Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cyclosporin A inhibits colon cancer cell growth independently of the calcineurin pathway

Chronic inflammation is a risk factor for the development of colon cancer, providing genotoxic insults, growth and pro-angiogenic factors that can promote tumorigenesis and tumor growth. Immunomodulatory agents can interfere with the inflammation that feeds cancer, but their impact on the transformed cell is poorly understood. The calcium/calcineurin signaling pathway, through activation of NFAT, is essential for effective immune responses, and its inhibitors cyclosporin A (CsA) and FK506 are used in the clinics to suppress immunity. Moreover, the kinases GSK3β and mTOR, modulated by PI-3K/Akt, can inhibit NFAT activity, suggesting a cross-talk between the calcium and growth factor signaling pathways. Both NFAT and mTOR activity have been associated with tumorigenesis. We therefore investigated the impact of calcineurin and PI-3K/mTOR inhibition in growth of human colon carcinoma cells. We show that despite the efficient inhibition of NFAT1 activity, FK506 promotes tumor growth, whereas CsA inhibits it due to a delay in cell cycle progression and induction of necroptosis. We found NFκB activation and mTORC1 activity not to be altered by CsA or FK506. Similarly, changes to mitochondrial homeostasis were equivalent upon treatment with these drugs. We further show that, in our model, NFAT1 activation is not modulated by PI3K/mTOR. We conclude that CsA slows cell cycle progression and induces necroptosis of human carcinoma cell lines in a TGFβ-, NFAT-, NFκB- and PI3K/mTOR-independent fashion. Nevertheless, our data suggest that CsA, in addition to its anti-inflammatory capacity, may target transformed colon and esophagus carcinoma cells without affecting non-transformed cells, promoting beneficial tumoristatic effects.
Anatomical vertebral artery hypoplasia and insufficiency impairs dynamic blood flow regulation

Recent studies have suggested that vertebral artery (VA) hypoplasia is a predisposing factor for posterior cerebral stroke. We examined whether anatomical vertebrobasilar ischemia, i.e., unilateral VA hypoplasia and insufficiency, impairs dynamic blood flow regulation. Twenty‐eight female subjects were divided into three groups by defined criteria: (i) unilateral VA hypoplasia (n = 8), (ii) VA insufficiency (n = 6), and (iii) control (n = 14). Hypoplastic VA criterion was VA blood flow of 40 ml min−1, whereas VA insufficiency criterion was net (left + right) VA blood flow of 100 ml min−1 or less. We evaluated left, right, and net VA blood flows by ultrasonography during hypercapnia, normocapnia, and hypocapnia to evaluate VA CO2 reactivity. The unilateral VA hypoplasia group showed lower CO2 reactivity at hypoplastic VA than at non‐hypoplastic VA (2·65 ± 0·58 versus 3·00 ± 0·48% per mmHg, P = 0·027) and net VA CO2 reactivity was preserved (Unilateral VA hypoplasia, 2·95 ± 0·48 versus Control, 2·93 ± 0·42% per mmHg, P = 0·992). However, the VA insufficiency group showed a lower net VA CO2 reactivity compared to the control (2·29 ± 0·55 versus 2·93 ± 0·42% per mmHg, P = 0·032) and the unilateral VA hypoplasia (P = 0·046). VA hypoplasia reduced CO2 reactivity, although non‐hypoplastic VA may compensate this regulatory limitation. In subjects with VA insufficiency, lowered CO2 reactivity at the both VA could not preserve normal net VA CO2 reactivity. These findings provide a possible physiological mechanism for the increased risk of posterior cerebral stroke in subjects with VA hypoplasia and insufficiency.
Physical activity and cardiorespiratory fitness in adolescents with Down syndrome.

AIMS To determine if adolescents with and without Down syndrome (DS) accomplish the physical activity (PA) guidelines and to evaluate relationships between PA and cardiorespiratory variables. METHODS 42 adolescents (27 with DS) participated in this study. PA was measured using accelerometers. Walking-graded treadmill protocol with a breath-by-breath gas analyzer was employed to assess cardiorespiratory fitness. RESULTS Adolescents with DS spent less time in sedentary PA, moderate PA (MPA), vigorous PA (VPA) and moderate to vigorous PA (MVPA) than those without DS. VO2peak was correlated with total minutes spent in light PA, MPA, VPA and MVPA in the control group (from r = 0.55 to r = 0.61, p < 0.05) and with MPA and MVPA in the DS group (from r = 0.38 to r = 0.41, p < 0.05). CONCLUSION Nor DS neither control groups achieved at least 60 minutes of MPA daily. Engaging more time in MPA was associated with greater cardiorespiratory fitness in adolescents with DS.
Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer Analysis of the Antagonist- and Partial Agonist-occupied States of the Cholecystokinin Receptor*

