method based on an exothermic chemical reaction. After injection of only a small amount of matched reactants into the target tissue by medical syringes, an exothermic reaction takes place, and then releases tremendous heat to elevate the temperature to its thermally lethal value. Compared with most of the currently existing thermotherapy strategies, this heating is highly localized, completely safe and uniform, which will remarkably reduce the thermal damage and mechanical trauma to the surrounding healthy tissues. This study opens the clinical possibilities for tumors to be treated in a minimally invasive way by a thermotherapy treatment based on an exothermic chemical reaction.
Analysis of the impact of analogue telephone channel on MFCC parameters for voice pathology detection

In this paper, the feasibility of a system developed for the remote diagnosis of voice pathologies is analysed. More specifically, the performance of MFCC-based pathology detectors over speech transmitted through an analogue telephone channel is studied. Results indicate that MFCC are voice features fairly robust to amplitude distortion and almost insensitive to phase distortion, but the efficiency of a voice pathology detector based on these features is clearly decreased when the speech samples are transmitted through a telephone channel.
Obesity in the Iranian population

There is an obesity epidemic worldwide, which has been increasing in recent years. An epidemiologic cross‐sectional study was conducted among 3799 persons who were 30–70 years old in Semnan Province, Iran. Multistage cluster sampling was performed, and subjects were selected from urban and rural populations. Body weight, height and waist circumference (WC) were measured, and body mass index (BMI) and waist to hip ratio (WHR) were calculated. Overweight and obesity were defined as 25 ≤ BMI < 30 and ≥30 respectively in men with WHR ≥ 0.9 or WC ≥ 102 cm, and women with WHR ≥ 0.8 or WC ≥ 88 cm were considered centrally obesite. Prevalence of obesity and overweight was 26.3% and 40.6% respectively. Prevalence of obesity was more among women (39.5%) than men (14.5%) with central obesity prevalence using WHR and WC cut‐points of 72.2% and 26.6% respectively. There was a significant association between obesity and age, gender, residential area and educational level (P < 0.01). In conclusion, prevalence of obesity and overweight among 30–70 years old, especially among women, was higher than expected. A comprehensive educational programme on obesity risk factors and obesity‐related diseases is necessary.
Combined Assessment of High-Sensitivity Troponin T and Noninvasive Coronary Plaque Composition for the Prediction of Cardiac Outcomes.

PURPOSE To determine the risk-stratification ability of plaque volume and composition assessment with cardiac computed tomographic (CT) angiography and high-sensitivity troponin T (hsTnT) in patients at intermediate risk for coronary artery disease (CAD). MATERIALS AND METHODS The study complied with the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the local ethics committee. All patients gave written informed consent. Five hundred twenty-one consecutive patients (mean age ± standard deviation, 62 years ± 10; 256 men and 265 women) were included in this prospective, observational, longitudinal, single-center study. Quantitative cardiac CT angiography analysis was performed in all patients (for 7690 coronary segments), whereas biomarkers (hsTnT and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein) were available in 408 patients (78%). To evaluate the incremental value of cardiac CT angiography and hsTnT for the prediction of cardiovascular events, multivariate Cox regression and integrated discrimination improvement analysis were applied. RESULTS In 521 patients, 13 hard cardiac events occurred during a mean follow-up period of 2.3 years ± 1.1 (median, 2.4 years; range, 0.5-4.5 years), while 23 patients underwent late coronary revascularization. The Duke clinical score was 51% ± 30, indicating intermediate risk. The presence of no plaques or purely calcified versus noncalcified plaques, plaque volume according to tertiles, and increased hsTnT (≥14 pg/mL) was independently associated with hard cardiac events (hazard ratio [HR] = 26.08, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 2.78, 244.99; HR = 12.14, 95% CI: 1.87, 78.74; and HR = 10.31, 95% CI: 2.72, 39.0, respectively; P < .01 for all). Patients with increased hsTnT and plaque burden (n = 53) showed the highest incidence for hard cardiac events (annual rate, 12.7%), followed by those with either increased hsTnT or plaque burden (n = 145; annual rate = 0.44%, P < .03), while those with lower hsTnT and plaque burden exhibited excellent outcomes and no hard event during the follow-up duration (n = 210; annual rate = 0%, P < .001). CONCLUSION Use of hsTnT as a marker of myocardial microinjury and cardiac CT angiography as a marker of the total atherosclerotic burden improves the prediction of cardiac outcome in patients with presumably stable CAD and may aid in personalized risk stratification in patients at intermediate risk.
Genetics of Parkinson's disease

