Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of targeted educational interventions on appropriateness of stress ulcer prophylaxis in critically ill adults

Background: Acid suppression therapy (AST) is routinely used in critically ill patients to prevent stress-related mucosal bleeding (SRMB). Objective: Our objective was to determine the impact of a structured educational intervention on AST used for prevention of SRMB on appropriateness of AST. Methods: A single-center, retrospective, cohort study of appropriate use of AST in critically ill patients admitted to the medical intensive care unit (ICU) at an academic medical center between January to June of 2014 (no intervention) and January to June of 2015 (intervention) was conducted. The percentage of patients prescribed inappropriate AST, inappropriate AST at ICU transfer and hospital discharge, doses of inappropriate AST, and adverse effects associated with AST use were compared between periods using chi-square tests. Results: Patients in the intervention group (n=118) were 5 years older than patients in the no intervention group (n=101). AST was inappropriately initiated more frequently in the no intervention group (23% vs. 11%, p=0.012). Continuation of inappropriate AST at ICU transfer and hospital discharge was similar between groups (60% vs. 53%, p=0.277 and 18% vs. 14%, p=0.368, respectively). Conclusion: Patients had appropriate AST initiated and inappropriate AST withheld more frequently when formal education was provided. This low-cost intervention strategy can be implemented easily at institutions where pharmacists interact with physicians on rounding services and should be evaluated in institutions where interactions between pharmacists and physicians occur more frequently in non-rounding situations.
Equine Infectious Anemia Virus Entry Occurs through Clathrin-Mediated Endocytosis

ABSTRACT Entry of wild-type lentivirus equine infectious anemia virus (EIAV) into cells requires a low-pH step. This low-pH constraint implicates endocytosis in EIAV entry. To identify the endocytic pathway involved in EIAV entry, we examined the entry requirements for EIAV into two different cells: equine dermal (ED) cells and primary equine endothelial cells. We investigated the entry mechanism of several strains of EIAV and found that both macrophage-tropic and tissue culture-adapted strains utilize clathrin-coated pits for entry. In contrast, a superinfecting strain of EIAV, EIAVvMA-1c, utilizes two mechanisms of entry. In cells such as ED cells that EIAVvMA-1c is able to superinfect, viral entry is pH independent and appears to be mediated by plasma membrane fusion, whereas in cells where no detectable superinfection occurs, EIAVvMA-1c entry that is low-pH dependent occurs through clathrin-coated pits in a manner similar to wild-type virus. Regardless of the mechanism of entry being utilized, the internalization kinetics of EIAV is rapid with 50% of cell-associated virions internalizing within 60 to 90 min. Cathepsin inhibitors did not prevent EIAV entry, suggesting that the low-pH step required by wild-type EIAV is not required to activate cellular cathepsins.
Leadership spirituality in Banking Professionals and its impact on Organizational Commitment

Spirituality has been found as the key indicator in enhancing and increasing multiple levels of organizational success and accomplishment. The present study explores the relationship between the spirituality and Job satisfaction of 121 branch managers, area managers and regional managers of various private and public sector banks of Pakistan. For the purpose of study an independent spirituality assessment scale (iSAS) developed by Rojas (2002) was used. Spirituality is found quite significant in predicting the affective commitment among the employees. Managerial implications, Limitations and future guidelines have also been provided for future research.
Sphero as an interactive tool in computer games for people with ID

This paper presents an experiment in which people with intellectual disabilities played 3 apps with different levels and purposes on an iPad Air. As part of the game they were required to interact with Sphero and the activities they tried to perform required motor skills, attention and memory. We have selected two groups of participants according to their level of support needs. The results show the highest level of satisfaction in both groups in the game involving Sphero. In terms of effectiveness of activities for this profile of participant as interventions the results reveal that driving and care activities do show an adequate response, though with worse results related to memory.
The B-Oligomer of Pertussis Toxin Deactivates Cc Chemokine Receptor 5 and Blocks Entry of M-Tropic HIV-1 Strains

