A Strength-based Inventory for Assessing the Needs for Academic Advising of University Students in Hong Kong

Copyright © 2021 The Author(s). This study aims to develop and validate a strength-based instrument for assessing the academic advising needs of university students in Hong Kong using the Appreciative Advising Inventory (AAI) as a blueprint. We reviewed the content validity and cultural relevance of the AAI and developed a 37-item AAI Hong Kong Version (AAI-HK). We conducted Rasch analysis and principal component analysis. The AAI-HK has four stable and reliable factors (social competence and support; positive identity and participation; positive values; and commitment to learning and study), which represent key strengths of university students. Four AAI-HK subscales demonstrate good reliability. We found significant differences in AAI-HK scores between students who are under academic probation or not and between students who are local or nonlocal

Prognosis and functional outcome after ischaemic stroke in Chinese

Oral PresentationINTRODUCTION: Ischaemic stroke (ISS) is a significant cause of disability and mortality worldwide. Here, we studied the subtypes and long-term prognosis of ISS in our locality. METHODS: A total of 1214 patients with ISS receiving rehabilitation at Tung Wah Hospital during 2004-2008 were prospectively followed-up for a mean of 76±18 months. Presence of recurrent stroke and all-cause mortality during the follow-up period was documented. The modified Rankin Score (mRS) at 1-year follow-up was delin…published_or_final_versio

Local structural alignment of RNA with affine gap model

Predicting new non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) of a family can be done by aligning the potential candidate with a member of the family with known sequence and secondary structure. Existing tools either only consider the sequence similarity or cannot handle local alignment with gaps. In this paper, we consider the problem of finding the optimal local structural alignment between a query RNA sequence (with known secondary structure) and a target sequence (with unknown secondary structure) with the affine gap penalty model. We provide the algorithm to solve the problem. Based on a preliminary experiment, we show that there are ncRNA families in which considering local structural alignment with gap penalty model can identify real hits more effectively than using global alignment or local alignment without gap penalty model.The project is partially supported by the Seed Funding Programme for Basic Research (Project number: 200911159065) of the University of Hong Kong

SOAP3-dp: Fast, Accurate and Sensitive GPU-based Short Read Aligner

To tackle the exponentially increasing throughput of Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS), most of the existing short-read aligners can be configured to favor speed in trade of accuracy and sensitivity. SOAP3-dp, through leveraging the computational power of both CPU and GPU with optimized algorithms, delivers high speed and sensitivity simultaneously. Compared with widely adopted aligners including BWA, Bowtie2, SeqAlto, GEM and GPU-based aligners including BarraCUDA and CUSHAW, SOAP3-dp is two to tens of times faster, while maintaining the highest sensitivity and lowest false discovery rate (FDR) on Illumina reads with different lengths. Transcending its predecessor SOAP3, which does not allow gapped alignment, SOAP3-dp by default tolerates alignment similarity as low as 60 percent. Real data evaluation using human genome demonstrates SOAP3-dp's power to enable more authentic variants and longer Indels to be discovered. Fosmid sequencing shows a 9.1 percent FDR on newly discovered deletions. SOAP3-dp natively supports BAM file format and provides a scoring scheme same as BWA, which enables it to be integrated into existing analysis pipelines. SOAP3-dp has been deployed on Amazon-EC2, NIH-Biowulf and Tianhe-1A.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figures, submitted to PLoS ONE, additional files available at "https://www.dropbox.com/sh/bhclhxpoiubh371/O5CO_CkXQE". Comments most welcom

Trust as a mediator in the relationship between childhood sexual abuse and IL-6 level in adulthood

Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) has been shown to predict the coupling of depression and inflammation in adulthood. Trust within intimate relationships, a core element in marital relations, has been shown to predict positive physical and mental health outcomes, but the mediating role of trust in partners in the association between CSA and inflammation in adulthood requires further study. The present study aimed to examine the impact of CSA on inflammatory biomarkers (IL-6 and IL-1β) in adults with depression and the mediating role of trust. A cross-sectional survey data set of adults presenting with mood and sleep disturbance was used in the analysis. CSA demonstrated a significant negative correlation with IL-6 level (r = -0.28, p<0. 01) in adults with clinically significant depression, while trust showed a significant positive correlation with IL-6 level (r = 0.36, p < .01). Sobel test and bootstrapping revealed a significant mediating role for trust between CSA and IL-6 level. CSA and trust in partners were revealed to have significant associations with IL-6 level in adulthood. Counterintuitively, the directions of association were not those expected. Trust played a mediating role between CSA and adulthood levels of IL-6. Plausible explanations for these counterintuitive findings are discussed

Overexpression of proto-oncogene FBI-1 activates membrane type 1-matrix metalloproteinase in association with adverse outcome in ovarian cancers

