Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A mouse model of hereditary pancreatitis generated by transgenic expression of R122H trypsinogen.

BACKGROUND & AIMS Missense mutations in human cationic trypsinogen PRSS1 are frequently detected in patients with hereditary pancreatitis, a rare genetic disease of the pancreas characterized by autodigestive necrosis, chronic inflammation, and fibrosis. To examine the link between PRSS1 mutations and the initiation and progression of hereditary pancreatitis, we have sought to generate a transgenic mouse that carries a missense mutation in the PRSS1 that is most frequently observed in patients. METHODS A transgenic mouse was generated in which the expression of the mouse PRSS1 mutant R122H (R122H_mPRSS1) is targeted to pancreatic acinar cells by fusion to the elastase promoter. The expression of the mutant trypsinogen was assessed by immunohistochemical staining and real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction analysis. The relationship between transgene expression and inflammation was analyzed by morphologic assessment of H&E-stained tissue sections, responsiveness to cerulein-induced pancreatitis, and immunohistochemical identification of cellular and biochemical components of the inflammatory response. RESULTS Pancreata from transgenic mice display early-onset acinar cell injury and inflammatory cell infiltration. With progressing age, the transgenic mice develop pancreatic fibrosis and display acinar cell dedifferentiation. Moreover, the expression of R122H_mPRSS1 transgene is associated with enhanced response to cerulein-induced pancreatitis. Finally, cell-specific activation of the inflammation-associated signaling pathways, c-jun-N-terminal kinase and extracellular signal-regulated kinase, was observed in response to expression of R122H_mPRSS1. CONCLUSIONS These results underscore the importance of PRSS1 mutations as pathogenic mediators of hereditary pancreatitis and indicate that persistent pancreatic injury might be causally linked to chronic pancreatitis.
Moving Molecules: mRNA Trafficking in Mammalian Oligodendrocytes and Neurons

Numerous mRNA molecules are localized in regions of the dendrites of neurons, some moving along dendrites in response to synaptic activity. The proteins encoded by these RNAs have diverse functions, including participation in memory formation and long-term potentiation. Recent experiments have shown that a cytoplasmic RNA trafficking pathway described for oligodendrocytes also operates in neurons. Transported RNAs possess a cis-acting element that directs them to granules, which are transported along microtubules by the motor proteins kinesin and dynein. These RNA molecules are recruited to the cytoplasmic transport granules by cooperative interaction with a cognate trans-acting factor. mRNAs containing the 11-nucleotide A2RE11 or 21-nucleotide A2RE sequences bind heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoproteins A2 and A3, which are abundant in the brain. Mutations in this cis-acting element that weaken its interaction with hnRNP A2 also interfere with RNA trafficking. Several dendritically localized mRNAs, including those encoding calcium-calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II α subunit and neurogranin, possess A2RE-like sequences, suggesting that they may be localized by interaction with these heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoproteins. Calcium-calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II α subunit is of particular interest: Its RNA is transported in depolarized neurons, and the protein it encodes is essential for establishing long-term memory. Several other cis-acting sequences and trans-acting factors that participate in neuronal RNA localization have been discovered.
Distinct Influx Pathways, Not Calcium Load, Determine Neuronal Vulnerability to Calcium Neurotoxicity

