Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Histologic structure of human umbilical cord vein and its clinical application value

To provide theoretical data on human umbilical cord vein used for small-caliber transplanting material. Fifty fetal umbilical cord vein aged from 24 weeks to 42 weeks were collected and serially sectioned by paraffin section methods. The tissue structure, elastic fiber, collagenic fiber and smooth muscle were stained by HE, Weigert, Aniline blue and Orange G respectively. The microstructure component in tunica media of umbilical cord vein were measured by the computer image analysis system. With the increasing of the gestational age, relative content of elastic fiber in tunica media of umbilical cord vein was gradually increased, meanwhile, relative content of collagenic fiber and the ratio of C/E(collagen/elastin) were gradually decreased(P0.01). The relative content of elastic fiber located on proximal segment was lower than that of distal segment(P0.01)and its C/E was increased gradually from proximal segment to distal segment . The tissue structure of human umbilical cord vein was similar to medium-sized artery. Human umbilical cord veins are good substitutes for small-caliber arterial grafts. Our studies suggested that umbilical cord vein, whose gestational age ranged from 37 weeks to 40 weeks, be better candidate material for the transplantation. Meanwhile,we should select umbilical cord vein of different segments for the transplantation so that the histologic structure were correspondent as far as possible between umbilical cord vein as material for the transplantation and host blood vessel to increase long-term patency rate of transplantation blood vessel.
Prevalence of Teenagers with Disabilities in a Medium-Sized Municipality

Introduction: Despite variations in the beginning and the end, adolescence is the second decade of life, 10-19 years. According to the World Report on disability among those individuals aged 0-14 years of age, 93 million had severe or moderate disabilities and 13 million severe disabilities. Therefore, this study aimed to identify adolescents with hearing, visual and physical impairment. Methods: A quantitative transversal study of a medium-sized municipality. Data was collected at interviews conducted by community health workers, with an instrument containing sociodemographic data and impairment characteristics. Data was organized in spreadsheets and analyzed for correlations between types of disabilities and other variables by chi-square test. Statistical significance was verified by a 0.05 level. Results: Physical disability prevailed over visual and auditory. An association was found between disability and level of education (p = 0.023). Conclusion: Support and incentive education policies are necessary among the disabled.
Expression Systems for Synthetic Spider Silk Protein Production

Expression Systems for Synthetic Spider Silk Protein Production by Michaela R. Hugie, Doctor of Philosophy Utah State University, 2019 Major Professor: Dr. Randolph V. Lewis Department: Biological Engineering Spider silk is a biodegradable and biocompatible material that is stronger than steel and more elastic than nylon. These properties make spider silk a desirable material for many commercial avenues, ranging from textiles to biomedical materials. Due to spiders’ cannibalistic and territorial nature it is not feasible to farm them to procure spider silk in large quantities. Therefore, a bioengineered synthetic process is necessary to produce spider silk. To date synthetic spider silk has been produced in E. coli, goats, yeast, plants, mammalian cells and silkworms, but none of these processes has provided a commercially available product. More specifically, limiting factors include: 1) low purification yields and 2) recombinant spider silk proteins (rSSps) that are much smaller than the natural proteins and create synthetic fibers with mechanical properties inferior to those of natural fibers. The size of the protein is directly correlated to the mechanical characteristics of the resulting fiber. This research aimed to address the optimization of spider silk production in varying hosts to attain a commercially viable process, while improving the synthetic spider silk’s mechanical characteristics through both genetic engineering and expression
The insulin receptor adaptor IRS2 is an APC/C substrate that promotes cell cycle protein expression and a robust spindle assembly checkpoint

Insulin receptor substrate 2 (IRS2) is an essential adaptor that mediates signaling downstream of the insulin receptor and other receptor tyrosine kinases. Transduction through IRS2-dependent pathways is important for coordinating metabolic homeostasis, and dysregulation of IRS2 causes systemic insulin signaling defects. Despite the importance of maintaining proper IRS2 abundance, little is known about what factors mediate its protein stability. We conducted an unbiased proteomic screen to uncover novel substrates of the Anaphase Promoting Complex/Cyclosome (APC/C), a ubiquitin ligase that controls the abundance of key cell cycle regulators. Surprisingly, we found that IRS2 levels are regulated by APC/C activity and that IRS2 is a direct APC/C target in G1. Consistent with the APC/C’s role in degrading cell cycle regulators, we find that IRS2-null cells are deficient in proteins involved in cell cycle progression and display spindle assembly checkpoint defects during M-phase. Together, these findings reveal a new pathway for IRS2 turnover and indicate that IRS2 is a critical component of the cell cycle control system in addition to acting as an essential metabolic regulator.
Prevalence and use of clinical pathways in 23 countries – an international survey by the European Pathway Association