Changes in receptor conformation are believed to be key for ligand-induced regulation of cellular signaling cascades. However, little information exists about specific conformations of a receptor. We recently applied fluorescence resonance energy transfer to determine distances from distinct points distributed over the surface and within the helical bundle of the cholecystokinin receptor to the amino terminus of a full agonist CCK analogue (Harikumar, K. G., Pinon, D. I., Wessels, W. S., Dawson, E. S., Lybrand, T. P., Prendergast, F. G., and Miller, L. J. (2004) Mol. Pharmacol. 65, 28–35). Here, we apply the same experimental strategy to determine distances from the same receptor positions to an analogous point at the amino terminus of structurally related partial agonist (Alexa488-Gly-[(Nle28,31)CCK-26–32]phenethyl ester) and antagonist (Alexa488-Gly-[(d-Trp31, Nle28,31)CCK-26–32]phenethyl ester) ligands. A high degree of spectral overlap and fluorescence transfer was observed for ligand-occupied fluorescent-tagged receptors with no transfer observed for the ligand-occupied pseudo-wild type null cysteine-reactive mutant receptor (C94S). For the partial agonist, calculated distances to receptor positions 94, 102, 204, and 341, representing sites within the helical confluence, and the first, second, and third loops, were 21 ± 0.4, 18 ± 0.4, 25 ± 1, and 17 ± 1 Å, not different from those measured previously for the analogous full agonist. For the antagonist, the analogous distances were 21 ± 2, 28 ± 2, 15 ± 1 and 21 ± 1 Å. Distances to the first and third loops were longer and the distance to the second loop was shorter for the antagonist relative to both the full and partial agonist probes, whereas all three probes demonstrated similar distances to the intrahelical reference point. This supports the possibilities of changes in the conformation of the probe and/or the receptor induced by structurally similar ligands having distinct intrinsic biological activities.
Postsocialist Pathways: Transforming Politics and Property in East Central Europe

Part I. Extrication: 1. Remaking the political field: strategic interactions and contingent choices Part II. Transformations: 2. The privatization debate: from plan to market or from plan to clan? 3. Path dependence and privatization strategies Part III. Deliberative Association: 4. Markets, states, and deliberative associations 5. Restructuring networks in East European capitalism 6. Enabling constraints: institutional sources of policy coherence 7. Extended accountability Bibliography.
Tales From the Wild West of Us Drug Pricing: The Case of Intravenous Acetaminophen

Abstract This article aims to discuss and provide insight into the effects of the increased use and price (from $12.43 to $35.40 in 2014) of intravenous acetaminophen, which has rapidly gained acceptance in the field of perioperative medicine. Overall use and characteristics are described for selected surgeries with absolute use particularly high in orthopedic surgeries associated with substantial costs (up to an additional $160,000 per year per hospital for just orthopedic use). The availability of large-scale data on costs and use of intravenous acetaminophen in the United States will greatly benefit the ongoing discussions on its place in current practice.
Social foragers adopt a riskier foraging mode in the centre of their groups

Foraging in groups provides many benefits that are not necessarily experienced the same way by all individuals. I explore the possibility that foraging mode, the way individuals exploit resources, varies as a function of spatial position in the group, reflecting commonly occurring spatial differences in predation risk. I show that semipalmated sandpipers (Calidris pusilla), a social foraging avian species, tended to adopt a riskier foraging mode in the central, more protected areas of their groups. Central birds effectively used the more peripheral group members as sentinels, allowing them to exploit a wider range of resources within the same group at the same time. This finding provides a novel benefit of living in groups, which may have a broad relevance given that social foraging species often exploit a large array of resources.
Politiques éducatives et évasion fiscale dans les pays en développement

The goal of this article is to highlight the consequences that tax evasion could impact on schooling duration and expenditures in education. We don’t make any specific assumptions as regards the origin of the tax evasion. We simply consider a society made up of two categories of heterogeneous agents, the rich and the poor. Among the rich people, some declare their total income whereas the others declare the same income as the poor. While the government is unable to control this factor, it can’t distinguish the wealthy tax evaders from the poor ones either. Moreover, in the human capital accumulation function, we have introduced complementarities between personal tax contributions. Our model is declined in two cases, each corresponding to different education policies characterized by different ways of education funding. In the public education regime, the government collects income tax. Tax revenues are used to finance education. In the mixed education regime (public and private), the government finances education by collecting income tax whereas the richest parents can complete this education privately. We show that taxation depends positively on how large the tax evasion is but we also show that, in the mixed education regime, this sub optimality can be corrected by a longer compulsory length of schooling.
Iterative decoding for uncompressed wireless video transmission

Due to the emergence of mmWave systems that provide multi-Gbps data rate over 60GHz band, uncompressed video transmission has been considered as a commonly used feature for wireless multimedia transmission over the wireless personal area networks (WPANs). However, mmWaves signals usually have higher attenuation than the conventional low-frequency wireless signals, and therefore supporting transmission in a low SNR condition becomes a challenging problem for such systems. In this paper, we propose a iterative decoding method for the wireless transmission of uncompressed video. With our proposed iterative decoding structure, the video decoder utilizes the temporal redundancy among the video frames to jointly decode the received coded bits from different video frames with the aid of correlation noise model. The simulation results show that the proposed method can significantly enhanced the video quality in terms of PSNR, even while operating in an extremely low SNR condition.
Developmental Potential of Hematopoietic and Neural Stem Cells: Unique or All the Same?