Infection of target cells by HIV-1 requires initial binding interactions between the viral envelope glycoprotein gp120, the cell surface protein CD4, and one of the members of the seven-transmembrane G protein–coupled chemokine receptor family. Most primary isolates (R5 strains) use chemokine receptor CCR5, but some primary syncytium-inducing, as well as T cell line–adapted, strains (X4 strains) use the CXCR4 receptor. Signaling from both CCR5 and CXCR4 is mediated by pertussis toxin (PTX)-sensitive Gi proteins and is not required for HIV-1 entry. Here, we show that the PTX holotoxin as well as its binding subunit, B-oligomer, which lacks Gi-inhibitory activity, blocked entry of R5 but not X4 strains into primary T lymphocytes. Interestingly, B-oligomer inhibited virus production by peripheral blood mononuclear cell cultures infected with either R5 or X4 strains, indicating that it can affect HIV-1 replication at both entry and post-entry levels. T cells treated with B-oligomer did not initiate signal transduction in response to macrophage inflammatory protein (MIP)-1β or RANTES (regulated upon activation, normal T cell expressed and secreted); however, cell surface expression of CCR5 and binding of MIP-1β or HIV-1 to such cells were not impaired. The inhibitory effect of B-oligomer on signaling from CCR5 and on entry of R5 HIV-1 strains was reversed by protein kinase C (PKC) inhibitors, indicating that B-oligomer activity is mediated by signaling events that involve PKC. B-oligomer also blocked cocapping of CCR5 and CD4 induced by R5 HIV-1 in primary T cells, but did not affect cocapping of CXCR4 and CD4 after inoculation of the cultures with X4 HIV-1. These results suggest that the B-oligomer of PTX cross-deactivates CCR5 to impair its function as a coreceptor for HIV-1.
Changes in the polar vortex: Effects on Antarctic total ozone observations at various stations

October mean total column ozone data from four Antarctic stations form the basis for understanding the evolution of the ozone hole since 1960. While these stations show similar emergence of the ozone hole from 1960 to 1980, the records are divergent in the last two decades. The effects of long‐term changes in vortex shape and location are considered by gridding the measurements by equivalent latitude. A clear eastward shift of the mean position of the vortex in October with time is revealed, which changes the fraction of ozone measurements taken inside/outside the vortex for stations in the vortex collar region. After including only those measurements made inside the vortex, ozone behavior in the last two decades at the four stations is very similar. This suggests that dynamical influence must be considered when interpreting and intercomparing ozone measurements from Antarctic stations for detecting ozone recovery and ozone‐related changes in Antarctic climate.
Direct visualization of ageing in colloidal glasses

We use confocal microscopy to directly visualize the dynamics of ageing colloidal glasses. We prepare a colloidal suspension at high density, a simple model system that shares many properties with other glasses, and initiate experiments by stirring the sample. We follow the motion of several thousand colloidal particles after the stirring and observe that their motion significantly slows as the sample ages. The ageing is both spatially and temporally heterogeneous. Furthermore, while the characteristic relaxation timescale grows with the age of the sample, nontrivial particle motions continue to occur on all timescales.
Organization of Mammalian Cytoplasm

ABSTRACT Although the role of macromolecular interactions in cell function has attracted considerable attention, important questions about the organization of cells remain. To help clarify this situation, we used a simple protocol that measures macromolecule release after gentle permeabilization for the examination of the status of endogenous macromolecules. Treatment of Chinese hamster ovary cells with saponin under carefully controlled conditions allowed entry of molecules of at least 800 kDa; however, there were minimal effects on internal cellular architecture and protein synthesis remained at levels comparable to those seen with intact cells. Most importantly, total cellular protein and RNA were released from these cells extremely slowly. The release of actin-binding proteins and a variety of individual cytoplasmic proteins mirrored that of total protein, while marker proteins from subcellular compartments were not released. In contrast, glycolytic enzymes leaked rapidly, indicating that cells contain at least two distinct populations of cytoplasmic proteins. Addition of microfilament-disrupting agents led to rapid and extensive release of cytoplasmic macromolecules and a dramatic reduction in protein synthesis. These observations support the conclusion that mammalian cells behave as highly organized, macromolecular assemblies (dependent on the actin cytoskeleton) in which endogenous macromolecules normally are not free to diffuse over large distances.
Factors Affecting Recovery Time of Pulmonary Function in Hospitalized Patients With Acute Asthma Exacerbations

Purpose Prolonged recovery time of pulmonary function after an asthma exacerbation is a significant burden on asthmatics, and management of these patients needs to be improved. The aim of this study was to evaluate factors associated with a longer recovery time of pulmonary function among asthmatic patients hospitalized due to a severe asthma exacerbation. Methods We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of 89 patients who were admitted for the management of acute asthma exacerbations. The recovery time of pulmonary function was defined as the time from the date each patient initially received treatment for asthma exacerbations to the date the patient reached his or her previous best FEV1% value. We investigated the influence of various clinical and laboratory factors on the recovery time. Results The median recovery time of the patients was 1.7 weeks. Multiple linear regression analysis revealed that using regular inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) before an acute exacerbation of asthma and concurrent with viral infection at admission were associated with the prolonged recovery time of pulmonary function. Conclusions The prolonged recovery time of pulmonary function after a severe asthma exacerbation was not shown to be directly associated with poor adherence to ICS. Therefore the results indicate that an unknown subtype of asthma may be associated with the prolonged recovery of pulmonary function time after an acute exacerbation of asthma despite regular ICS use. Further prospective studies to investigate factors affecting the recovery time of pulmonary function after an asthma exacerbation are warranted.
Content-based photo quality assessment