Objectives To give an overview on the use and prevalence of clinical pathways. Design Cross-sectional descriptive study. Study participants European Pathway Association (E-P-A) contact persons in 23 countries. Results Clinical pathways, also known as critical pathways or integrated care pathways, have been used in health care for 20 years. Although clinical pathways are well established, little information exists on their use and dissemination around the world. The E-P-A has performed their first international survey on the use and dissemination of clinical pathways in 23 countries. At present, pathways are used with a minority of patients, mainly in acute hospital trusts. Our survey showed that clinical pathways were predominantly viewed as a multidisciplinary tool to improve the quality and efficiency of evidence-based care. Pathways were also used as a communication tool between professionals to manage and standardize outcome-oriented care. Conclusions There is a future for the use of clinical pathways, but there is a need for international benchmarking and knowledge sharing with regard to their development, implementation and evaluation.
scGAIN: Single Cell RNA-seq Data Imputation using Generative Adversarial Networks

Single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) provides a rich view into the heterogeneity underlying a cell population. However single-cell data are usually noisy and very sparse due to the presence of dropout genes. In this work we propose an approach to impute missing gene expressions in single cell data using generative adversarial networks (GANs). By learning an approximate distribution of the data, our approach, scGAIN, can impute dropouts in simulated and real single cell data. The work in this paper discusses how to adopt GAIN training model into the domain of imputing single cell data. Experiments show that scGAIN gives competitive results compared to the state-of-the-art approaches while showing superiority in various aspects in simulation and real data. Imputation by scGAIN successfully recovers the underlying clustering of different subpopulations, provides sharp estimates around true mean expressions and increase the correspondence with matched bulk RNAseq experiments.
A scalable random walk with restart on heterogeneous networks with Apache Spark for ranking disease-causing genes using type-2 fuzzy data fusion

Prediction and discovery of disease-causing genes are among the main missions of biology and medicine. In recent years, researchers have developed several methods based on gene/protein networks for the detection of causative genes. However, because of the presence of false positives in these networks, the results of these methods often lack accuracy and reliability. This problem can be solved by using multiple genomic sources to reduce noise in data. However, network integration can also affect the quality of the integrated network. In this paper, we present a method named RWRHN (random walk with restart on a heterogeneous network) with fuzzy fusion or RWRHN-FF. In this method, first, four gene-gene similarity networks are constructed based on different genomic sources and then integrated using the type-II fuzzy voter scheme. The resulting gene-gene network is then linked to a disease-disease similarity network, which itself is constructed by the integration of four sources, through a two-part disease-gene network. The product of this process is a reliable heterogeneous network, which is analyzed by the RWRHN algorithm. The results of the analysis with the leave-one-out cross-validation method show that RWRHN-FF outperforms both RWRHN and RWRH. The proposed method is used to predict new genes for prostate, breast, gastric and colon cancers. To reduce the algorithm run time, Apache Spark is used as a platform for parallel execution of the RWRHN algorithm on heterogeneous networks. In the test conducted on heterogeneous networks of different sizes, this solution results in faster convergence than other non-distributed modes of implementations.
Commentaries on Viewpoint: Gold standards for scientists who are conducting animal-based exercise studies

: We believe that a better “gold standard” withregard to assessing ﬁber type, speciﬁcally the contractile phe-notype, is with SDS-PAGE separation of MHC isoforms per-formed, optimally, on single isolated muscle ﬁbers. The met-abolic and contractile phenotype must be assessed separately,and the electrophoretic approach offers distinct advantages toATPase and immunohistochemistry (IHC). While the lattermethods are probably the most commonly used, there arelimitations to these approaches described by Booth et al. (1). Many muscle ﬁbers express heterogeneity of MHC isoforms.ATPase and IHC provide information only on the presence ofa given isoform, not its proportional contribution. These meth-ods are therefore only informative from a qualitative perspec-tive.Our suggested methodology is feasible for most labs toperform and, importantly, is quantitative. It allows fordetermination of precise proportions of all MHC isoforms ina given muscle ﬁber. Additionally, it provides a deﬁnitivemeans for identifying the IIx MHC isoform, something thatis currently problematic with respect to ATPase and IHCtechniques. Neonatal and embryonic MHCs can also bedistinctly separated and quantiﬁed by electrophoresis, whenperformed under optimized conditions (6). Another speciﬁcadvantage of this methodology is that it allows for theprediction of functional properties of the muscle, i.e., force-velocity relationship (4, 5). SDS-PAGE has been deﬁni-tively shown to be a method sensitive to subtle or markeddifferences in MHC isoform expression in response toaltered loading and hormone states, during development,and between muscles of different ﬁber types (2–6). Toprove that interventions impact on contractile phenotype,MHC isoform composition should be determined by theelectrophoretic approach.
Sex-specific genetic effects across biomarkers

