Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
YvoA and CcpA Repress the Expression of chiB in Bacillus thuringiensis

ABSTRACT Bacillus thuringiensis produces chitinases, which are involved in its antifungal activity and facilitate its insecticidal activity. In our recent work, we found that a 16-bp sequence, drechiB (AGACTTCGTGATGTCT), downstream of the minimal promoter region of the chitinase B gene (chiB) was a critical site for the inducible expression of chiB in B. thuringiensis Bti75. In this work, we show that a GntR family transcriptional regulator (named YvoABt), which is homologous to YvoA of Bacillus subtilis, can specifically bind to the drechiB oligonucleotide sequences in vitro by using electrophoretic mobility shift assays (EMSAs) and isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) assays. The results of quantitative real-time reverse transcription-PCR (qRT-PCR) and Western blotting indicated that deletion of yvoA caused an ∼7.5-fold increase in the expression level of chiB. Furthermore, binding of purified YvoABt to its target DNA could be abolished by glucosamine-6-phosphate (GlcN-6-P). We also confirmed, in the presence of the phosphoprotein Hpr-Ser45-P, that purified CcpABt bound specifically to the promoter of chiB, which contains the “crechiB ” sequence (ATAAAGCGTTTACA). According to the results of qRT-PCR and Western blotting, deletion of ccpA resulted in a 39-fold increase in the chiB expression level, and glucose no longer influenced the expression of chiB. We confirm that chiB is negatively controlled by both CcpABt and YvoABt in Bti75.
Decreased serum concentration of ionized calcium in insulin‐dependent human diabetes mellitus

Abstract. Low serum ionized calcium concentrations were observed in twenty‐five insulin dependent diabetic outpatients compared with twenty‐three age‐matched normal subjects: mean 1.16 mmol/l (SEM 0.01) versus 1.20 mmol/l (0.01), P < 0.002. Despite this, there was no compensatory increase in serum concentrations of immunoreactive parathyroid hormone, nor was serum total calcium decreased in the diabetic patients. Serum magnesium was significantly decreased in the diabetics compared with normals: mean 0.75 mmol/l versus 0.83 mmol/l, P < 0.001. No significant correlation could be demonstrated between serum magnesium and serum ionized calcium or parathyroid hormone in the diabetic patients.
The role of antennal sensory cues in female responses to courting males in the cricket Teleogryllus oceanicus

Courtship communication in the field cricket Teleogryllus oceanicus is multimodal, involving a minimum of both acoustic and chemical cues. The acoustic signal, or courtship song, is necessary to elicit normal levels of female mounting of the male during courtship. Antennal input is also crucial since antennectomized females show highly reduced levels of mounting. Immobilization of the scape­pedicel and pedicel­flagellum joints of female antennae had no effect on mounting probability, suggesting that mechanosensory input from chordotonal organs at the base of the antenna is not necessary. The antennal flagellum is a multimodal sensory organ, which contains both mechanoreceptors and chemoreceptors. In order to dissect the roles of different flagellar modalities, we treated antennae with zinc sulphate. This suppressed a well-characterized contact-chemosensory behaviour, initiation of courtship by males, and eliminated responsiveness of most chemosensory hairs as assayed electrophysiologically. Zinc sulphate treatment had no effect on a tactile antennal reflex, indicating that it selectively silenced chemoreceptors. Treatment of antennae with zinc sulphate reduced mounting levels nearly as much as antennectomy, suggesting that the main antennal cue required for the mounting responses is chemosensory, rather than mechanosensory, in nature.
Circadian Stress Regimes Affect the Circadian Clock and Cause Jasmonic Acid-Dependent Cell Death in Cytokinin-Deficient Arabidopsis Plants[OPEN]

Strong changes in the light-dark regime negatively affect the circadian clock, causing circadian stress, which leads to jasmonic acid-dependent cell death in cytokinin-deficient Arabidopsis plants. The circadian clock helps plants measure daylength and adapt to changes in the day-night rhythm. We found that changes in the light-dark regime triggered stress responses, eventually leading to cell death, in leaves of Arabidopsis thaliana plants with reduced cytokinin levels or defective cytokinin signaling. Prolonged light treatment followed by a dark period induced stress and cell death marker genes while reducing photosynthetic efficiency. This response, called circadian stress, is also characterized by altered expression of clock and clock output genes. In particular, this treatment strongly reduced the expression of CIRCADIAN CLOCK ASSOCIATED1 (CCA1) and LATE ELONGATED HYPOCOTYL (LHY). Intriguingly, similar changes in gene expression and cell death were observed in clock mutants lacking proper CCA1 and LHY function. Circadian stress caused strong changes in reactive oxygen species- and jasmonic acid (JA)-related gene expression. The activation of the JA pathway, involving the accumulation of JA metabolites, was crucial for the induction of cell death, since the cell death phenotype was strongly reduced in the jasmonate resistant1 mutant background. We propose that adaptation to circadian stress regimes requires a normal cytokinin status which, acting primarily through the AHK3 receptor, supports circadian clock function to guard against the detrimental effects of circadian stress.
Striatal Tissue Preparation Facilitates Early Sampling in Microdialysis and Reveals an Index of Neuronal Damage

