Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
How many carbonic anhydrase inhibition mechanisms exist?

Abstract Six genetic families of the enzyme carbonic anhydrase (CA, EC 4.2.1.1) were described to date. Inhibition of CAs has pharmacologic applications in the field of antiglaucoma, anticonvulsant, anticancer, and anti-infective agents. New classes of CA inhibitors (CAIs) were described in the last decade with enzyme inhibition mechanisms differing considerably from the classical inhibitors of the sulfonamide or anion type. Five different CA inhibition mechanisms are known: (i) the zinc binders coordinate to the catalytically crucial Zn(II) ion from the enzyme active site, with the metal in tetrahedral or trigonal bipyramidal geometries. Sulfonamides and their isosters, most anions, dithiocarbamates and their isosters, carboxylates, and hydroxamates bind in this way; (ii) inhibitors that anchor to the zinc-coordinated water molecule/hydroxide ion (phenols, carboxylates, polyamines, 2-thioxocoumarins, sulfocoumarins); (iii) inhibitors which occlude the entrance to the active site cavity (coumarins and their isosters), this binding site coinciding with that where CA activators bind; (iv) compounds which bind out of the active site cavity (a carboxylic acid derivative was seen to inhibit CA in this manner), and (v) compounds for which the inhibition mechanism is not known, among which the secondary/tertiary sulfonamides as well as imatinib/nilotinib are the most investigated examples. As CAIs are used clinically in many pathologies, with a sulfonamide inhibitor (SLC-0111) in Phase I clinical trials for the management of metastatic solid tumors, this review updates the recent findings in the field which may be useful for a structure-based drug design approach of more selective/potent modulators of the activity of these enzymes.
Understanding Visual Representation by Developing Receptive-Field Models

Summary To study representation in the visual system, researchers typically adopt one of two approaches. The first approach is tuning curve measurement, in which the researcher selects a stimulus dimension and then measures responses to specialized stimuli that vary along that dimension. Stimulus dimensions can range from low-level dimensions, such as contrast, to high-level dimensions, such as object category. The second approach is multivariate pattern classification, in which the researcher collects the same type of data as in the tuning-curve approach but uses these data to train a statistical classifier that attempts to predict the dimension of interest from measured responses. This approach has recently become quite popular in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In this chapter, we argue that the tuning curve and classification approaches suffer from two critical problems: first, these approaches presuppose that individual stimulus dimensions can be cleanly isolated from one another, but careful consideration of stimulus statistics reveals that isolation is in fact quite difficult to achieve; second, these approaches provide no means for generalizing results to other types of stimulus. We then describe receptive-field estimation, an alternative approach that addresses these problems. In receptive-field estimation, the researcher measures responses to a large number of stimuli drawn from a general stimulus class and then develops receptive-field models that describe how arbitrary stimuli are mapped onto responses. Although receptive-field estimation is traditionally associated with electrophysiology, we review recent work of ours demonstrating the application of this technique to fMRI of primary visual cortex. The success of our approach suggests that receptive-field estimation may be a promising direction for future fMRI studies.
Pituitary-Adrenal and Parasympathetic Function in Chronic Schizophrenic Patients with Postoperative Ileus or Hypotension

We studied the relationship between parasympathetic, sympathetic and pituitary-adrenal functions in chronic schizophrenic patients with complications such as postoperative paralytic ileus and hypotension during anaesthesia. Plasma epinephrine, norepinephrine (NE), adrenocorticotropin (ACTH), cortisol and the coefficient of variation (CV) of the R-R intervals on the electrocardiogram (ECG) as parasympathetic parameter were measured in schizophrenic and control patients. The CV value of the R-R interval on the ECG before the start of anaesthesia was significantly decreased to 2.3 ± 0.2 in the schizophrenic patients as compared with 3.5 ± 0.3 of the control patients. The CV value of the R-R interval on the ECG in schizophrenic patients with postoperative paralytic ileus was more diminished to 1.6 ± 0.2. The CV values in schizophrenic patients with and without hypotension during anaesthesia were similar and we could not find any significant difference. Chronic schizophrenic patients developed a decrease in NE, ACTH and cortisol responses to surgical stress, while there were no significant differences in these hormonal changes between those patients with and without paralytic ileus and hypotension during anaesthesia. In conclusion, the CV value of the ECG R-R interval may be correlated inversely with the expectancy of postoperative ileus in chronic schizophrenic patients. Their suppressed pituitary-adrenal function and sympathetic system may be indirectly associated with the paralytic ileus and hypotension.
Towards an effective business model for golf industry: A proposed framework