Sex differences have been shown in laboratory biomarkers; however, the extent to which this is due to genetics is unknown. In this study, we infer sex-specific genetic parameters (heritability and genetic correlation) across 33 quantitative biomarker traits in 181,064 females and 156,135 males from the UK Biobank study. We apply a Bayesian Mixture Model, Sex Effects Mixture Model (SEMM), to Genome-wide Association Study summary statistics in order to (1) estimate the contributions of sex to the genetic variance of these biomarkers and (2) identify variants whose statistical association with these traits is sex-specific. We find that the genetics of most biomarker traits are shared between males and females, with the notable exception of testosterone, where we identify 119 female and 445 male-specific variants. These include protein-altering variants in steroid hormone production genes ( POR, UGT2B7 ). Using the sex-specific variants as genetic instruments for Mendelian randomization, we find evidence for causal links between testosterone levels and height, body mass index, waist and hip circumference, and type 2 diabetes. We also show that sex-specific polygenic risk score models for testosterone outperform a combined model. Overall, these results demonstrate that while sex has a limited role in the genetics of most biomarker traits, sex plays an important role in testosterone genetics.
Heritability, Genetic Line and Inbreeding Effects on Resistance of Whiteleg Shrimp Penaeus vannamei Boone 1931 to Acute Hepatopancreatic Necrosis Disease (AHPND) in Mexico

The objective of this paper is to present preliminary results regarding heritability, genetic line differences and inbreeding effects for survival time in experimental challenges to acute hepatopancreatic necrosis disease (AHPND) in Penaeus vannamei Boone 1931. Here we present results of analyses conducted on data from a Resistance Line obtained from a merging of several Ecuadorian groups with a history of white-spot syndrome virus resistance, and a Growth Line with high genetic growth ability, obtained by selection in a Mexican hatchery. Family-identified animals from the two genetic lines and their crosses were inoculated by immersion in 2014, 2015 and 2016 using a Vibrio parahaemolyticus strain (M0904) AHPND+ obtained from a natural infection in Mexico. Heritabilities for survival time obtained using nested linear mixed models ranged from 9 to 18 %. Survival was greater for the Resistance Line compared to the Growth Line or the F 1 cross ( P
On the low reproductive success of two
 Cyrtopodium
 species (Orchidaceae: Cyrtopodiinae): The relative roles of biotic and abiotic pollination

Rewardless orchid species are pollinated by deception and have reduced reproductive success. Those species that present self‐compatibility followed by alternative mechanisms of autogamy may compensate for such episodic allogamy events. This is the case for rain‐assisted self‐pollination, a rare mechanism in Orchidaceae. In this study, we investigated the reproductive biology of two terrestrial species: Cyrtopodium hatschbachii and C. paludicolum. We studied their reproductive systems, examined pollinators and male and female successes, and ascertained if rain promotes self‐pollination. Both species are allogamous but self‐compatible. However, natural fruit set is low, not exceeding 1.40% during 4 years of observation. This may result from the reduced frequency of pollinator visitation followed by a high pollinator specificity, because each species was pollinated by a single specialist bee. Although spontaneous selfing did not occur, we verified fruits formed by rain action. The evaporation of the water droplet that accumulates on stigma helps the pollinarium to slip back, promoting selfing. This occurred in approximately 10% of C. hatschbachii fruits, but in C. paludicolum it was recorded only once during three observation years. This indicates that the phenomenon happens at random and may vary temporally. Nevertheless, rain may confer additional fruit set, especially under circumstances of pollinator limitation. Overall, we confirmed deception as a strategy for this understudied genus. In addition, we report a further two cases of rain‐assisted self‐pollination for Cyrtopodium, for species from the center of diversity of the genus, indicating that it may be more widespread than previously thought.
Socially dominant, aggressive males are poor influencers of group-consensus in a social fish

In many species, cultures, and contexts, social dominance reflects the ability to exert influence over the behavior of others. Yet the behavioral attributes of those in dominant positions, and the behaviors of actually influential individuals may not be the same, and the behavioral attributes that generate influence in one social context may reduce influence in others. The question of what makes an effective leader is therefore not straightforward, and has many answers depending on the context in which leadership and influence is to be manifested. Most importantly, social dominance cannot always be assumed to be equivalent with social influence. Here we examine whether socially dominant males in the cichlid fish Astatotilapia burtoni are more effective in exerting social influence than socially subordinate males. Using machine-vision based automated tracking of behavior, we find that dominant males in this species display behavioral traits that typify leadership across taxonomic systems – they are aggressive, occupy central social network positions, and lead group movements, whereas subordinate males are passive, socially peripheral, and have little influence over typical group movement. However, in a more complex group-consensus task the influence of dominant males breaks down, and subordinate males become more effective agents of social change. In a more sophisticated group consensus task involving a visual association task, the behavioral attributes that define male dominance – aggression, rapid movement, and increased physical distance to others – interfere with the ability of dominant males to generate group to consensus. Dominant males occupy more spatially distant positions, and had lower signal-to-noise ratio of informative behavior in the association task, while subordinate males are typically is close physical association with their group members, have high signal-to-noise behaviors in the association task, and equal visual connectivity to other group members as dominant males. The attributes that define effective social influence are therefore highly context-specific in this species. These results demonstrate that in this and many other species including humans, behavioral traits that are typical of socially dominant individuals may be the same that reduce their social influence in other contexts.
Meat productivity of chicken broilers when using stress protectors during the pre-slaughter period

