Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effect of graded hypertonic intracarotid infusions on drug delivery to experimental RG‐2 gliomas

The RG-2 brain tumor model was used to determine whether unidirectional transport of alpha-aminoisobutyric acid (AIB) into brain and tumor tissue was increased after an intracarotid infusion of one of six different hypertonic solutions of L-arabinose. Intracarotid infusion of hypertonic solutions that have been reported as subthreshold for normal brain were used to determine whether they would selectively increase blood-to-tissue transport in brain tumors. No increase in the transport rate constant (K) across RG-2 tumor capillaries resulted from the infusion of 0.8- to 1.4-osm solutions. Infusions of 1.6- and 1.8-osm solutions were also performed, and blood-to-tissue transport was measured under conditions that produce maximum blood-brain-barrier disruption; however, no increase in the transport rate across tumor capillaries was measured. In brain regions surrounding the tumor, there was a trend toward increasing K values associated with increasing osmolality of the infusate, but the magnitude of this increase was small. There was a progressive increase in the K of tumor-free brain regions. This increase correlated with increasing osmolality of the infusate (0.8 to 1.8 osm). We conclude that intracarotid infusion of hypertonic solutions of L-arabinose does not increase the rate of delivery of watersoluble drugs to experimental RG-2 brain tumors. In this situation, the use of hypertonic infusions may be counterproductive and result in a greater delivery to and exposure of surrounding and normal brain tissue to levels of chemotherapeutic drugs which are potentially neurotoxic.
THE LANGUAGE OF CUTTING: INITIAL REFLECTIONS ON A STUDY OF THE EXPERIENCES OF SELF-INJURY IN A GROUP OF WOMEN AND NURSES

Non-suicidal self-injury is a distressing act, which can arouse dissent and negative comment in service users and providers. The purpose of the study was to describe how women who self-injure and nurses assign meaning to shared discourses about self-injury. The wider study is framed in a grounded theory methodology. Fourteen qualified nurses and 11 women who have self-injured were interviewed using unstructured and initially open-ended interviews, lasting 45–90 minutes. Initially a thematic analysis was used to code data. In this report, three of the early themes are reported with some comparative interpretations. Nurses lack understanding of the meanings of cutting behaviour. A common language is needed if nurses are to be effective in helping women who have self-injured to express distress in less damaging ways.
Cross-cultural decoding of positive and negative non-linguistic emotion vocalizations

Which emotions are associated with universally recognized non-verbal signals? We address this issue by examining how reliably non-linguistic vocalizations (affect bursts) can convey emotions across cultures. Actors from India, Kenya, Singapore, and USA were instructed to produce vocalizations that would convey nine positive and nine negative emotions to listeners. The vocalizations were judged by Swedish listeners using a within-valence forced-choice procedure, where positive and negative emotions were judged in separate experiments. Results showed that listeners could recognize a wide range of positive and negative emotions with accuracy above chance. For positive emotions, we observed the highest recognition rates for relief, followed by lust, interest, serenity and positive surprise, with affection and pride receiving the lowest recognition rates. Anger, disgust, fear, sadness, and negative surprise received the highest recognition rates for negative emotions, with the lowest rates observed for guilt and shame. By way of summary, results showed that the voice can reveal both basic emotions and several positive emotions other than happiness across cultures, but self-conscious emotions such as guilt, pride, and shame seem not to be well recognized from non-linguistic vocalizations.
Thermoresponsive Polymers for Biomedical Applications

Thermoresponsive polymers are a class of “smart” materials that have the ability to respond to a change in temperature; a property that makes them useful materials in a wide range of applications and consequently attracts much scientific interest. This review focuses mainly on the studies published over the last 10 years on the synthesis and use of thermoresponsive polymers for biomedical applications including drug delivery, tissue engineering and gene delivery. A summary of the main applications is given following the different studies on thermoresponsive polymers which are categorized based on their 3-dimensional structure; hydrogels, interpenetrating networks, micelles, crosslinked micelles, polymersomes, films and particles.
Cardiac Performance during Acute Hemmorrhagic Shock in Pentobarbital-Anesthetized Hamsters using Left Ventricular Pressure-Volume Measurement

Hemorrhagic shock results from massive blood loss, leading to hypotension, ischemia, heart failure and multiorgan dysfunction. The analysis of cardiac function in vivo is complex and even more challenging during hemorrhagic shock, especially in small animals. Cardiac function measurements require animals to be under anesthesia. Sodium pentobarbital is a common general anesthetic used for cardiovascular physiological studies in experimental animals. This study was designed to evaluate cardiac function during an acute hemorrhagic shock in pentobarbital-anesthetized hamsters. Animals were subjected to a hemorrhage of 40% of blood volume. Cardiac performance was evaluated using a miniaturized pressure-volume conductance catheter. One group of animals was under anesthetic without hemorrhage as a control group and other group was under anesthetic with hemorrhagic shock. We found that dP/dtmax was 77% and 68% of baseline in control and hemorrhagic shock groups, respectively. An estimated left ventricular end-systolic elastance in a hemorrhagic shock group was higher compared with a control group. Cardiac output, stroke volume and stroke work profoundly decreased after hemorrhage. Animals anesthetized with sodium pentobarbital evidently had depressive systolic cardiac function. The depression was more profound in systolic and diastolic cardiac function during hemorrhagic shock.
Robotic neuro-emdoscope with concentric tube augmentation