Automatically assessing photo quality from the perspective of visual aesthetics is of great interest in high-level vision research and has drawn much attention in recent years. In this paper, we propose content-based photo quality assessment using regional and global features. Under this framework, subject areas, which draw the most attentions of human eyes, are first extracted. Then regional features extracted from subject areas and the background regions are combined with global features to assess the photo quality. Since professional photographers may adopt different photographic techniques and may have different aesthetic criteria in mind when taking different types of photos (e.g. landscape versus portrait), we propose to segment regions and extract visual features in different ways according to the categorization of photo content. Therefore we divide the photos into seven categories based on their content and develop a set of new subject area extraction methods and new visual features, which are specially designed for different categories. This argument is supported by extensive experimental comparisons of existing photo quality assessment approaches as well as our new regional and global features over different categories of photos. Our new features significantly outperform the state-of-the-art methods. Another contribution of this work is to construct a large and diversified benchmark database for the research of photo quality assessment. It includes 17, 613 photos with manually labeled ground truth.
Chirality and metamaterials

Electromagnetic metamaterials are artificial media that derive novel properties from periodic structuring on the sub-wavelength scale. Here, the consequences of two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) chirality for the electromagnetic properties of metamaterials are investigated. The focus of this work is on new ways of achieving circular conversion dichroism, optical activity and negative refraction in highly symmetric structures. In the theoretical part of this work, fundamental constraints on polarization effects in planar metamaterials are established based on symmetry and energy conservation considerations. Through the experimental study of 2D chirality, I have first observed circular conversion dichroism (i) in non-chiral structures and (ii) due to 2D-chiral arrangement of non-chiral elements. (iii) I have first seen enantiomerically sensitive reflection, yielding the experimental demonstration that circular conversion dichroism results in simultaneous directional asymmetries in transmission, reflection and absorption. In particular, a tunable transmission asymmetry of up to 21 % has been observed when extrinsic 2D chirality was associated with oblique incidence onto a non-chiral meandering wire pattern. At normal incidence circular conversion dichroism was seen for non-chiral split ring elements assembled into a 2D-chiral double-periodic array. Simultaneous directional and enantiomeric asymmetries in transmission (16 %), reflection (16 %) and absorption (32 %) were observed for normal incidence onto a double-periodic array of 2D-chiral split rings. Regarding 3D chirality, I have (i) realized the first material with a negative refractive index due to chirality and (ii) observed optical activity in the first stereometamaterial. (iii) I have discovered that optical activity can be observed in non-chiral metamaterials and (iv) I have demonstrated that optical activity in such structures is tunable and occurs in transmission and reflection. In particular polarization rotation reaching 81° and circular dichroism of up to 26 dB have been observed for non-chiral arrays of split rings, when an extrinsically 3D-chiral experimental arrangement was formed by metamaterial and direction of incidence. Based on a previously-studied meta-molecule consisting of mutually twisted metal patterns in parallel planes, microwave and photonic stereometamaterials with optical activity have been realized in this thesis and such a structure has been shown to have a negative refractive index of -1.7 for right-handed circularly polarized microwaves.
Addressing the Issue of Chronic, Inappropriate Benzodiazepine Use: How Can Pharmacists Play a Role?

Prescribing guidelines do not recommend the long-term use of benzodiazepines since their effectiveness with chronic use is out-weighed by risks including dependence, memory and cognitive impairment, hip fractures and traffic accidents. Despite these guidelines, historical data points to an increasing proportion of inappropriate, repeat prescribing of benzodiazepines in Ireland and elsewhere, with up to 33% of patients who use these drugs doing so long-term. The typical long-term benzodiazepine user is an older, socio-economically disadvantaged patient who has been prescribed these medicines by their general practitioner (GP) and dispensed them by their community pharmacist. Misuse of benzodiazepines in nursing homes and psychiatric institutions is also of concern, with one Irish study indicating that almost half of all admissions to a psychiatric hospital were prescribed these drugs, usually despite a lack of clear clinical need. Discontinuation of benzodiazepines has proven to be of benefit, as it is followed by improvements in cognitive and psychomotor function, particularly in elderly patients. It is obvious that an inter-professional effort, focusing on the primary care setting, is required to address benzodiazepine misuse and to ensure appropriate pharmaceutical care. Pharmacists must be an integral part of this inter-professional effort, not least because they are uniquely positioned as the health professional with most frequent patient contact. There is already some supporting evidence that pharmacists’ involvement in interventions to reduce benzodiazepine use can have positive effects on patient outcomes. Here, this evidence is reviewed and the potential for pharmacists to play an expanded role in ensuring the appropriate use of benzodiazepines is discussed.
Involvement of an ATP-Dependent Protease, PA0779/AsrA, in Inducing Heat Shock in Response to Tobramycin in Pseudomonas aeruginosa