Abstract: Many forms of neurodegeneration are ascribed to excessive cellular Ca2+ loading (Ca2+ hypothesis). We examined quantitatively whether factors other than Ca2+ loading were determinants of excitotoxic neurodegeneration. Cell survival, morphology, free intracellular Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]i), and 45Ca2+ accumulation were measured in cultured cortical neurons loaded with known quantities of Ca2+ through distinct transmembrane pathways triggered by excitatory amino acids, cell membrane depolarization, or Ca2+ ionophores. Contrary to the Ca2+ hypothesis, the relationships between Ca2+ load and cell survival, free [Ca2+]i, and Ca2+‐induced morphological alterations depended primarily on the route of Ca2+ influx, not the Ca2+ load. Notably, Ca2+ loading via NMDA receptor channels was toxic, whereas identical Ca2+ loads incurred through voltage‐sensitive Ca2+ channels were completely innocuous. Furthermore, accounting quantitatively for Ca2+ loading via NMDA receptors uncovered a previously unreported component of l‐glutamate neurotoxicity apparently not mediated by ionotropic or metabotropic glutamate receptors. It was synergistic with toxicity attributable to glutamate‐evoked Ca2+ loading, and correlated with enhanced cellular ATP depletion. This previously unrecognized toxic action of glutamate constituted a chief excitotoxic mechanism under conditions producing submaximal Ca2+ loading. We conclude that (a) Ca2+ neurotoxicity is a function of the Ca2+ influx pathway, not Ca2+ load, and (b) glutamate toxicity may not be restricted to its actions on glutamate receptors.
Yeast Pif1 Accelerates Annealing of Complementary DNA Strands

Pif1 is a helicase involved in the maintenance of nuclear and mitochondrial genomes in eukaryotes. Here we report a new activity of Saccharomyces cerevisiae Pif1, annealing of complementary DNA strands. We identified preferred substrates for annealing as those that generate a duplex product with a single-stranded overhang relative to a blunt end duplex. Importantly, we show that Pif1 can anneal DNA in the presence of ATP and Mg2+. Pif1-mediated annealing also occurs in the presence of single-stranded DNA binding proteins. Additionally, we show that partial duplex substrates with 3′-single-stranded overhangs such as those generated during double-strand break repair can be annealed by Pif1.
Diversity of Lactic Acid Bacteria Associated with Fish and the Fish Farm Environment, Established by Amplified rRNA Gene Restriction Analysis

ABSTRACT Lactic acid bacteria have become a major source of concern for aquaculture in recent decades. In addition to true pathogenic species of worldwide significance, such as Streptococcus iniae and Lactococcus garvieae, several species have been reported to produce occasional fish mortalities in limited geographic areas, and many unidentifiable or ill-defined isolates are regularly isolated from fish or fish products. To clarify the nature and prevalence of different fish-associated bacteria belonging to the lactic acid bacterium group, a collection of 57 isolates of different origins was studied and compared with a set of 22 type strains, using amplified rRNA gene restriction analysis (ARDRA). Twelve distinct clusters were delineated on the basis of ARDRA profiles and were confirmed by sequencing of sodA and 16S rRNA genes. These clusters included the following: Lactococcus raffinolactis, L. garvieae, Lactococcus l. , S. iniae, S. dysgalactiae, S. parauberis, S. agalactiae, Carnobacterium spp. , the Enterococcus “faecium” group, a heterogeneous Enterococcus-like cluster comprising indiscernible representatives of Vagococcus fluvialis or the recently recognized V. carniphilus, V. salmoninarum, and Aerococcus spp. Interestingly, the L. lactis and L. raffinolactis clusters appeared to include many commensals of fish, so opportunistic infections caused by these species cannot be disregarded. The significance for fish populations and fish food processing of three or four genetic clusters of uncertain or complex definition, namely, Aerococcus and Enterococcus clusters, should be established more accurately.
A Simple Computational Model for the Estimation of Time-to-collision

It is critical for animals to respond quickly and accurately to avoid looming objects. Recently computation of time-to-collision (TTC) with a looming object have received much attention. TTC can be specified by the optical variable tau ap thetas/thetas', where thetas is the visual angle subtended by the looming object and thetas' is the derivative of thetas over time. The neural mechanisms involved in the computation of tau have been described previously. In this article we describe a neural network model designed to explain the physiological response properties of those tau neurons. We found that 1/tau can be computed by using a weighted combination of 1/(thetas+B) and thetas where B is a constant. We then built a simple computational model by including an improved back propagation algorithm as a way of simulating the brain response patterns. The output of the model is consistent with the performance of the TTC computation
Daily Ship Traffic Volume Statistics and Prediction Based on Automatic Identification System Data