Purpose of ReviewParkinson's disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder and affects 2% of the population over the age of 60 years. Due to the increasing proportion of elderly individuals in developed countries, Parkinson's disease and related neurodegenerative disorders represent a growing burden on the health care system. In the majority of cases, the cause of the disease is still unknown, and its elucidation remains one of the major challenges of the neurosciences. Recent findings in rare genetic forms of Parkinson's disease have allowed the development of novel animal models, providing a basis for a better understanding of the molecular pathogenesis of the disease, setting the stage for the development of novel treatment strategies. Recent findingsSeveral novel genes for monogenic forms of Parkinson's disease, such as PINK-1 for an autosomal-recessive early-onset variant, and LRRK2 for a relatively common late-onset autosomal-dominant form have recently been discovered, and several novel animal models have been generated on the basis of genes that had been found earlier. SummaryThe combination of genetic, pathologic and molecular findings provide increasing evidence that the pathways identified through the cloning of different disease genes are interacting on different levels and share several major pathogenic mechanisms.
The spatial, temporal and contrast properties of expansion and rotation flight optomotor responses in Drosophila

SUMMARY Fruit flies respond to panoramic retinal patterns of visual expansion with robust steering maneuvers directed away from the focus of expansion to avoid collisions and maintain an upwind flight posture. Panoramic rotation elicits comparatively weak syndirectional steering maneuvers, which also maintain visual stability. Full-field optic flow patterns like expansion and rotation are elicited by distinct flight maneuvers such as body translation during straight flight or body rotation during hovering, respectively. Recent analyses suggest that under some experimental conditions the rotation optomotor response reflects the linear sum of different expansion response components. Are expansion and rotation-mediated visual stabilization responses part of a single optomotor response subserved by a neural circuit that is differentially stimulated by the two flow fields, or rather do the two behavioral responses reflect two distinct control systems? Guided by the principle that the properties of neural circuits are revealed in the behaviors they mediate, we systematically varied the spatial, temporal and contrast properties of expansion and rotation stimuli, and quantified the time course and amplitude of optomotor responses during tethered flight. Our results support the conclusion that expansion and rotation optomotor responses are indeed two separate reflexes, which draw from the same system of elementary motion detectors, but are likely mediated by separate pre-motor circuits having different spatial integration properties, low-pass characteristics and contrast sensitivity.
High-level data structures: technical perspective

it is a defining moment for many a CS student when they start thinking about data structures relationally; when maps, n-tuples, sets, and bags become more natural terms of discourse than lists, vectors, hash tables, and binary trees. I often see a student's eyes light up when realizing that what they need is, say, a mapping from some Xs to an unordered set of Ys, with the correct-ness of the rest of their program unaffected by whether this mapping is implemented by hash tables and lists, trees and vectors, or something else. This difference in thinking is crucial for programming projects with any amount of data structure complexity , from the real world all the way down to university coursework. In a compiler course project, for instance, the difference is striking. Students who manage to grasp the separation of relational and low-level thinking have no trouble adapting to complex requirements. Students who cannot escape their preoccupation with low-level data structures often spend all their time changing the intertwined implementations of a mess of lexically scoped symbol tables, member tables, and global type structures. This lifting of data structure thinking to the relational level has long inspired computer scientists. Relational databases have given us a vocabulary for data management, but have also hidden the internals of the implementation from the end programmer. General-purpose programming has largely remained low-level. Even when a library offers an abstraction with different implementations—for example, a map that can be implemented via either a hash table or a binary tree—standard relational reasoning is not supported automatically. A map from a pair of X and Y values to Z values is equivalent to a map from X values to maps from Ys to Zs, for instance, but the programmer cannot represent both forms equivalently and has to structure the code for one or the other. As a result, data structure code is almost universally too low-level to be amenable to compiler analysis , for performance or correctness. In the following paper, the authors aim at elevating data structure programming to the relational realm. The separation of the relational view from the low-level implementation view of the data structure is performed in a disciplined way, and even automated. Given a relational specification of data to be stored, the system derives and verifies a " decomposition: " a combination of data structures that together implement the relational specification. Insertions, deletions, …
Status of lung transplant recipients surviving beyond five years.