Surgical robots are gaining favor in part due to their capacity to reach remote locations within the body. Continuum robots are especially well suited for accessing deep spaces such as cerebral ventricles within the brain. Due to the entry point constraints and complicated structure, current techniques do not allow surgeons to access the full volume of the ventricles. The ability to access the ventricles with a dexterous robot would have significant clinical implications. This paper presents a concentric tube manipulator mated to a robotically controlled flexible endoscope. The device adds three degrees of freedom to the standard neuroendoscope and roboticizes the entire package allowing the operator to conveniently manipulate the device. To demonstrate the improved functionality, we use an in-silica virtual model as well as an ex-vivo anatomic model of a patient with a treatable form of hydrocephalus. In these experiments we demonstrate that the augmented and roboticized endoscope can efficiently reach critical regions that a manual scope cannot.
Baseline Visual Field Findings in the Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension Treatment Trial ( IIHTT )

Department of Ophthalmology and Vision Science, University of California-Davis, Sacramento, California, United States Department of Neurology and Neurological Surgery, University of California-Davis, Sacramento, California, United States Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa, United States Department of Neurology and Ophthalmology, College of Medicine, University of Iowa, Iowa, United States
After vascular injury, heme oxygenase‐1/carbon monoxide enhances re‐endothelialization via promoting mobilization of circulating endothelial progenitor cells

Summary. Backgound: Heme oxygenase‐1 (HO‐1), a heme degradation enzyme with multiple vasoprotective functions, is systemically induced in pathophysiological states associated with oxidative stress. Objectives: To evaluate the impact of systemic HO‐1 expression on circulating endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) and re‐endothelialization after vascular injury in an animal model. Methods: Mice received an intravenous (i.v.) injection of the adenovirus‐bearing HO‐1 gene (Adv‐HO‐1). The serum levels of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and stromal cell‐derived factor‐1 (SDF‐1) were determined by ELISA and gene expression examined by quantitative real‐time PCR. Circulating EPCs were characterized by flow cytometry and in vitro culture. EPC recruitment and re‐endothelialization in injured arteries were assessed in mice receiving GFP+‐bone marrow transplantation and guide wire‐induced carotid injury. The effect of carbon monoxide (CO), a byproduct from heme degradation by HO‐1, was assessed by exposing mice to 250 p.p.m. CO for 2 h day−1. Results: Systemic HO‐1 induction led to elevated serum levels of VEGF and SDF‐1 and an increase in circulating EPCs. The re‐endothelialization of denuded vessels was accelerated in mice with systemic HO‐1 overexpression. A further experiment demonstrated that both EPC mobilization and re‐endothelialization were significantly attenuated in mice with HO‐1 deficiency. The increase in EPC mobilization and enhanced re‐endothelialization was also observed in mice exposed to CO prior to carotid injury. The CO‐mediated effect was associated with an increase in circulating SDF‐1 but not VEGF. Conclusion: These findings support a vital role of HO‐1 and its reaction byproduct, CO, in vascular repair through enhancing EPC mobilization.
An efficient ADMM algorithm for multidimensional anisotropic total variation regularization problems

Total variation (TV) regularization has important applications in signal processing including image denoising, image deblurring, and image reconstruction. A significant challenge in the practical use of TV regularization lies in the nondifferentiable convex optimization, which is difficult to solve especially for large-scale problems. In this paper, we propose an efficient alternating augmented Lagrangian method (ADMM) to solve total variation regularization problems. The proposed algorithm is applicable for tensors, thus it can solve multidimensional total variation regularization problems. One appealing feature of the proposed algorithm is that it does not need to solve a linear system of equations, which is often the most expensive part in previous ADMM-based methods. In addition, each step of the proposed algorithm involves a set of independent and smaller problems, which can be solved in parallel. Thus, the proposed algorithm scales to large size problems. Furthermore, the global convergence of the proposed algorithm is guaranteed, and the time complexity of the proposed algorithm is O(dN/ε) on a d-mode tensor with N entries for achieving an ε-optimal solution. Extensive experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed algorithm in comparison with current state-of-the-art methods.
Two Retinotopic Visual Areas in Human Lateral Occipital Cortex