Abstract: Injury‐induced efflux of dopamine was compared between two microdialysis preparations. Rats were implanted with guide cannulae 5–10 days prior to microdialysis experiments. In one group, ventral striatal tissue was punctured with stainless steel obturators that remained in place until the day of the experiment. In the other group, the tissue was not punctured until the microdialysis probes were inserted. Rats from each group were dialyzed with calcium‐free artificial extracellular fluid or tetrodotoxin 4 h after probe insertion. In the rats with previously punctured tissue, calcium depletion reduced dialysate dopamine concentrations to 8% of baseline. Dialysis with tetrodotoxin reduced dopamine concentrations to less than 1% of baseline. In the rats with freshly punctured tissue, dopamine concentrations were reduced only to 50% of baseline levels by calcium depletion and to 30% during dialysis with tetrodotoxin. Thus, penetration of the tissue prior to testing can significantly reduce the acute injury‐induced efflux of dopamine. Further, a significant correlation was found between baseline 3,4‐dihydroxy‐phenylacetic acid/dopamine ratios and the efficacy of tetrodotoxin in reducing dialysate dopamine concentrations. Thus, basal 3,4‐dihydroxyphenylacetic acid/dopamine ratios appear to provide an index of the amount of injury‐induced dopamine efflux following probe insertion.
Tolerance to in-band coherent crosstalk of differential phase-shift-keyed signal with balanced detection and FEC

It is found experimentally that the differential phase-shift-keyed (DPSK) signal with balanced detection has /spl sim/6 dB higher tolerance to in-band coherent crosstalk than on-off-keyed (OOK) signal. We attribute the improved crosstalk tolerance of the DPSK signal to its 6-dB lowered peak signal power as compared to the OOK signal for equal bit-error rate in optical signal-to-noise-ratio-limited systems. The impact of signal coherence on the crosstalk tolerance in a 10-Gb/s DPSK system adopting a standard Reed-Solomon forward-error correction is also investigated.
Franchise Fratricide and the Fight for $15

Few instances of workplace collective action have inspired as much excitement within the labor movement as the rolling strikes that have recently swept the fast food and retail industries. Growing with each passing year, by this April, tens of thousands of low-wage workers and allies were taking to the streets in hundreds of cities across the country, demanding a raise to the federal minimum wage that make the halting efforts on that front by the Obama administration look picayune by comparison. The energy and persistence of these workers has also sent a chill down the spine of various sectors of the business community. When Seattle passed a local ordinance that would increase the minimum wage in the city to $15 by 2017, the move was greeted with apoplectic outbursts from the Chamber of Commerce as well as a lawsuit from the International Franchise Association (IFA), the largest trade association of its kind in the country. Similar outcries followed recent hikes in Chicago, San Francisco, and San Diego, and even in red states like Alaska and Arkansas, where minimum wage increases were passed by popular referendum during the 2014 midterm elections. Perhaps the clearest sign of all of the indigestion the Fight for $15 has been causing low-wage employers have been the surprising decisions by industry leaders like the Gap, McDonald’s, Target, and Walmart to raise their starting pay scales—not to the $15 level, to be sure, but high enough to buy them some good publicity and some temporary breathing room. As those moves also made clear, there are issues besides hourly wages at stake here, and they are producing some revealing splits within the business community. In pressing for union rights alongside better pay, the Fight for $15 has challenged the very business models that those and other large corporations have long depended on to keep fast food, retail, and other service industries bastions of low-wage, precarious work. Franchising and subcontracting in particular have been highly effective methods for avoiding basic legal obligations to workers in these industries—but also often leave franchisees, subcontractors, and small business owners in economically vulnerable positions of their own. So while larger corporations have been more willing to compromise on pay to preserve the advantages provided by these legal loopholes, smaller businesses have recently found themselves fighting their workers with one hand and corporate headquarters with the other.
Tracking the rise of stem cell tourism.

AIMS Driven by hype surrounding stem cell research, a number of clinics around the world currently offer 'stem cell therapies' to patients. These unproven interventions have attracted policy interest owing to the risks they may pose to patients and to the progress of legitimate translational stem cell research, yet remarkably little data exists about the patients who undergo these unproven therapies or their experiences. We sought to characterize this patient population. MATERIALS & METHODS We developed a comprehensive data set of blogs written by patients (or their caretakers) about their experiences with unproven stem cell therapies. RESULTS & CONCLUSIONS Analyzing these data suggests that unproven stem cell therapies are increasing rapidly in popularity and are attracting a wide range of patients--both young and old and with a diverse collection of medical conditions. These results should help clinicians advise individual patients and help policymakers devise strategies to mitigate the risks these treatments pose.
Recruiting older volunteers: Findings from the Belgian Ageing Studies.