BACKGROUND Prolonged survival after lung transplantation is now commonplace as a result of advances in surgical techniques and postoperative management protocols. Although 1- and 5-year functional and survival data after lung transplantation are well known, sparse information is available regarding functional status of recipients surviving beyond 5 years. METHODS The medical records and pulmonary function study results of lung transplant recipients who had survived at least 5 years as of September 1995 were retrospectively reviewed. RESULTS Of the 76 transplantations performed between November 1983 and September 1990, 30 (39.5%) were double lung transplantations, and 46 (60.5%) were single lung transplantations. Thirty-one recipients were alive 5 years after transplantation (12 double lung transplantations, 19 single lung transplantations). The 5-, 6-, and 7-year survival rates were 44%, 34%, and 29%, respectively. There was no association or difference in cytomegalovirus status, sex, and blood group between those who died within 5 years and those who survived beyond 5 years. The median percent predicted FEVs for single and double lung transplant recipients were as follows: 5 yrs-75%, 75%; 6 years-73%, 75%; 7 years-68%, 73%. The proportion of recipients with bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome according to published criteria was as follows: stage 0, 32%; stage I, 19%; stage II, 16%; and stage III, 19%. The functional status (i.e., active, working, disabled) 5 years after transplantation was as follows: active/working, 74%; active but not working, 13%; some limitation/independent, 10%; and disabled, 3%. CONCLUSION Bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome is a frequent occurrence in long-term survivors. Nevertheless, in spite of this condition, most recipients have acceptable lung function, are active, and are generally working.
Carotid intima–media thickness in HIV patients treated with antiretroviral therapy

Introduction: Increased cardiovascular risk in HIV patients in antiretroviral therapy (ART) may be due to HIV infection, direct effect of ART or dyslipidaemia induced by ART. Our aim was to study the relative importance of HIV, ART and dyslipidaemia on atherosclerosis, assessed by the comparison of carotid artery intima–media thickness (IMT) in non‐smoking HIV patients with high or low serum cholesterol levels as well as in healthy volunteers.
Immediate-Early Expression of the Herpes Simplex Virus Type 1 ICP27 Transcript Is Not Critical for Efficient Replication In Vitro or In Vivo

ABSTRACT We constructed a promoter mutation altering the immediate-early expression of the herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) ICP27 transcript and its cognate wild-type rescue viruses in order to assess the role of the ICP27 protein in the earliest stages of viral infection by global transcriptional analysis with a DNA microarray. This mutant, ICP27/VP16, replaces the whole ICP27 promoter/enhancer with the VP16 promoter. It demonstrates loss of immediate-early expression of ICP27 according to the criteria expression in the absence of de novo protein synthesis and earliest expression in the kinetic cascade. Significant differences in relative transcript abundances between the mutant and wild-type rescue viruses were limited at the earliest times measured and not evident at all by 4 h after infection. Consistent with this observation, levels of some critical proteins were reduced in the mutant as compared to rescue virus infections at the earliest times tested, but were equivalent by 8 h postinfection. Further, both single and multistep levels of virus replication were equivalent with both mutant and rescue viruses. Thus, altering the immediate-early kinetics of ICP27 leads to a suboptimal quantitative lag phase in gene expression but without consequence for replication fitness in vitro. Infections in vivo also revealed equivalent ability of mutant and rescue viruses to invade the central nervous system of mice following footpad injections. Limitations to an immediate-early role of ICP27 in the biology of HSV are discussed in light of these observations.
Retrovirus-Associated Heparan Sulfate Mediates Immobilization and Gene Transfer on Recombinant Fibronectin