Despite the tough climate for golf operations and golf participation in general, this industry also exhibits the potential to be a great niche tourism product.As such, to deal with the changing landscape of business in golf industry, designing an effective business model is highly imperative.This study aims to explore the business model in a golf industry, in search for a business model that is effective and competitive.A proposed framework is presented to look at various elements and components of a golf business.While the data is yet to be collected using a case study approach to a golf club in the northern region, the study suggests that the findings will provide useful insights to the golf business in designing an effective business model, hence develop necessary strategies towards superior performance.
Referral for dialysis in Ontario.

BACKGROUND Because the incidence rates of treated end-stage renal disease are much lower in Canada than in the United States, we hypothesized that decisions, made by family physicians and community internists, not to refer certain patients to nephrologists might explain this difference. OBJECTIVE To elicit patterns of practice and attitudes from nonnephrologist physicians who care for, and possibly refer, patients with renal disease. METHODS A mailed survey was sent to a random sample of 1924 members of the Ontario Medical Association, Sections on General and Family Practice and Internal Medicine. Of 1778 eligible respondents, responses were received from 728 physicians (40.9%). RESULTS Patients with microscopic hematuria (79.2%), proteinuria (69.5%), and serum creatinine levels in the 120 to 150 mumol/L (1.4 to 1.7 mg/dL) range (84.3%) were generally not referred by family physicians. A hypothetical question about patient age and comorbid features revealed that physicians were less likely to refer patients as their age and comorbidity increased. In response to the question, "In the past 3 years, did you care for a patient who, after due consideration, died of renal failure without referral for dialysis," 14.2% of family physicians and 44.6% of internists said yes. Overall, 67.4% of respondents strongly or somewhat agree that rationing of dialysis is occurring now. Opinions about possible criteria for rationing of dialysis were that the majority strongly or somewhat agreed to basing a decision on the wishes of a competent patient (94.1%), short life expectancy (87.9), poor quality of life (87.0%), and age (63.6%). CONCLUSIONS These results suggest that nonreferral for dialysis occurs in Ontario and that the act of referral, or nonreferral as the case may be, is influenced by both age and coexisting disease. The patterns of nonreferral reported raise a concern that patients who might benefit are not being referred to dialysis centers.
Efficient Attribute-Based Secure Data Sharing with Hidden Policies and Traceability in Mobile Health Networks

Mobile health (also written as mHealth) provisions the practice of public health supported by mobile devices. mHealth systems let patients and healthcare providers collect and share sensitive information, such as electronic and personal health records (EHRs) at any time, allowing more rapid convergence to optimal treatment. Key to achieving this is securely sharing data by providing enhanced access control and reliability. Typically, such sharing follows policies that depend on patient and physician preferences defined by a set of attributes. In mHealth systems, not only the data but also the policies for sharing it may be sensitive since they directly contain sensitive information which can reveal the underlying data protected by the policy. Also, since the policies usually incur linearly increasing communication costs, mHealth is inapplicable to resource-constrained environments. Lastly, access privileges may be publicly known to users, so a malicious user could illegally share his access privileges without the risk of being traced. In this paper, we propose an efficient attribute-based secure data sharing scheme in mHealth. The proposed scheme guarantees a hidden policy, constant-sized ciphertexts, and traces, with security analyses. The computation cost to the user is reduced by delegating approximately 50% of the decryption operations to the more powerful storage systems.
Effects of smoking on clinical parameters and the gingival crevicular fluid levels of IL-6 and TNF-alpha in patients with chronic periodontitis.