Like many other animals, mammals develop from fertilized oocytes – the ultimate stem cells. As embryogenesis proceeds, most cells lose developmental potential and eventually become restricted to a specific cell lineage. The result is the formation of a complete and structured mature organism with complex organs composed of a great variety of mature, mostly mitotically quiescent effector cells. However, along the way, some exceptional cells, known as somatic stem cells (SSCs) are set aside and maintain a high proliferation and tissue-specific differentiation potential. SSCs, in contrast to embryonic stem (ES) cells, which are able to give rise to all cell types of the body, have been regarded as being more limited in their differentiation potential in the sense that they were thought to be committed exclusively to their tissue of origin. However, recent studies have demonstrated that somatic stem cells from a given tissue can also contribute to heterologous tissues and thus show a broad nontissue restricted differentiation potential. The question arises: how plastic are somatic stem cells? To provide a tentative answer, we describe and review here recent investigations into the developmental potentials of two somatic stem cell types, namely hematopoietic and neural stem cells.
Postbariatric Patients Undergoing Body-Contouring Abdominoplasty: Two Techniques to Raise the Flap and Their Influence on Postoperative Complications

Postbariatric patients undergoing abdominoplasties were retrospectively analyzed to correlate postoperative local complications with the 2 most commonly used techniques of raising the abdominal flap: diathermocoagulation versus scalpel. All patients undergoing body-contouring abdominoplasties were included. Excluded were patients with ongoing clinical infections, those that received a complete course of antibiotic in the 6 months before operation, those requesting steroid therapy, those with systemic diseases that could impair wound repair (arteriosclerosis, diabetes mellitus), and those who had undergone apronectomy. One hundred thirty-seven patients were divided into 2 groups (diathermocoagulation = 90 vs. scalpel = 47). Overall, 7 seromas (5.1%), 7 hematomas (5.1%), and 28 wound infections (20.4%) were detected. A higher occurrence of postoperative hematomas was found after the flap raised using a scalpel (12.8% vs. 1.1%, Fisher exact test, P < 0.05), with a relative risk of 11.6. A significant association existed between postoperative hematomas and wound infections with delayed healing (n = 10, 7.3%): 43% of patients with a hematoma also experienced a wound infection with delayed healing versus 5.4% of those that did not develop hematomas (Fisher exact test; P < 0.01). In patients for whom a scalpel had been used to raise the flap, this correlation persisted (50% of patients with a hematoma had developed a wound infection with delayed healing vs. 7.3% of those that did not develop hematomas; Fisher exact test; P < 0.05). In postbariatric patients, diathermocoagulation reduces the occurrence of postoperative hematomas and wound infections with delayed healing compared with the cold knife.
Solution of inductance for bearingless switched reluctance motor by using enhanced incremental energy method

Differing from flux linkage method and incremental energy method that need solve second-order differential coefficient, the enhanced incremental energy method (EIEM) to evaluate the flux linkage, static inductance (secant inductance) and dynamic inductance (differential inductance) for nonlinear systems is presented in this paper. After the operating point of each circuit is confirmed, a less perturbed current is applied to every circuit in the vicinity of the operating point, and then the magnetic field of the system could be perturbed. Combined with nonlinear B-H curve of magnetic materials, the magnetic incremental energy can be obtained using the integral of incremental to magnetic field H and magnetic flux density B. Hence, the flux linkage, static inductance and dynamic inductance of every circuit can be calculated without differential. Taking a bearingless switched reluctance motor prototype with 12/8 7.5 kW as an instance, mutual inductance between the phase can be neglected while the three-phase windings are considered as complete time- sharing conduct; taking linear material as an instance for iron core, the mutual inductance between the main and suspended windings can be neglected. Therefore, a solution for the static and dynamic self-inductance for the main and suspended windings of only single phase is sufficient. These inductances versus position angle and pointing current are solved, and the results are in a good agreement with the measured ones.
Differences in streamer initiation and propagation in ester fluids and mineral oil