ABSTRACT Recombinant retroviruses have been shown to bind to fibronectin (FN) and increase the efficiency of gene transfer to a variety of cell types. Despite recent work to optimize gene transfer on recombinant FN, the mechanism of retrovirus binding to FN and the interactions of target cells with the bound virus remain elusive. We investigated the roles of virus surface glycoprotein (gp70), cell-conditioned medium, and proteoglycans in mediating retrovirus binding to FN. We also examined the role of Polybrene (PB) in these interactions. We found that gp70 is not involved in retrovirus binding to FN. Immobilization of the virus, however, does not overcome its receptor requirement, and gp70 is still needed for successful gene transfer. Our results clearly show that retrovirus binds FN through virus-associated heparan sulfate (HS) and that binding is necessary for transduction without PB. Two distinct modes of gene transfer occur depending on PB: (i) in the presence of PB, retrovirus interacts directly with the target cells; and (ii) in the absence of PB, retrovirus binds to FN and target cells interact with the immobilized virus. PB may promote the former mode by interacting with the virus HS and reducing the negative charge of the viral particles. Interestingly, the latter mode is more efficient, leading to significantly enhanced gene transfer. A better understanding of these interactions may provide insight into virus-cell interactions and lead to a more rational design of transduction protocols.
Detection and isolation of an iridovirus from chameleons (Chamaeleo quadricornis and Chamaeleo hoehnelli) in the United Kingdom

The Animal Birth Control Programme at Help in Suffering, Jaipur, is funded by jAAN, France, agencies of the government of India and formerly by the World Society for the Protection ofAnimals. J. F. R. is supported by an award from the Humane Society International, USA. The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance ofMr Jeremy Townend, Mr Brian Rogers, and all veterinary staff at Help in Suffering in data collection. Dr J. Purcell provided invaluable statistical expertise which the authors are very happy to acknowledge.
Study of Certain Stochastic Predator-Prey Models

In this paper, we provide sufficient conditions for the permanence and ergodicity of a stochastic predator-prey model with Beddington-DeAngelis functional response. These sufficient conditions are sharp and close to the necessary conditions as well. In addition to the nondegenerate diffusion, degenerate cases are also treated. In the degenerate case, our results characterize the support of the associated unique invariant probability measure. Convergence in total variation of the transition probability to the invariant measures is given. We also consider a stochastic model with regime-switching. Our results are demonstrated by several examples.
Diagnostic Criteria for Cystic Fibrosis in Men with Congenital Absence of the Vas Deferens

The high frequency of cystic fibrosis (CF) mutations in males with absence of vas deferens supported the hypothesis of a primarily genital phenotype of CF disease. To consider the idea of an attenuated form of CF, we investigated 14 men with congenital bilateral aplasia of the vasa deferentia. All patients were consulting for infertility and none was known to have CF. The median age was 30.5 years (range, 20-38 yr). DNA analysis for 22 CF mutations showed at least 1 mutation in 10 patients (71%), whereas the CF carrier frequency is only 4% in the general population. Three compound heterozygotes were identified, all carriers of the R117H mutation. The sweat test was considered positive in 6 patients (43%), and a high frequency of radiologic evidence of sinus disease (8 patients) and of elevated antibodies to Pseudomonas (8 patients) was found. Only 2 patients were free of all these criteria for CF disease. This study strengthens the hypothesis that absence of vas deferens is an attenuated form of CF. We propose a combination of tests including DNA study, computerized tomographic scan of the paranasal sinuses, and testing of anti-Pseudomonas antibodies when the sweat test is inconclusive.