Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Receptor signalling and intracellular calcium in neutrophil activation

More than 100 years have elapsed since Ringer in 1883 made his remarkable discovery that calcium chloride restores the contractility of the isolated heart. Since then, the list of scientific publications demonstrating the importance of intracellular calcium as a trigger or regulator of cellular functions, has increased to an enormous extent. The concentration of cytosolic free calcium [Ca2+]i, in most cells tested so far is maintained around lo-’ mol 1-’ (i.e. about 10000-fold below the concentra. tion in the extracellular fluid) by a variety of cellular buffering systems. The techniques available to measure [Ca2+]i, such as impalement with specific calcium microelectrodes or microinjection of calcium-sensitive dyes or photoproteins, were technically highly demanding and often posed problems of calibration
Antecedents of Customer Loyalty in Banking Sector: A Mediational Study

Executive Summary The competition among the organizations is increasing continuously and there has been a rapid shift in the business process deliverance. Financial service firms are striving to improve their business processes by liaising with customers to survive and compete successfully. The literature has obstinately emphasized on the utmost importance of trust and loyalty to survive in the financial sector. This study aims to explore the role of customer knowledge management (CKM) and satisfaction as antecedents of customer trust in the retail banking sector. The causal relationships existing between CKM, satisfaction, trust, and loyalty are explored. The mediating role of customer trust in the knowledge–loyalty and satisfaction–loyalty relationships is also explored. The data has been collected randomly from 412 customers of a private bank through survey by questionnaire. The research instrument has been developed and purified through factor analysis (confirmatory factor analysis). Structural equation modelling (SEM) has been employed to examine the causal relationship and fitness of the proposed model. The findings of the study reveal that CKM and satisfaction positively impact customer trust, and customer trust has a significant impact on loyalty. Besides, trust partially mediates the effect of knowledge and satisfaction on loyalty. The findings of the study are valuable to managers and strategists in understanding customer need in order to formulate the relevant customer loyalty programmes. However, the study focused on retail banking sector and uses data from a single bank only. Future research may evaluate the generalizability of findings across other banks as well as other nationalities. The main contribution of this study is to the loyalty literature by empirically validating the identified antecedents and demonstrating their role in managing loyalty. Furthermore, the study provides some valuable insights into the relational exchanges between variables wherein some inferences are derived from results regarding trust and loyalty.
Lixisenatide as add‐on to oral anti‐diabetic therapy: an effective treatment for glycaemic control with body weight benefits in type 2 diabetes

Achieving recommended glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) targets in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) requires effective control of fasting and post‐prandial plasma glucose. As T2DM progresses, oral anti‐diabetics are no longer sufficient to maintain glycaemic control. Five phase III studies in the GetGoal clinical trial programme assessed the efficacy of lixisenatide, a once‐daily prandial glucagon‐like peptide‐1 receptor agonist, in combination with oral anti‐diabetics in patients with T2DM insufficiently controlled using oral anti‐diabetics.
DRUG-INDUCED Observer Variation in Drug-Induced Sleep Endoscopy: Experienced Versus Nonexperienced Ear, Nose, and Throat Surgeons

Study Objective: To determine variations in interobserver and intraobserver agreement of drug-induced sleep endoscopy (DISE) in a cohort of experienced versus nonexperienced ear, nose, and throat (ENT) surgeons. Design: Prospective, blinded agreement study. Setting: Ninety-seven ENT surgeons (90 nonexperienced with DISE; seven experienced) observed six different DISE videos and were asked to score the upper airway (UA) level (palate, oropharynx, tongue base, hypopharynx, epiglottis), direction (anteroposterior, concentric, lateral), and degree of collapse (none; partial or complete collapse). Findings were collected and analyzed, determining interobserver and intraobserver agreement [overall agreement (OA), specific agreement (SA)] and kappa values per UA level. Measurement and Results: In the nonexperienced group, overall interobserver agreement on presence of tongue base collapse (OA = 0.63; kappa = 0.33) was followed by the agreement on epiglottis (OA = 0.57; kappa = 0.23) and oropharynx collapse (OA = 0.45; kappa = 0.09). Low overall interobserver agreement in this group was found for hypopharyngeal collapse (OA = 0.33; kappa = 0.08). A similar ranking was found for degree of collapse. For direction of collapse, high interobserver agreement was found for the palate (OA = 0.57; kappa = 0.16). Among the experienced observers , overall interobserver agreement was highest for presence of tongue base collapse (OA = 0.93; kappa = 0.71), followed by collapse of the palate (OA = 0.80; kappa = 0.51). In this group, lowest agreement was also found for hypopharyngeal collapse (OA = 0.47; kappa = 0.03). Interobserver agreement on direction of collapse was highest for epiglottis collapse (OA = 0.97; kappa = 0.97). Concerning the degree of collapse, highest agreement was found for degree of oropharyngeal collapse (OA = 0.82; kappa = 0.66). Among the experienced observers a statistically significant higher interobserver agreement was obtained for presence, direction, and degree of oropharyngeal collapse, as well as for presence of tongue base collapse and degree of epiglottis collapse. Among the nonexperienced observers, high intraobserver agreement was found in particular for tongue base and epiglottis collapse. Among the experienced observers, high agreement was found for all levels but to a lesser extent for hypopharyngeal collapse. Intraobserver agreement was statistically significantly higher in the experienced group, for all UA levels expect for the hypopharynx. Conclusion: This study indicates that both interobserver and intraobserver agreement was higher in experienced versus nonexperienced ENT surgeons. Agreement ranged from poor to excellent in both groups. The current results suggest that experience in performing DISE is necessary to obtain reliable observations.
Mg Acetyltaurinate as a photic inhibitor in photosensitive magnesium depletion : a physiological pathway in headache with photophobia treatment