Daily ship traffic volume statistics and prediction are of great significance to shipping market. Reliable prediction of daily ship traffic volume can instruct shipping company to make sound judgment and decision for operational management. Because of the mobility of ships, it may be difficult to obtain the ship traffic volume automatically and frequently. This paper defines four types' daily ship traffic volume for a port and proposes autonomous statistic methods for counting daily ship traffic volume at port only based on Automatic Identification System (AIS) data. Take Shanghai port as instance, we count the daily ship traffic volume by using the proposed statistic methods for three common types of ship: cargo ship, passenger ship, and tanker ship. For ship traffic volume prediction, we apply a hybrid methodology that combines both Auto-Regressive and Moving Average (ARMA) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) models to cargo ship and tanker ship, and show the comparison of ARMA, ANN and the hybrid methodology. Empirical results indicate that the hybrid methodology is efficient and superior for ship traffic volume prediction. But for passenger ship traffic volume, since the correlation coefficient plot shows feeble correlation in it, we just analyze some statistical characters for it.
Gastric emptying in patients with gallstone disease with or without dyspepsia: effect of cholecystectomy.

Dyspepsia is a common complaint in patients presenting with gallstone disease. Since the stomach appears to be its site of origin, the present study was undertaken to assess gastric emptying in patients with gallstone disease and to find out its correlation with dyspeptic symptoms before and after cholecystectomy. Gastric emptying (t1/2) was prospectively assessed in 43 patients with symptomatic gallstones (29 with and 14 without dyspepsia). These data were compared with that of 20 healthy volunteers (control group). Delayed gastric emptying (> 112 min: mean + 2 s.d. of the control group) was observed in 18 patients (42%; P < 0.002), 10 of whom presented with dyspepsia and eight without (NS). Re-evaluation in 18 of the 29 patients with dyspepsia, 3 months after cholecystectomy, revealed complete disappearance of symptoms in three, improvement in 11 and no change in four patients. After 6 months, two patients had reverted back to their pre-operative dyspeptic status; resulting in three patients completely cured, nine partially cured and six without any change in their dyspeptic status at this time. Gastric emptying was delayed in nine of the 18 patients before cholecystectomy. After cholecystectomy, normal emptying was observed in all but one patient (P < 0.005). Dyspeptic symptoms, however, completely disappeared in one patient, improved in five and remained unchanged in three. In the remaining nine patients, gastric emptying was normal both before and after cholecystectomy. Gallstone disease is associated with delayed gastric emptying but this delay was not the cause of dyspepsia in these patients. Cholecystectomy normalizes gastric emptying, a finding that has not been reported previously. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Proximity Loggers: Data Handling and Classification for Quality Control

Proximity loggers are a novel biotelemetry device used for quantifying animal-animal interactions in a non-invasive way. Such data has been used for studying a range of interactions from disease spread among badgers and cattle to quantifying cow-calf interactions. Such quantitative behavioral traits could be used for the purpose of selective breeding in domesticated animals. With the use of real data, from the study of oestrus behavior in cattle populations raised in an extensive grazing system, we have identified poor reciprocal agreement (RA) as a source of variation. To date, RA has not been adequately considered or addressed and can have serious implications for further analyses aimed at correctly quantifying and interpreting social behavior. We provide a database schema for storing the millions of contact records produced by proximity loggers and programming functions, for use in the statistical programming language R, for performing raw data quality control, data import, database queries and classification of RA between proximity logger pairs. Poor RA leads to a lack of confidence in the data recorded by a pair of loggers. At best, substantial noise is added to the data set and at worst can lead to over or under estimation of contacts between pairs of animals. Over successive deployments, the identification and removal of loggers consistently involved in poor RA pairs can improve the level of agreement and confidence in the recorded data. This is a necessity for the accurate estimation of genetic parameters based on proximity logger data.
Natural occurrence of Alternaria mycotoxins in olives--their production and possible transfer into the oil.