We describe two visual field maps, lateral occipital areas 1 (LO1) and 2 (LO2), in the human lateral occipital cortex between the dorsal part of visual area V3 and visual area V5/MT+. Each map contained a topographic representation of the contralateral visual hemifield. The eccentricity representations were shared with V1/V2/V3. The polar angle representation in LO1 extended from the lower vertical meridian (at the boundary with dorsal V3) through the horizontal to the upper vertical meridian (at the boundary with LO2). The polar angle representation in LO2 was the mirror-reversal of that in LO1. LO1 and LO2 overlapped with the posterior part of the object-selective lateral occipital complex and the kinetic occipital region (KO). The retinotopy and functional properties of LO1 and LO2 suggest that they correspond to two new human visual areas, which lack exact homologues in macaque visual cortex. The topography, stimulus selectivity, and anatomical location of LO1 and LO2 indicate that they integrate shape information from multiple visual submodalities in retinotopic coordinates.
Compliance of German pediatric patients with oral antibiotic therapy: results of a nationwide survey.

BACKGROUND Noncompliance with a prescribed therapy is a common problem in ambulatory pediatrics. OBJECTIVE To establish a nationwide status quo of compliance of German ambulatory pediatric patients with oral antibiotics prescribed for various bacterial infections. PATIENTS AND METHODS In this study, organized and financed by the German Society for Pediatric Infectious Diseases, 42 pediatricians in private practice who were selected to represent the 3 main regions of Germany and residence in large cities or small towns, respectively, enrolled consecutive patients who had bacterial infections that required therapy with oral antibiotics. Choice of agent and duration of treatment were left to the study physicians. Compliance was measured by a standardized telephone interview on the penultimate day and a urine bioassay for antibacterial activity on the last day of the planned treatment period. Parents did not know the true purpose of the study. RESULTS Five hundred eight-four patients were fully evaluable. The most frequent diagnoses included tonsillopharyngitis (n = 231), otitis media (n = 170) and lower respiratory tract infections (n = 114). Most frequently prescribed antibiotics included amoxicillin (n = 102), potassium penicillin V (n = 81) and clarithromycin (n = 67). Overall compliance (positive urine test) on the last day of therapy was 69.5% (406 of 584 patients). Compliance was not significantly influenced by the region of residence or the underlying bacterial infection. It was significantly associated with the antibiotic used (macrolides, 89.0%; penicillins, 62.2%; cephalosporins, 66.4%; P = 0.0001 for macrolides vs. the others). Best compliance was found with clarithromycin (94.0%) and erythromycin estolate (89.8%). Compliance was also significantly better in patients > or =6 years old (77.7%; P = 0.016); with a treatment duration of < or =7 days (77.6%; P = 0.014); when the drug package contained a dose-taking reminder (79.7%; P = 0.003); and when the pediatrician's behavior toward the patient was assessed by the parents as "very sympathetic" or "sympathetic" (72.6%; P = 0.017). Subjecting all variables to logistic regression analysis, we found 3 variables to be significant predictors of treatment compliance: choice of antibiotic (P = 0.0001); patient age (P = 0.0008); and residence in town or city (P = 0.03). CONCLUSIONS A noncompliance rate of >30% is unsatisfactory. Whereas some variables significantly associated with compliance cannot be influenced (patient age; place of residence in town or city), others are amenable to modifications. These include the physician-patient interaction and the choice of antibiotic. Agents should be preferred that are well-accepted by patients, that enable short-term therapy with few daily doses and with a package that contains a dose-taking reminder.
Bumble-bees learn the value of social cues through experience

Natural selection should lead animals to use social cues (SC) when they are useful, and disregard them when they are not. Theoretical investigation predicts that individuals should thus employ social learning ‘strategies’, but how might such context specificity be achieved on a proximate level? Operant conditioning, whereby the use of SC is reinforced through rewarding results, provides a potential mechanism. We investigate the role of reinforcement in joining behaviour in bumble-bees, Bombus terrestris. When bees visit unfamiliar flower species, they prefer to probe inflorescences where others are also foraging, and here we show that such behaviour is promoted through experience when conspecific presence reliably predicts reward. Our findings highlight a straightforward, but rarely discussed, mechanism by which animals can be selective about when to use SC.
The Barriers of Access to Selective Universities in Russia

This paper examines the characteristics of students admitted to Russian universities with different levels of selectivity. First, we argue that students differ not only by the results of the Unified State Exam (USE), the university entrance exam, but by family and school characteristics, and by educational strategies. Next, it is shown that the probability of being admitted to the most selective HEIs is determined not only by the USE scores, but by characteristics that are not directly related to the applicants’ abilities, such as class specialisation in secondary schools, and high school location. Moreover, we have found that income has an indirect impact on the admission results: a higher level of income increases the probability of being admitted to highly selective universities through the level of investment in pre-entry coaching and the regional differences in wages. On the other hand, regional differences in costs of living decrease the opportunities of studying in selective universities. Hence, schooling and financial barriers without alternative student support can limit the participation of less affluent students in selective universities.
Exploring potentialities for cosmopolitan learning in Swedish teacher education