OBJECTIVE Smoking is an important environmental risk factor for the initiation and progression of periodontal diseases. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of smoking on clinical parameters and the gingival crevicular fluid (GCF) contents of the pro-inflammatory cytokines interleukin-6 (IL-6) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) levels in patients with chronic periodontitis. MATERIAL AND METHODS The study base consisted of 41 patients including 22 volunteer current smokers with an age range of 32-59 (44.41+/-7.88) years and 19 volunteer non-smokers with an age range of 36-59 (46.94+/-6.07) years. The first month after non-surgical periodontal therapy was accepted as the baseline of the study. The clinical parameters including plaque index (PI), gingival index (GI), bleeding on probing (BOP), probing depth (PD), clinical attachment loss (CAL) were recorded and GCF samples were collected for analysis of GCF contents of IL-6 and TNF-alpha levels. At the 3rd and 6th months, all of these procedures were repeated. RESULTS In smokers, only CAL was significantly higher at the 3rd month compared with non-smokers (p<0.05). GI and BOP were higher in non-smokers than smokers in both periods (p<0.05). PI showed increases from the initial to the 6th month in smokers (p<0.05). Although the differences between two groups with regard to IL-6 and TNF-alpha were not significant (p>0.05), the total amount of TNF-alpha in GCF decreased from the initial to the 6th month in smokers (p<0.05). There were no significant correlations between the mean total amount of IL-6 and TNF-alpha in GCF and clinical parameters in both evaluation periods in smokers (p>0.05). CONCLUSION The present study demonstrated that cigarette smoking increases the amount of dental plaque over time in smokers and does not influence GCF contents of IL-6 and TNF-alpha.
Escape of Intracellular Shigella from Autophagy

The degradation of undesirable cellular components or organelles, including invading microbes, by autophagy is crucial for cell survival. Here, Shigella, an invasive bacteria, was found to be able to escape autophagy by secreting IcsB by means of the type III secretion system. Mutant bacteria lacking IcsB were trapped by autophagy during multiplication within the host cells. IcsB did not directly inhibit autophagy. Rather, Shigella VirG, a protein required for intracellular actin-based motility, induced autophagy by binding to the autophagy protein, Atg5. In nonmutant Shigella, this binding is competitively inhibited by IcsB binding to VirG.
The Effects of 2008 Financial Crisis on Turkish Banking Sector Performance and Profitability: Financial Ratios and Accounting Based Approach

There is an inter-relationship between financial crisis and banking performance as prior research and literature suggests. The business world today is more global than ever and financial crisis affect national economies just like dominos. More importantly, financial crisis have several negative impacts such as unemployment, high inflation, decreased investments, low levels of privatization, mergers and acquisitions. Likewise, the role of banking sector in modern economies can never be neglected. This is because banks are the locomotives of markets and they serve significant functions such as enabling investments, lending funds, supporting entrepreneurship and providing liqudity. Thus, revealing the double-sided link between financial crisis and performance of banking sector presents numerous advantages and helps to take corrective measures for the future. However, the tie between financial crisis and banking sector is still not crystal clear and debate continues on this issue without satisfactory explanations. Moreover, research focusing on the emerging markets arena which investigates the correlation between financial crisis and banking sector performance is even more limited. This study concentrates on 2008 financial crisis effects on banking sector performance and profitability of Turkey, that is an emerging economy. For this purpose, the financial period of 2002-2015 is included to the analysis to test both the prior and post crisis effects. Financial ratios as variables and indicators of banking sector performance are utilized as the methodology of study to bring an accounting approach to the research. Furthermore, both state and private banks are integrated to the study to avoid bias and subjectivety as well as ensuring independence.
Conception et réalisation d'une plateforme mécatronique dédiée à la simulation de conduite des véhicules deux-roues motorisés. (Design and realization of a mechatronic platform for motorized two-wheeled vehicle riding simulation)