Although there is a significant body of work concerning voluntary work, hardly any attention is given to volunteering of older individuals. Moreover, the potential volunteers among older adults is even less examined. Next to volunteering among older adults, the neighbourhood becomes more salient when people age and this due to their more intense use and time spent in the neighbourhood. In response to these lacunae, the main purpose of this contribution is to examine the impact of subjective neighbourhood features on the recruitment potential for volunteering among older people. This study uses data collected from the Belgian Ageing Studies. 59.977 adults aged sixty and over living self-reliantly in 127 Flemish municipalities in Belgium participated in this study. A binary logistic regression is applied to analyse the key variables characterizing potential volunteers. Our findings stress the need for recognizing the crucial importance of the locality when recruiting older adults for volunteer activities.
Macrophage migration and gene expression in response to tumor hypoxia

Monocytes are recruited into tumors from the circulation along defined chemotactic gradients and they then differentiate into tumor‐associated macrophages (TAMs). Recent evidence has shown that large numbers of TAMs are attracted to and retained in avascular and necrotic areas, where they are exposed to tumor hypoxia. At these sites, TAMs appear to undergo marked phenotypic changes with activation of hypoxia‐inducible transcription factors, dramatically upregulating the expression of a large number of genes encoding mitogenic, proangiogenic and prometastatic cytokines and enzymes. As a consequence, high TAMs density has been correlated with increased tumor growth and angiogenesis in various tumor types. Since hypoxia is a hallmark feature of malignant tumors and hypoxic tumor cells are relatively resistant to radio‐ and chemotherapy, these areas have become a target for novel forms of anticancer therapy. These include hypoxia‐targeted gene therapy in which macrophages are armed with therapeutic genes that are activated by hypoxia‐responsive promoter elements. This restricts transgene expression to hypoxic areas, where the gene product is then released and acts on neighboring hypoxic tumor cells or proliferating blood vessels. In this way, the responses of macrophages to tumor hypoxia can be exploited to deliver potent antitumor agents to these poorly vascularized, and thus largely inaccessible, areas of tumors. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Dendritic spine and dendritic field characteristics of layer V pyramidal neurons in the visual cortex of fragile-X knockout mice.

Fragile-X syndrome is a common form of mental retardation resulting from the inability to produce the fragile-X mental retardation protein. The specific function of this protein is unknown; however, it has been proposed to play a role in developmental synaptic plasticity. Examination of human brain autopsy material has shown that fragile-X patients exhibit abnormalities in dendritic spine structure and number, suggesting a failure of normal developmental dendritic spine maturation and pruning in this syndrome. Similar results using a knockout mouse model have previously been described; however, it was noted in retrospect that the mice used in that study may have carried a mutation for retinal degeneration, which may have affected cell morphology in the visual cortex of those animals. In this study, dendritic spines on layer V pyramidal cells of visual cortices, taken from fragile-X knockout and wild-type control mice without the retinal degeneration mutation and stained using the Golgi-Cox method, were investigated for comparison with the human condition. Quantitative analyses of the lengths, morphologies, and numbers of dendritic spines, as well as amount of dendritic arbor and dendritic branching complexity, were conducted. The fragile-X mice exhibited significantly more long dendritic spines and significantly fewer short dendritic spines than control mice. Similarly, fragile-X mice exhibited significantly more dendritic spines with an immature-like morphology and significantly fewer with a more mature type morphology. However, unlike the human condition, fragile-X mice did not exhibit statistically significant dendritic spine density differences from controls. Fragile-X mice also did not demonstrate any significant differences from controls in dendritic tree complexity or dendritic arbor. Long dendritic spines with immature morphologies are characteristic of early development or a lack of sensory experience. These results are similar to those found in the human condition and further support a role for the fragile-X mental retardation protein specifically in normal dendritic spine developmental processes. They also support the validity of these mice as a model of fragile-X syndrome.
Super-twisting algorithm based sliding mode observer for wide-speed range PMSM sensorless control considering VSI nonlinearity