Clinical and paraclinical data (visual stress tests, electroencephalographic and cerebrovascular photic driving, visual evoked potentials) demonstrate that the concept of photosensitive headache is fully justified. The interictal hallmark of photosensitive cephalalgic patients is potentiation (or sensitization) instead of habituation. The aetiopathogenic mechanisms of photosensitive headache associate hypofunction of the biological dock and magnesium depletion. The new concept of headache due to photosensitive magnesium depletion seems justified. It appears logical to add the treatments of magnesium depletion and of photosensitivity to classical treatment of headache. Prophylactic magnesium treatment relies on atoxic nutritional magnesium supplementation in case of primary magnesium deficiency. Pharmacological doses of parenteral magnesium may be used but may induce toxicity. Therefore it is necessary to know the therapeutic index of magnesium compound used: the larger its value, the greater the safety margin. Treatment of photosensitivity uses various types of « darkness therapies »: darkness therapy through physiologie, psychotherapic, physiotherapic, pharmacologie stimulating techniques and substitutive darkness therapy through palliative treatment. Melatonin is only a partial substitutive treatment of photosensitivity. A new mode! of photosensitive magnesium depletion with potentiation should be a useful tool for discriminating the most efficient « darkness-mimicking » agent.
Citizen participation and electricity sector governance in Lithuania: current state and future perspectives

The paper presents a study, which describes the current governance model of the electricity sector in Lithuania. Electricity and energy production and distribution is highly regulated worldwide. This is also true in Lithuania, where the electricity sector is highly politically prominent, and policy is highly centralized. There are geopolitical concerns towards Russia, which is an important supplier of electricity, and Lithuania’s grid is highly integrated with that of Russia. In addition, Lithuania is a small country dominated by a small number of large state-owned producers and has no regional administrations. Lithuania rhetorically has adopted increased citizen participation as a strategic policy goal. The study investigates how far the rhetorics are followed up by policy planning, implementation, and development of new governance modes. The authors base the study on interviews with 19 experts and regulation analysis. The study found that regulation process is transparent, but this causes lower public interest and consequently lower citizen participation. Existing stakeholder involvement at the policy level is highly arbitrary and favorable to large electricity producers. As production is set to decentralize, this has the potential to overburden the regulatory system and cause conflict between different producers.
A phantom study to cross-validate multimodality shear wave elastography techniques

As various quantitative shear wave elastography techniques are being implemented commercially and used clinically, it is important to understand what elastic modulus is measured by those techniques and to assess technical factors influencing measurement accuracy. Cross-validated in this study were four shear wave elastography techniques including ultrasound elastography point quantification (ElastPQ), magnetic resonance elastography (MRE), 1-D transient elastography (TE), and a Verasonics ultrasound system based elastography feature. ElastPQ is an acoustic radiation force (ARF) based technique implemented on an ultrasound system iU22 for a curvilinear probe C5-1. MRE measurements were made at a shear wave frequency of 100 Hz. The 1-D TE system uses an external mechanical vibrator at 100 Hz to generate shear waves and a 7.5 MHz single element transducer to track shear wave propagation. The Verasonics ultrasound system with a linear probe L7-4 uses a plane wave transmit imaging mode to measure propagation speed of shear waves induced by ARF. Six custom-made elasticity phantoms were measured selectively and were assumed purely elastic by the four techniques. The results show good agreement between two ARF based techniques: ElastPQ and Verasonics based feature. When comparing ElastPQ to 1-D TE, the discrepancy for the hardest phantom could be explained by the diffraction artifact in the latter system. Further improvements on the 1D-TE reconstruction algorithm are ongoing. The overestimation by ElastPQ and Verasonics against MRE could be attributed to frequency dispersion due to slight viscosity in phantoms. MRE measures shear wave speed at a single frequency 100 Hz, whereas the other two estimate an effective group velocity over a larger bandwidth for a broadband shear wave signal. 1-D TE and MRE measurements are in closest agreement due to similar shear wave frequencies. More validation of these techniques is required on real patients in clinical settings.
Ion channels in toxicology