A limited survey of the natural occurrence of the major Alternaria mycotoxins, i.e. alternariol (AOH), alternariol methyl ether (AME), altenuene (ALT), altertoxin-I (ATX-I), and tenuazonic acid (TA) has been carried out on olives and related processing products (oil and husks). The toxigenicity of Alternaria strains isolated from olives and the possible mycotoxin transfer into the oil have also been investigated. Four out of 13 olive samples were contaminated by 2 to 4 Alternaria mycotoxins. The highest contamination was found in a badly damaged sample containing 2.9, 2.3, 1.4 and 0.3 mg/kg of AME, AOH, ALT and TA, respectively. No mycotoxins were detected in olive-oil destined for human consumption (6 samples) or olive-husks (3 samples) collected from oil-mills after the first pressing of olives. An oil sample produced in our laboratory by processing the most contaminated olive sample contained AME (0.79 mg/kg) and AOH (0.29 mg/kg). The estimated mycotoxin amount transferred into the oil was 4% for AME, 1.8% for AOH, and zero for ALT and TA (considering 15% the oil yield). Although Alternaria species, mostly A. alternata (Fr.) Keissler, were present at various extent on all the examined olive samples, mycotoxins were only detected in samples of physically damaged olives. The production of mycotoxins by A. alternata isolated from olives was much higher (up to 3 order of magnitude for TA) on rice cultures than on olive cultures.
Light-induced Dissociation of an Antenna Hetero-oligomer Is Needed for Non-photochemical Quenching Induction

PsbS plays a major role in activating the photoprotection mechanism known as “non-photochemical quenching,” which dissipates chlorophyll excited states exceeding the capacity for photosynthetic electron transport. PsbS activity is known to be triggered by low lumenal pH. However, the molecular mechanism by which this subunit regulates light harvesting efficiency is still unknown. Here we show that PsbS controls the association/dissociation of a five-subunit membrane complex, composed of two monomeric Lhcb proteins (CP29 and CP24) and the trimeric LHCII-M. Dissociation of this supercomplex is indispensable for the onset of non-photochemical fluorescence quenching in high light, strongly suggesting that protein subunits catalyzing the reaction of heat dissipation are buried into the complex and thus not available for interaction with PsbS. Consistently, we showed that knock-out mutants on two subunits participating to the B4C complex were strongly affected in heat dissipation. Direct observation by electron microscopy and image analysis showed that B4C dissociation leads to the redistribution of PSII within grana membranes. We interpreted these results to mean that the dissociation of B4C makes quenching sites, possibly CP29 and CP24, available for the switch to an energy-quenching conformation. These changes are reversible and do not require protein synthesis/degradation, thus allowing for changes in PSII antenna size and adaptation to rapidly changing environmental conditions.
Stochastic optimization for reactive power planning problems

In this paper, a stochastic optimal power flow is developed to solve the reactive power planning (RPP) problem while dealing with uncertainties such as intermittent power generation and loads. The RPP problem is formulated as a mixed integer non-linear problem (MINLP) which is a hard problem to solve. Therefore, Benders decomposition is used in order to get feasible solutions. The uncertainty sources are characterized by probability density functions from which samples are generated. If rare events are considered, conventional Monte Carlo method gives rise to a too large number of samples. The main objective of this paper is to identify the most critical samples leading to possible voltage limits violations due to a lack of reactive power supply and find the required optimal reactive power compensation. An iterative procedure is developed and aims to concentrate the samples in the zones having the highest influence on the RPP. First, both MINLP and Benders formulations are compared on a 9-node system to show the validity of the Benders decomposition. Then the iterative sampling process is assessed on the same test case and allows finding the optimal robust reactive power compensation with a reduced number of samples compared to direct Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS).
IN A TWO-SECTOR MODEL OF ENDOGENOUS

We develop a two-sector model of endogenous growth. The export sector is the only sector that generates technological progress. Technological knowledge can be used by the import sector. Firms face adjustment costs for investment. The model has well-defined equations for the growth rate of capital, and for the growth rate of consumption. The model has a steady-state solution. We study the relation between the interest rate and the growth rate. The optimal growth rate is higher than that achieved in the market economy without government. The optimal policy is an investment subsidy in the export sector.
Relationship of the Pain Disability Index (PDI) and the Oswestry Disability Questionnaire (ODQ) with three dynamic physical tests in a group of patients with chronic low-back and leg pain.