ABSTRACT The adaptive resistance of Pseudomonas aeruginosa to aminoglycosides is known to occur during chronic lung infections in cystic fibrosis patients in response to nonlethal concentrations of aminoglycosides. Not only is it difficult to achieve high levels of drug throughout the dehydrated mucus in the lung, but also steep oxygen gradients exist across the mucus layer, further reducing the bactericidal activity of aminoglycosides. In this study, microarray analysis was utilized to examine the gene responses of P. aeruginosa to lethal, inhibitory, and subinhibitory concentrations of tobramycin under aerobic and anaerobic conditions. While prolonged exposure to subinhibitory concentrations of tobramycin caused increased levels of expression predominantly of the efflux pump genes mexXY, the greatest increases in gene expression levels in response to lethal concentrations of tobramycin involved a number of heat shock genes and the PA0779 gene (renamed here asrA), encoding an alternate Lon protease. Microarray analysis of an asrA::luxCDABE transposon mutant revealed that the induction of heat shock genes in response to tobramycin in this mutant was significantly decreased compared to that in the parent strain. The level of expression of asrA was induced from an arabinose-inducible promoter to 35-fold greater than wild-type expression levels in the absence of tobramycin, and this overexpression alone caused an increased expression of the heat shock genes, as determined by quantitative PCR (qPCR). This overexpression of asrA conferred short-term protection against lethal levels (4 μg/ml) of tobramycin but did not affect the tobramycin MIC. The RpoH heat shock sigma factor was found to be involved in the regulation of asrA in response to both heat shock and tobramycin at the posttranscriptional level. The results of this work suggest that the tobramycin concentration has a significant impact on the gene expression of P. aeruginosa, with lethal concentrations resulting in immediate adaptations conferring short-term protection, such as the induction of the heat shock response, and with subinhibitory concentrations leading to more sustainable long-term protection mechanisms, such as increased efflux.
Ste20‐like kinase (SLK), a regulatory kinase for polo‐like kinase (Plk) during the G2/M transition in somatic cells

Activation of the cyclin‐dependent kinase cdc2‐cyclin B1 at the G2/M transition of the cell cycle requires dephosphorylation of threonine‐14 and tyrosine‐15 in cdc2, which in higher eukaryotes is brought about by the Cdc25C phosphatase. In Xenopus, there is evidence that a kinase cascade comprised of xPlkk1 and Plx1, the Xenopus polo‐like kinase 1, plays a key role in the activation of Cdc25C during oocyte maturation. In the mammalian somatic cell cycle, a polo‐like kinase homologue (Plk1) also functions during mitosis, but a kinase upstream of Plk is still unknown.
Optimal detection theory applied to monopulse antennas

Estimation of the direction of arrival of a signal source by means of a monopulse antenna is one of the oldest and most widely used high resolution techniques. Although the statistical performance of this estimation technique has been extensively investigated, it has never been analyzed from the viewpoint of a two-sensor system. This deficiency is responsible for the form of the common solution (detector/estimator) which restricts the accessible performance. Applying the optimal detection theory to this problem, when a Raleigh-type signal source is present, shows that changing the detector is necessary to optimize the overall performance. The analytical performance of the new solution has been established , thus complementing the existing characterization of the common solution.
T-kininogen gene expression is induced during aging

We have constructed a cDNA library from senescent (24-month-old) rat liver mRNA and, by differential screening, have selected clones corresponding to mRNA species with increased abundance in aging rats. Direct sequencing of the inserts indicated that most of the clones (9 of 10) contained sequences coding for T-kininogen, also called major acute-phase protein, cysteine protease inhibitor, or thiostatin. Nuclear elongation experiments showed that the increase in mRNA concentration was controlled at the transcriptional level. RNase mapping and S1 analysis indicated that the age-dependent induction operated preferentially at one of the three transcriptional start sites of the gene(s). The acute-phase reaction (inflammation) is known to also induce these genes at the level of transcription; however, two of the three start sites are induced by inflammation. Transcription from one of these sites was induced by both phenomena, aging and inflammation.