The properties of ester fluids and mineral oils differ in many cases in a qualitative way. This means that these liquids may look like very similar in some experiments while in others they behave very differently. These differences must be understood and taken into account in the design of ester filled transformers to avoid unexpected failures. Classic models such as the two-parameter Weibull statistics of breakdown voltage are in some respects too simple to properly catch the underlying physics. We discuss the importance of segregating initiation and propagation processes to properly interpret results of experiments with esters and mineral oil. In transformer design it is in some parts more important to avoid initiation while in others it is more important to stop propagating streamers. Furthermore, to obtain low probability statistics from high probability breakdown experiments, both average and spread of breakdown voltages are required. The difference in spread of initiation and propagation voltages is discussed. Esters and mineral oils behave in a qualitatively similar way regarding initiation while they differ substantially in the propagation process. In this paper we compare some different experiments in terms of initiation and propagation.
slowly pulsating B stars ? , ? ?

Context. Massive stars are important building blocks of the Universe, and their stellar structure and evolution models are fundamental cornerstones of various fields in modern astrophysics. The precision of these models is strongly limited by our lack of understanding of various internal mixing processes that significantly influence the lifetime of these objects, such as core overshoot, chemical mixing, or the internal differential rotation. Aims. Our goal is to calibrate models by extending the sample of available seismic studies of slowly pulsating B (SPB) stars, providing input for theoretical modelling efforts that will deliver precise constraints on the parameters describing the internal mixing processes in these objects. Methods. We used spectral synthesis and disentangling techniques to derive fundamental parameters and to determine precise orbital parameters from high-resolution spectra. We employed custom masks to construct light curves from the virtually uninterrupted four year long Kepler pixel data and used standard time-series analysis tools to construct a set of significant frequencies for each target. These sets were first filtered from combination frequencies, and then screened for period spacing patterns. Results. We detect gravity mode period series of modes, of the same degree ` with consecutive radial order n, in four new and one revisited SPB star. These series (covering typically 10 to 40 radial orders) are clearly influenced by moderate to fast rotation and carry signatures of chemical mixing processes. Furthermore, they are predominantly prograde dipole series. Our spectroscopic analysis, in addition to placing each object inside the SPB instability strip and identifying KIC 4930889 as an SB2 binary, reveals that KIC 11971405 is a fast rotator that shows very weak Be signatures. Together with the observed photometric outbursts this illustrates that this Be star is a fast rotating SPB star. We hypothesise that the outbursts might be connected to its very densely compressed oscillation spectrum.
Development of a porcine excisional wound model.

OBJECTIVES To develop a porcine model for cutaneous tangential excisional wounds. METHODS This was a prospective, longitudinal, blinded experiment on four isoflurane-anesthetized swine. Forty standardized excisional wounds (1 square inch each) were created with an electric dermatome set at a depth of 300, 600, 750, or 900 microm. Full-thickness wounds were created with a surgical blade (n = 8 for each depth). Wounds were treated with polyurethane film. Full-thickness punch biopsies were taken after one, two, three, four, five, and 14 days for blinded histopathological evaluation. The main outcome was the percent wound reepithelialization (REP) calculated by dividing the length of neoepidermis in cross-section by the specimen's diameter (interobserver correlation = 0.99). Analysis of variance was used to compare percent REP among wound depths. This study had 80% power to detect a 33% difference in REP across groups (two-tailed alpha = 0.05). RESULTS There were significant differences in percent REP across wound depths for days 2-5 (p < 0.001 for all days). The more superficial wounds (300 to 600 microm) were mostly reepithelialized by day 4, whereas wounds ranging in depth from 750 to 900 micro m were mostly healed by day 5. Full-thickness wounds had no evidence of REP even after 14 days. CONCLUSIONS The authors describe an excisional wound model in swine. Rapid reepithelialization occurs within three to five days in wounds <900 microm deep.
Current-controller with single DC link current measurement for inverter-fed AC machines based on an improved observer-structure

In modern industrial applications even low-cost drives have excellent dynamic behavior, which is achieved by field-oriented control combined with high-dynamic current regulation. Usually at least two phase-current sensors are necessary to realize such an operation. In this paper, a new current-control scheme is presented, which enables high-dynamic control of ac machine-line currents with improved accuracy by measuring only the current of the dc-link. The controller is based on three individual and adaptive phase-current observers, which guarantee very accurate phase-current estimates even at low-modulation indices. Thus, operation is possible even at low-speed without modifying the switching pattern of the controller and the necessary modification at zero-speed can be clearly reduced. Different realizations of the proposed scheme are given and a comparison is made to previously published schemes which are also based on a single dc-link current sensor. Measurements performed on an induction-machine drive at different points of operation show the applicability of the proposed structure. It is shown that the long-term accuracy is clearly increased and the maximum deviation of the observer estimate from the actual phase-current is reduced when using the proposed scheme.