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>FBI-1 (factor that binds to the inducer of short transcripts of human immunodeficiency virus-1) is a member of the POK (POZ and Kruppel) family of transcription factors and play important roles in cellular differentiation and oncogenesis. Recent evidence suggests that FBI-1 is expressed at high levels in a subset of human lymphomas and some epithelial solid tumors. However, the function of FBI-1 in human ovarian cancers remains elusive.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In this study, we investigated the role of FBI-1 in human ovarian cancers, in particularly, its function in cancer cell invasion via modulating membrane type 1-matrix metalloproteinase (MT1-MMP). Significantly higher FBI-1 protein and mRNA expression levels were demonstrated in ovarian cancers samples and cell lines compared with borderline tumors and benign cystadenomas. Increased FBI-1 mRNA expression was correlated significantly with gene amplification (P = 0.037). Moreover, higher FBI-1 expression was found in metastatic foci (P = 0.036) and malignant ascites (P = 0.021), and was significantly associated with advanced stage (P = 0.012), shorter overall survival (P = 0.032) and disease-free survival (P = 0.016). <it>In vitro</it>, overexpressed FBI-1 significantly enhanced cell migration and invasion both in OVCA 420 and SKOV-3 ovarian carcinoma cells, irrespective of <it>p53 </it>status, accompanied with elevated expression of MT1-MMP, but not MMP-2 or TIMP-2. Moreover, knockdown of MT1-MMP abolished FBI-1-mediated cell migration and invasion. Conversely, stable knockdown of FBI-1 remarkably reduced the motility of these cells with decreased expression of MT1-MMP. Promoter assay and chromatin immunoprecipitation study indicated that FBI-1 could directly interact with the promoter spanning ~600bp of the 5'-flanking sequence of MT1-MMP and enhanced its expression in a dose-dependent manner. Furthermore, stable knockdown and ectopic expression of FBI-1 decreased and increased cell proliferation respectively in OVCA 420, but not in the p53 null SKOV-3 cells.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our results suggested an important role of FBI-1 in ovarian cancer cell proliferation, cell mobility, and invasiveness, and that FBI-1 can be a potential target of chemotherapy.</p

SOAP3-dp: Fast, Accurate and Sensitive GPU-Based Short Read Aligner

To tackle the exponentially increasing throughput of Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS), most of the existing short-read aligners can be configured to favor speed in trade of accuracy and sensitivity. SOAP3-dp, through leveraging the computational power of both CPU and GPU with optimized algorithms, delivers high speed and sensitivity simultaneously. Compared with widely adopted aligners including BWA, Bowtie2, SeqAlto, CUSHAW2, GEM and GPU-based aligners BarraCUDA and CUSHAW, SOAP3-dp was found to be two to tens of times faster, while maintaining the highest sensitivity and lowest false discovery rate (FDR) on Illumina reads with different lengths. Transcending its predecessor SOAP3, which does not allow gapped alignment, SOAP3-dp by default tolerates alignment similarity as low as 60%. Real data evaluation using human genome demonstrates SOAP3-dp's power to enable more authentic variants and longer Indels to be discovered. Fosmid sequencing shows a 9.1% FDR on newly discovered deletions. SOAP3-dp natively supports BAM file format and provides the same scoring scheme as BWA, which enables it to be integrated into existing analysis pipelines. SOAP3-dp has been deployed on Amazon-EC2, NIH-Biowulf and Tianhe-1A

Inhibition of cytochrome P450 2D6 metabolism of hydrocodone to hydromorphone does not importantly affect abuse liability

ABSTRACT Enzymatic conversion of hydrocodone to hydromorphone is catalyzed by cytochrome P450 2D6, which is inactive in about 7% of Caucasians [poor metabolizers (PMs)] and can be inhibited by quinidine pretreatment in the remainder [extensive metabolizers (EMs)]. If hydromorphone, having a substantially higher -receptor affinity than hydrocodone, contributes importantly to the physiological and subjective effects of oral hydrocodone, then PMs should be less responsive to the same doses, and quinidine pretreatment should cause EMs to temporarily respond as PMs. Seventeen EMs and 8 PMs who previously responded positively to hydromorphone s.c. received placebo and hydrocodone (10 mg, 15 mg and 22.5 mg p.o.) and were retested with their favorite dose after placebo or quinidine (100 mg) pretreatment; physiological and subjective measures were collected at base line and four times after drug administration, and urine was collected for 8 hr. EMs and PMs were equally responsive to oral hydrocodone, and quinidine had no consistent effect on their responses, even though quinidine abolished the pre-existing metabolic differences in hydromorphone production, as measured in urine. These data suggest only a small role of hydromorphone in eliciting abuserelated responses to oral hydrocodone. The genetic polymorphism of the drug-metabolizing enzyme CYP2D6 results in phenotypic differences in the pharmacokinetics of many drugs One drug for which there is evidence of phenotypic differences in response is codeine, which is O-demethylated by CYP2D6 to form morphine Hydrocodone differs structurally from codeine in that the C6-position is occupied by a keto-group, and thus the drug does not undergo the extensive conjugation (Ͼ60%) that codeine undergoe

Ezrin interacts with the SARS coronavirus spike protein and restrains infection at the entry stage

© 2012 Millet et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Background: Entry of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and its envelope fusion with host cell membrane are controlled by a series of complex molecular mechanisms, largely dependent on the viral envelope glycoprotein Spike (S). There are still many unknowns on the implication of cellular factors that regulate the entry process. Methodology/Principal Findings: We performed a yeast two-hybrid screen using as bait the carboxy-terminal endodomain of S, which faces the cytosol during and after opening of the fusion pore at early stages of the virus life cycle. Here we show that the ezrin membrane-actin linker interacts with S endodomain through the F1 lobe of its FERM domain and that both the eight carboxy-terminal amino-acids and a membrane-proximal cysteine cluster of S endodomain are important for this interaction in vitro. Interestingly, we found that ezrin is present at the site of entry of S-pseudotyped lentiviral particles in Vero E6 cells. Targeting ezrin function by small interfering RNA increased S-mediated entry of pseudotyped particles in epithelial cells. Furthermore, deletion of the eight carboxy-terminal amino acids of S enhanced S-pseudotyped particles infection. Expression of the ezrin dominant negative FERM domain enhanced cell susceptibility to infection by SARS-CoV and S pseudotyped particles and potentiated S-dependent membrane fusion. Conclusions/Significance: Ezrin interacts with SARS-CoV S endodomain and limits virus entry and fusion. Our data present a novel mechanism involving a cellular factor in the regulation of S-dependent early events of infection.This work was supported by the Research Grant Council of Hong Kong (RGC#760208)and the RESPARI project of the International Network of Pasteur Institutes