Ion channels play essential roles in human physiology and toxicology. Cardiac contraction, neural transmission, temperature sensing, insulin release, regulation of apoptosis, cellular pH and oxidative stress, as well as detection of active compounds from chilli, are some of the processes in which ion channels have an important role. Regulation of ion channels by several chemicals including those found in air, water and soil represents an interesting potential link between environmental pollution and human diseases; for instance, de novo expression of ion channels in response to exposure to carcinogens is being considered as a potential tool for cancer diagnosis and therapy. Non‐specific binding of several drugs to ion channels is responsible for a huge number of undesirable side‐effects, and testing guidelines for several drugs now require ion channel screening for pharmaceutical safety. Animal toxins targeting human ion channels have serious effects on the population and have also provided a remarkable tool to study the molecular structure and function of ion channels. In this review, we will summarize the participation of ion channels in biological processes extensively used in toxicological studies, including cardiac function, apoptosis and cell proliferation. Major findings on the adverse effects of drugs on ion channels as well as the regulation of these proteins by different chemicals, including some pesticides, are also reviewed. Association of ion channels and toxicology in several biological processes strongly suggests these proteins to be excellent candidates to follow the toxic effects of xenobiotics, and as potential early indicators of life‐threatening situations including chronic degenerative diseases. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Can physiological variables and early warning scoring systems allow early recognition of the deteriorating surgical patient?*

Objective:Early warning scoring systems are widely used in clinical practice to allow early recognition of the deteriorating patient, but they lack validation. We aimed to test the ability of physiologic variables, either alone or in existing early scoring systems, to predict major deterioration in a patient’s condition and attempt to derive functions with superior accuracy. Design:A comparative cohort study. Setting:A teaching hospital in Scotland. Patients:Two cohorts of general surgical high-dependency patients. The cohorts are a group of surgical high-dependency care patients who did not require intensive care admission and another group of patients who did require admission. Interventions:None. Measurements and Main Results:Prospective physiologic data on consecutive surgical high-dependency unit patients were collected and compared with physiologic data on patients admitted to the intensive care unit from the same surgical high-dependency units. Data were quality checked and summarized, and discriminant analysis and receiver operator curves were used to discriminate between the groups. There were significant physiologic differences between groups with regard to heart rate (p < .001, area under the receiver operating characteristic curve [AUC] 0.7), respiratory rate (p < .001, AUC 0.71), and oxygen saturation (p < .001, AUC 0.78) across time points. This was not present for systolic blood pressure or temperature. Existing early warning scoring systems had good discriminatory power (AUC 0.83–0.86). We derived discriminant functions, which have a high predictive ability to determine differences between groups (p < .0001, AUC 0.86–0.90). We found that heart rate and respiratory rate could detect differences between groups at 6 and 8 hrs before ICU admission, but oxygen saturation and the discriminant function 2 could detect differences 48 hrs before ICU admission. Conclusions:Some commonly used physiologic variables have reasonable power in determining the difference between patients requiring intensive care unit admission, but others are poor. Existing early warning scores have comparatively good discriminatory power. We have derived functions with excellent predictive power in this derivation cohort.
Tricuspid Valve Endocarditis Caused by a New Species of Actinomyces: Actinomyces Funkei

We present a case of tricuspid valve endocarditis in a 40-y-old woman with a history of heroin abuse. Blood cultures yielded a Gram-positive rod, preliminarily identified as ''Actinomyces turicensis-like'', but subsequently formally described as Actinomyces funkei sp. nov. The patient was cured by prolonged treatment with 10 weeks of i.v. antibiotics followed by oral antibiotic treatment for 12 weeks.
Molecular dynamics simulation for the bonding energy of metal-SWNT interface

For this paper, we carried out molecular dynamics simulation to calculate the bonding energy of the metal-SWNT interface. Three kinds of metal, namely iron, nickel and gold, were studied. The results show that the iron-SWNT interface has the strongest bonding energy, and then nickel and gold. To confirm these results, tensile loading tests were also performed to study the breaking force of the metal-SWNT interface. The force needed to debond the metal-SWNT interface is at the order of nano-newton. The more adhesion energy the interface has, the bigger force that must be loaded to break the joint.
El papel del capital intelectual en la innovación tecnológica. Un aplicación a las empresas de servicios profesionales de España* The Role of Intellectual Capital on Technological Innovation. Evidence from Spanish Proffesional Service Firms

Organizational knowledge and its different forms play a critical role in order to effectively develop the products and processes of the firm (Kogut and Zander, 1996; Teece, 1998; Alegre and Lapiedra, 2005). This work explores the influence of the different forms of organizational knowledge (or Intellectual Capital) on the innovation capability of professional service firms. For reaching this purpose, in a first section, an exploratory factor analysis is carried out, obtaining the three main blocks of Intellectual Capital: Human Capital, Structural Capital, and Relational Capital. In the next step, the basic hypothesis about the positive influence of these kinds of Intellectual Capital (and their main dimensions) on firm innovation, are presented. From the empirical findings obtained for Spanish professional service firms, it is special worthwhile to highlight the role of customer relationships, as well as IT-based competences, alliances, and corporate reputation.
Interaction of the co‐activator CBP with Myb proteins: effects on Myb‐specific transactivation and on the cooperativity with NF‐M.