Industrial birds experience stress factors which decrease productivity and cause economic damages to the food security of Russia. However, the modern agrarian science develops and applies stress protectors which increase growth, development and safety of chickens and their meat productivity. The “PIK Antistress” at doses of 1269 and 1693 g/t used 5 days before slaughter increased the average daily weight gain by 0.7-6.6%, the absolute weight gain by 2.3-9.4%, livability by 1.5-2.3%, the ratio of feeding efficiency by 4.5-24.6%, the amount of meat by 0.6-1.2%, the category of meat by 18.5-20.0%.
Studies on the impact of cover crops on soybean productivity and root diseases

Soybean (Glycine max L.) and corn (Zea mays L.) are the two main field crops grown in the Midwest, and they are usually used in a rotation system (FAOSTAT, 2018). This cropping system contributes to the elevated nitrate levels found in the surface waters in the Midwest (David et al., 1997; Dinnes et al., 2002), along with higher risk of soil erosion (Pimentel et al., 1995) and loss of nutrients and organic matter (Burkart and James, 1999; David and Gentry, 2000). Cover crops, grown between soybean or corn harvest in the fall and planting of the subsequent crop in the spring, may reduce erosion and nutrient loss, thus improving or maintaining soil health as well as protecting water quality (Lu et al., 2000; Sarrantonio and Gallandt, 2003; Kaspar et al., 2007; Qi and Helmers, 2010; Kaspar and Singer, 2011). However, little is known about the impact of cover crops on soybean seedling and root rot diseases, as well as on their causal agents, including Fusarium graminearum and Pythium sylvaticum. This study was conducted to: (i) determine the susceptibility of different cover crop species to infection by F. graminearum and P. sylvaticum; (ii) test the effect of long-term winter rye (Secale cereale) cover crop, established for at least 10 years, on soybean seedling and root rot diseases, growth parameters, and grain yield; and (iii) evaluate the effect of different cover crops species on soybean grown in soil artificially infested with F. graminearum and P. sylvaticum. In vitro and greenhouse experiments were conducted to evaluate the susceptibility of cover crop species to infection by F. graminearum, F. oxysporum, and P. sylvaticum. Seventeen cover crop species belonging to the Brassicaceae, Poaceae, and Leguminosae families were tested in addition to a resistant and susceptible soybean cultivar and a corn
Thresholds of fire response to moisture and fuel load differ between tropical savannas and grasslands across continents

Aim An emerging framework for tropical ecosystems states that fire activity is either “fuel build‐up limited ” or “fuel moisture limited ”, that is, as you move up along rainfall gradients, the major control on fire occurrence switches from being the amount of fuel, to the moisture content of the fuel. Here we used remotely sensed datasets to assess whether interannual variability of burned area is better explained by annual rainfall totals driving fuel build‐up, or by dry season rainfall driving fuel moisture. Location Pantropical savannas and grasslands. Time period 2002–2016. Methods We explored the response of annual burned area to interannual variability in rainfall. We compared several linear models to understand how fuel moisture and fuel build‐up effect (accumulated rainfall during 6 and 24 months prior to the end of the burning season, respectively) determine the interannual variability of burned area and explore if tree cover, dry season duration and human activity modified these relationships. Results Fuel and moisture controls on fire occurrence in tropical savannas varied across continents. Only 24% of South American savannas were fuel build‐up limited against 61% of Australian savannas and 47% of African savannas. On average, South America switched from fuel limited to moisture limited at 500 mm/year, Africa at 800 mm/year and Australia at 1,000 mm/year of mean annual rainfall. Main conclusions In 42% of tropical savannas (accounting for 41% of current area burned) increased drought and higher temperatures will not increase fire, but there are savannas, particularly in South America, that are likely to become more flammable with increasing temperatures. These findings highlight that we cannot transfer knowledge of fire responses to global change across ecosystems/regions—local solutions to local fire management issues are required, and different tropical savanna regions may show contrasting responses to the same drivers of global change.