This study aimed to explore student teachers’ experiences of learning in teacher education, with a focus on how students describe their ways of thinking about their own learning in relation to their future professional role as teachers and how these descriptions relate to emerging cosmopolitan visions for student learning in teacher education. Data were collected through qualitative interviews with a small sample of student teachers at two Swedish universities. Thirty student teachers writing their final exam papers were invited to participate in an interview. Of these, 14 volunteered for audio-recorded, individual interviews exploring the students’ experiences of studying and learning. The analysis drew on a conceptual framework developed in research on students’ approaches to studying and learning and focused on how students described their experiences of learning in the course of studying, with an emphasis on the ways in which students reflected on their own emergent understandings of knowledge that they believe to be central to the process of becoming a professional teacher. These reflective accounts were subsequently analysed with a focus on the ways in which they connect to current philosophical ideas of cosmopolitan learning in teacher education. While the student teachers did not explicitly link their own understandings of what is involved in becoming a teacher to any cosmopolitan views raised in their teacher education, their ways of thinking about their own emergent professional understanding of teaching revealed a certain reflexive potential that can be linked to ideas of cosmopolitan learning in teacher education. This study contributes to educational research by linking an empirically derived conceptualisation of student learning in higher education to broader philosophical visions of higher education specifically addressing the challenges that teacher education faces in the light of the globalisation of society as a whole.
A tale of three CDNs: An active measurement study of Hulu and its CDNs

We study the Hulu online video service via active measurements. It is known that Hulu utilizes multiple CDNs to serve users' video requests. The focus of this study is on how Hulu selects CDNs and how each CDN allocates resources (i.e., servers) to serve user requests. Based on our analysis of measurement data, we find that Hulu frequently changes preferred CDNs for users. However, once a CDN is selected, Hulu clients try to stay with the same CDN during the entire length of the movie even when performance of that CDN degrades. While the preferred CDN selection is not fixed, we observe that Hulu attempts to divide video requests among CDNs to attain a fixed target ratio. In terms of CDNs, we find that different CDNs employ different amounts of resources (servers) to serve Hulu content.
The influence of race on attitudes about college athletics

Abstract The questions of whether college student-athletes should be paid and/or allowed to unionize have generated a wide-ranging national debate. Public opinion on these issues is starkly divided along racial lines, with African-Americans dramatically more supportive than non-African-Americans. We posit that the race gap stems from fundamentally distinct mindsets. African-Americans view pay for play and unionization as mechanisms to enhance educational experiences and hence as a form of affirmative action. Non-African-Americans, in contrast, focus on the extent to which they enjoy the consumption value of college athletics. We present results from a nationally representative survey experiment that supports our expectations. We also find that non-African-Americans can be swayed to employ a more race-based lens on these issues, although this re-framing does not diminish the attitudinal race gap. We conclude with a discussion about race, sports and public opinion.
Influence of sulfur and cadmium on antioxidants, phytochelatins and growth in Indian mustard

Sulphur(S)-deficiency is emerging as a major problem for agricultural productivity. Cadmium (Cd) exerts its phytotoxicity against defence, growth and development. S-rich compounds (glutathione, phytochelatins, etc.) limit the impacts of Cd-toxicity. We investigated what happens during S-deficiency and Cd exposure (dual stress) in mustard. Major findings were: S-deficiency increases the susceptibility of plants to Cd-generated oxidative damage and modulates the AsA-GSH antioxidant cycle; SOD is not the first line of defence against metal stress and S-rich metabolites play a prime role; S-deprived plants are more prone to Cd and oxidative stress; and great loss is incurred to defence modules and growth under dual stress, restricting the efficiency of phytoremediation.
Why should we even care? Hospice social work practice in a prison setting

Abstract United States prison populations are increasing at an alarming rate and many more offenders are dying in prison. Often, little attention is given to the unique medical, psychological, and spiritual needs of prisoners. As the prison system faces the challenge in delivering health care, two responses emerge: hospice comfort care and compassionate release. This paper examines the challenges faced in providing hospice care within the confines of a prison system and argues for more frequent use of compassionate release. First, the paper presents a brief discussion of offenders as a forgotten class, and the societal or professional inattention, indifference, and hostility toward providing offenders with basic end‐of‐life care. Second, it examines why dying offenders suspect that end‐of‐life care means not having access to health care. Next, the challenges of attending to the needs of dying offenders in a hospice at a prison are presented, and finally, I discuss hospice comfort care versus compassionate.