The oncoprotein v‐Myb is a potent inducer of myeloid leukemias, and its cellular homolog c‐Myb plays a crucial role in the regulation of hematopoiesis. Both proteins function as transcriptional regulators. We demonstrate that this function is mediated at least in part by the nuclear co‐activator CREB binding protein (CBP). This protein interacts directly with both c‐Myb and v‐Myb and potentiates Myb‐specific transcription as measured on the mim‐1 promoter. In contrast, dominant negative mutants of CBP lead to repression, as does E1A, an antagonist of CBP function. Phosphorylation of c‐Myb does not appear to be required for interaction with CBP, thus indicating that the binding may be constitutive. Furthermore, the C/EBP family member NF‐M, which cooperates with c‐Myb in transactivating the mim‐1 promoter through an adjacent DNA binding site, is co‐activated by CBP in a Ras‐dependent manner. Not only the individual activities of c‐Myb and NF‐M are stimulated by CBP, but also their synergistic transcriptional function, while it is negatively regulated by dominant negative forms of CBP. These data suggest that CBP is recruited by both Myb proteins and NF‐M and potentiates their transcriptional activity. We suggest that CBP can bridge between c‐Myb and NF‐M, thus providing an explanation for the strong synergism between these two proteins.
Identification of two novel, alternatively spliced mRNA transcripts of the human follicle‐stimulating hormone receptor

Glycoprotein hormone receptors contain large extracellular domains encoded by multiple exons that can be alternatively spliced. Using human ovarian surface epithelium, we cloned two new splice variants of the human follicle‐stimulating hormone receptor (FSH‐R) gene, hFSH‐R2 and hFSH‐R3. The hFSH‐R2 splice variant differed from the full‐length FSH‐R mRNA by the deletion of exon 10 and inclusion of two small exons after exon 9 whereas the hFSH‐R3 splice variant retained only exons 1–6 of the full‐length transcript. Both variants were expressed at low levels, but were detected in cells from follicular fluid derived from 30 different subjects. Transfection of these two variants individually into KGN cells, an ovarian cancer cell line that expresses wild‐type FSH‐R, reduced FSH‐mediated phosphorylation of ERK1/2, Akt, and p38/MAPK. Furthermore, in vitro co‐expression of either hFSH‐R2 or hFSH‐R3 and full‐length FSH‐R in HEK293T cells reduced signal transduction through full‐length FSH‐R. Further studies are needed to fully elucidate the functions of these receptor isoforms. Mol. Reprod. Dev. 80: 916–923, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Intra-ischemic hypothermia attenuates intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1) and migration of neutrophil

Abstract Adhesion of neutrophil to the endothelium and subsequent transmigration has been reported to contribute to progression of focal ischemia. Hypothermia has been known to attenuate ischemic insult through various mechanisms of action. The authors evaluated the effect of hypothermia on expression of intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1) protein and on transmigration of neutrophil with immunohistochemical method. Transient focal ischemia model in rats was employed, and animals received 2 h of either normothermic or hypothermic ischemia. To confirm the effectiveness of hypothermia on neuroprotection, cortical infarct area was compared between the two groups. Our results demonstrated that hypothermia reduced both the number of microvessels expressing ICAM-1 and that of neutrophils migrating into ischemic tissue. Comparison of cortical infarct area showed persistent protective effect. This study indicates that reduction of ICAM-1 expression and subsequent reduction of migrating neutrophil in hypothermia can contribute to attenuation of ischemic damage. [Neurol Res 2001; 23: 105-111]
Textile and Clothing Industry: An Approach towards Sustainable Life Cycle Production

In our economic system there is an urgent need for product quality and sustainability. This need is in the face of a growing destruction of non-renewable resources and the ceaseless degradation of the environment. It is based on wealth economics trading in new products to continue expanding well-being while limiting the ecological footprint including environmental effects, energy and material consumption, emissions all along the product life cycle. The goal of this work is the technical, ecological, environmental and social examination of the life cycle of traditional industry products. This paper focuses on the novel opportunity offered to textile clothing industries by trading off products-services, namely, enhanced products or extended deliveries, with a transparent accounting of resource depletion.