Le sujet de these concerne la realisation et la caracterisation d’un simulateur dynamique de vehicule deux-roues. La these est organisee en plusieurs parties essentielles. D’abord, une etude bibliographique est menee pour cerner la problematique de la simulation de conduite d’une maniere generale en se focalisant sur les simulateurs de point de vue conception. Dans cette partie, on a pris connaissance des differentes architectures mecaniques utilisees auparavant ainsi que les problemes lies. Le choix de l'architecture du simulateur est guide par les besoins necessaires d'avoir une perception suffisante au cours de la simulation de conduite. Notre objectif est de reproduire les effets inertiels (acceleration, effort,.) les plus pertinents percus dans une conduite reelle. Le second chapitre aborde la dynamique des vehicules et compare celle des deux-roues contre les automobiles. Des adaptations pour des modeles dynamiques de moto ont ete presentees pour repondre a nos besoins en termes de rendus privilegies. Le troisieme chapitre presente les aspects conception, realisation, caracterisation et identification du simulateur de moto mis au point dans le cadre de cette these. Il constitue la principale contribution de ces travaux de recherche. Les deux derniers chapitres sont dedies aux algorithmes de controle/commande ainsi qu’essais experimentaux sur la plateforme. Ces tests ont ete realises en vue de la caracterisation et la validation de performances de toute la chaine de simulation.
The importance of personal values and hospitableness in small foodservice businesses’ social responsibility

This article investigates the relationship between personal values, hospitableness and social responsibility in small, independent foodservice businesses. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 24 owner-managers of these businesses located in Sheffield, United Kingdom. The results established that hospitableness is expressed through the way in which these small businesses engage in social responsibility. In lifestyle and family businesses, personal values, such as altruism, friendliness and a passion for food, influence the hospitableness and social responsibility of the small foodservice business. In the long term, social responsibility actions expressing hospitableness add value to the business itself. This research contributes to the hospitality literature by empirically demonstrating how hospitableness can be expressed through small business social responsibility, which can provide, in the long term, a competitive advantage for small, independent foodservice businesses.
A multimodal system to characterise melancholia: cascaded bag of words approach

Recent years have seen a lot of activity in affective computing for automated analysis of depression. However, no research has so far proposed a multimodal system for classifying different subtypes of depression such as melancholia. The mental state assessment of a mood disorder depends primarily on appearance, behaviour, speech, thought, perception, mood and facial affect. Mood and facial affect mainly contribute to distinguishing melancholia from non-melancholia. These are assessed by clinicians, and hence vulnerable to subjective judgement. As a result, clinical assessment alone may not accurately capture the presence or absence of specific disorders such as melancholia, a distressing condition whose presence has important treatment implications. Melancholia is characterised by severe anhedonia and psychomotor disturbance, which can be a combination of motor retardation with periods of superimposed agitation. Psychomotor disturbance can be sensed in both face and voice. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first attempt to propose a multimodal system to differentiate melancholia from non-melancholia and healthy controls. We report the sensitivity and specificity of classification in depressive subtypes.
Modellierung und Steuerung von strukturelastischen Robotern

Die vorliegende Arbeit befasst sich mit der Modellierung und Steuerung von Robotern mit Elastizitaten in den Antriebsstrangen und Strukturteilen. Hierzu werden nichtlineare Modelle erstellt und die Parameter der Modelle in einem mehrstufigen Identifikationsprozess bestimmt. Als Vorsteuerung werden inverse Robotermodelle verwendet. Da Strukturelastizitaten zu instabilen inversen Modellen fuhren, werden mit Hilfe einer neu entwickelten Invertierungsmethode approximative inverse Modelle von strukturelastischen Robotern erstellt die stabil sind. Deren Einsatz fuhrt zu einer deutlichen Verbesserung des Fahrverhaltens im realen Experiment, wobei weiterhin als Sensoren nur die Motorwinkel verwendet werden. Bahnoptimierungen basierend auf den erstellten inversen Modellen fuhren zu optimalen Sollbahnen unter Berucksichtigung der Strukturelastizitaten und der Begrenzungen in den Antrieben.
Transforming growth factor-beta inhibits human vascular smooth muscle cell growth and migration.