OBJECTIVE To determine the relationship between overall disability in daily activities, assessed with the Pain Disability Index (PDI) and the Oswestry Disability Questionnaire (ODQ), and impaired performance on three physical tests in patients with chronic low-back pain. DESIGN AND SUBJECTS The PDI and ODQ were administered in a cross-sectional study, before beginning a back rehabilitation program, to 45 patients with low-back pain of > or = 3 months' duration, with or without radiation to the legs. All patients also performed repetitive sit-up, arch-up, and squatting tests. SETTING Tertiary care center. RESULTS Modestly significant (p < 0.05) or significant (p < 0.01) inverse correlations (Pearson's r = 0.30-0.41) were noted between the PDI and the ODQ and all three physical performance tests. When normative data were used, the correlation (Spearman's rs = -0.45) between PDI and the squatting test remained significant (p < 0.01), whereas it was modestly significant (rs = -0.33, p < 0.05) between the ODQ and squatting test and between the PDI and arch-up test (rs = -0.35, p < 0.05). Compared with patients presently working, those on sick leave had significantly higher scores on the PDI and ODQ (Wilcoxon's two-sample test: p < 0.001) and also significantly worse performance on all physical tests (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS The PDI and ODQ, as measures of self-perceived disability, and impaired performance on repetitive squatting, arch-up, and sit-up tests, as measures of physical capability, show some overlap in low-back-pain patients. Both types of disability measures are clearly influenced by the patient's work status.
Positive Aging and Its Implications for Occupational Possibilities in Later Life

Background. There is a growing emphasis in academic, policy and popular literature within Western societies on positive discourses of aging. Although such discourses appear to be consistent with central beliefs of occupational therapy, particularly with respect to the health-promoting potential of occupation, critical social gerontologists are raising concerns about how such discourses are being shaped in relation to consumer culture and the rise of neoliberalism. Method and Purpose. Literature examining the emergence and evolution of positive aging discourses was reviewed and reflected upon using an occupational perspective. Results. Positive aging discourses are being shaped in ways that limit occupational possibilities and promote occupational injustices. Clinical Implications. Occupational therapists need to consider ways to enact discursive, practice and policy changes that enable aging persons with diverse abilities and resources to pursue occupations that fulfill needs and promote health.
An Autoregressive and Distributed Lag Model Approach to Inflation in Nigeria

This study scrutinized the precursors of Inflation in Nigeria between the periods 1980 to 2014. The Augmented Dickey-Fuller test was engaged to test for stationarity of the variables while the Autoregressive and Distributed lag (ARDL) Model was applied to capture the affiliation between inflation and selected macroeconomic variables. Our findings revealed that there exists a long run relationship between Inflation, money supply, interest rate, GDP per capita and exchange rate in Nigeria while in the short run, money supply has a significant positive one period lag effect on Inflation and Interest Rate also has a significant negative one period lag influence on Inflation in Nigeria. Recommendations are that in the short run, monetary policies should be geared towards the control of money supply and interest rate in Nigeria in other to regulate Inflation and also, the Nigerian economy can afford to vary any of human capital development or technological advancement to boost productivity without causing inflation as GDP per capita proved insignificant in the short run.
Perspectives on evaluation in financial education: Landscape, issues, and studies

ABSTRACT This review discusses the heterogeneity in the effectiveness of financial education programs that occurs because of the unique conditions for programs and methods to evaluate them. The authors define six groups served by financial education: children, youth, college students and young adults, working adults, military personnel, and low-income consumers. They then discuss research and evaluation literature for each group with a critical eye on program purpose, content, and evaluation. They also present findings affecting multiple groups on four issues: student loans, homeownership, retirement planning, and financial advising. The accumulated evidence on the effectiveness of financial education is positive, although the results are nuanced and sometimes limited. The authors argue that understanding this broad landscape in studying financial education is critical for future research and evaluation.