This paper proposed a super-twisting algorithm based sliding mode observer (STA-SMO) for permanent magnet synchronous machine (PMSM) sensorless control, in which voltage-source inverter (VSI) nonlinearity is taken into consideration. A lookup table for online tunning sliding mode coefficients of STA-SMO is obtained based on existing stable conditions. Since mismatch between reference and actual voltage due to VSI nonlinearity may lead not only to estimation error but also to system instability, especially at low speed range. Voltage distortion due to VSI nonlinearity is compensated to improve the estimation accuracy. A high-frequency harmonic components extraction method is used to compensate the VSI nonlinearity. Thus, a STA-SMO with suitable sliding mode coefficients and accurate voltage parameters is obtained. The effectiveness of the proposed sensorless control method with VSI nonlinearity compensation is verified on a surface-mounted PMSM by simulations and experiments.
Child Labor and Health: Problems and Perspectives

Abstract Child labor remains a widespread problem. Although it can have positive effects, in some situations it has negative effects on health and development of the children. Although mainly a problem in developing countries, it is also possible to find child workers, some working in hazardous activities, in developed countries. The authors describe the child labor profiles in developed and developing countries, the principal occupations of children, and their concomitant hazards. They summarize the epidemiologic evidence for a greater impact of some occupational exposures on the health of children as compared with adults, and the theoretical concerns about the impact of child labor on health, and suggest policies that can be used to combat harmful child labor.
Drivers of migration policy reform: The day off policy for migrant domestic workers in Singapore

While there has been much debate on Singapore’s migration policies, a ‘black box’ continues to surround policymaking decisions. This article examines the dynamics of migration policy reforms in Singapore, using the case study of the mandatory weekly day off policy for migrant domestic workers. Designing our analysis around the three ‘Is’ – ideas, interests and institutions – we argue that the inclusion and formalisation of migrant rights in the policy sphere entails the framing of migrant rights in a manner that appeals to Singapore’s institutional logics and cultural repertoire; prioritising the needs and interests of citizens in the policy calculus; and institutional readiness and conviction to the cause.
Photoaging in Asians

The aging process of the skin can be divided into intrinsic and photoaging. Clinically, naturally aged skin is smooth, pale and finely wrinkled. In contrast, photoaged skin is coarsely wrinkled and associated with dyspigmentation and telangiectasia. Although the population of Asia is more than half the population of the Earth, no well‐designed study has been undertaken to investigate the characteristics of cutaneous photodamage in Asian skin. As Asian skin is more pigmented, the acute and chronic cutaneous responses to UV irradiation seen in brown skin differ from those in white skin. The clinical characteristics of photoaging in Asian skin, such as pigmentary changes and wrinkle patterns, differ from those of Caucasian skin. This review provides an outline of the characteristic features of photoaging on the brown skin of Asians.
Searching for the Soul of Europe: The Impact of the Sovereign Debt Crisis on an ‘Ever Closer Union’

The destruction of global financial markets and the collapse of the Greek and Irish economies in 2010 caused a ripple effect that spread across the Eurozone and presented the EU with an unprecedented crisis. The level of economic devastation led many to question the integrity of the single currency and the direction of the European project as a whole. This thesis has examined three rounds of debate during the Sovereign Debt Crisis between 2010 and 2014, in order to ascertain the effect of this period on three competing ‘visions’ for the future of Europe. It has found that efforts to reform economic governance in the EU in the wake of the crisis have for the most part led to an entrenchment of the consolidation orthodoxy sponsored by Germany and its allies in northern Europe. However, a political turning point in mid-2012 led to a reprieve for the European Left and the subsequent advancement of the Social European vision advocating greater solidarity in the place of fiscal austerity. While the consolidation coalition’s commitment to economic stability and oversight has for the most part been maintained, the shifting balance of power in European politics, and an increasing frustration with the failures of austerity, have provided momentum for a major revision to the status quo. This thesis has found that while the Eurosceptic rise in the 2014 elections has raised serious questions for the EU, it has highlighted the unwavering commitment towards further integration among the dominant political actors in Europe, and will most likely set the Continent further along the path towards an ever closer union.
Joint torques are associated with speed-accuracy trade-offs during human reaching movements

Fitts' law is an empirically derived model that describes movement duration during human arm reaching as a function of movement distance and target width. Although this law does not consider dynamic properties, such as motor commands and joint torques, it can explain the speed-accuracy trade-off characteristics of human arm movements in most cases. However, human arm movements are achieved by transforming motor commands through dynamics. Thus, speed-accuracy trade-off characteristics can be explained by the joint torque produced by motor commands. Here, we investigated whether the speed-accuracy trade-off described by Fitts' law can be better explained by joint torque, which is directly controlled by motor commands. To examine the relationships between the movement speed, end-point accuracy, and joint torque, we performed temporally and spatially constrained experiments. A positive correlation was observed between the integrated absolute torque and end-point error, which is a measure of end-point accuracy for the trial-averaged values of each experimental condition. These findings suggest the possibility that the speed-accuracy trade-off described by Fitts' law can be explained by human arm dynamics and its parameters.