BACKGROUND Transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta) is released after vascular injury and may influence the healing response of the vessel wall. We investigated the effect of this growth factor on proliferation and migration of human venous smooth muscle cells (SMC) and the signal transduction mechanisms through which TGF-beta exerts this effect. METHODS SMC derived from human saphenous vein were used in a 72-hour proliferation assay and a 6-day migration assay. Cells were exposed to TGF-beta alone and in the presence of platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF), basic fibroblast growth factor (b-FGF), epidermal growth factor, and serum. The ability of TGF-beta to activate tyrosine kinases, phosphatases, or protein kinase C was evaluated by use of Western blotting with an antiphosphotyrosine antibody. RESULTS In a concentration-dependent manner, TGF-beta inhibited proliferation induced by PDGF, b-FGF, epidermal growth factor, and serum. This inhibitory effect was independent of SMC density. TGF-beta also inhibited migration induced by PDGF and b-FGF. Exposure of cells to TGF-beta did not lead to tyrosine phosphorylation of cellular substrates or activation of protein kinase C. CONCLUSIONS TGF-beta inhibits both migration and proliferation of human SMC. This inhibitory effect is not mediated through protein kinase C, mitogen-activated protein kinase, or tyrosine kinases.
Consumer Preference for Genetically Modified Halal Yogurt Drinks

Consumers worldwide have reacted negatively to food products made from genetically modified (GM) ingredients. This study strives to understand the importance placed by consumers on the features of a product when purchasing halal yogurt drinks with GM or non GM ingredient along with the level of antioxidants, price, flavor and Halal certification from JAKIM. In addition, their attitudes towards genetically modified foods, in general, and their purchase intention towards genetically modified yogurt drinks, in particular, were also determined. Experimental design using a convenience sampling was used; 120 eligible responses were received from the study using three types of yogurt drinks. The research findings showed that nutrition was deemed as being the most important product feature that influenced the decision in purchasing yogurt drinks, followed by freshness, price, flavor, variety, and origin. Furthermore, it was found that respondents presented a neutral attitude and purchase intention towards genetically modified yogurt drinks. The recommendations to market practitioners, research limitations, as well as suggestions for future studies are also discussed.
Flexion and Rotation of the Trunk and Lifting at Work Are Risk Factors for Low Back Pain: Results of a Prospective Cohort Study

Study Design. A 3-year prospective cohort study among workers of 34 companies in the Netherlands. Objectives. To investigate the relation between flexion and rotation of the trunk and lifting at work and the occurrence of low back pain. Summary of Background Data. Previous studies on work-related physical risk factors for low back pain either lacked quantification of the physical load or did not take confounding by individual and psychosocial factors into account. Methods. The study population consisted of 861 workers with no low back pain at baseline and complete data on the occurrence of low back pain during the 3-year follow-up period. Physical load at work was assessed by means of analyses of video-recordings. Information on other risk factors and the occurrence of low back pain was obtained by means of self-administered questionnaires. Results. An increased risk of low back pain was observed for workers who worked with the trunk in a minimum of 60° of flexion for more than 5% of the working time (RR 1.5, 95% CI 1.0–2.1), for workers who worked with the trunk in a minimum of 30° of rotation for more than 10% of the working time (RR 1.3, 95% CI 0.9–1.9), and for workers who lifted a load of at least 25 kg more than 15 times per working day (RR 1.6, 95% CI 1.1–2.3). Conclusions. Flexion and rotation of the trunk and lifting at work are moderate risk factors for low back pain, especially at greater levels of exposure.