Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Monitoring intracranial pressure utilizing a novel pattern of brain multiparameters in the treatment of severe traumatic brain injury

The aim of the study was to evaluate the clinical value of multiple brain parameters on monitoring intracranial pressure (ICP) procedures in the therapy of severe traumatic brain injury (sTBI) utilizing mild hypothermia treatment (MHT) alone or a combination strategy with other therapeutic techniques. A total of 62 patients with sTBI (Glasgow Coma Scale score <8) were treated using mild hypothermia alone or mild hypothermia combined with conventional ICP procedures such as dehydration using mannitol, hyperventilation, and decompressive craniectomy. The multiple brain parameters, which included ICP, cerebral perfusion pressure, transcranial Doppler, brain tissue partial pressure of oxygen, and jugular venous oxygen saturation, were detected and analyzed. All of these measures can control the ICP of sTBI patients to a certain extent, but multiparameters associated with brain environment and functions have to be critically monitored simultaneously because some procedures of reducing ICP can cause side effects for long-term recovery in sTBI patients. The result suggested that multimodality monitoring must be performed during the process of mild hypothermia combined with conventional ICP procedures in order to safely target different clinical methods to specific patients who may benefit from an individual therapy.
Effects of Eprosartan on Serum Metabolic Parameters in Patients with Essential Hypertension

The effect of the anti-hypertensive drug eprosartan on metabolic parameters is currently not extensively documented. We evaluated the effect of eprosartan on parameters involved in atherogenesis, oxidative stress and clotting activity. This open-label unblinded intervention study included 40 adult patients with essential hypertension taking eprosartan. Eprosartan significantly reduced by 8% (p<0.001) the systolic and by 13% (p<.001) the diastolic blood pressure, and in-creased by 24% the time needed to produce oxidative by-products (p=0.001), a marker of oxidative stress. In contrast, ep-rosartan did not alter 8-isoprostane (8-epiPGF2a) levels, another marker of oxidative stress. Additionally, eprosartan re-duced by 14% aspartate aminotransferase and by 21% then alanine aminotransferase activity, while it had a neutral effect on the lipid profile and apolipoprotein levels and did not influence glucose homeostasis, creatinine and uric acid levels. Eprosartan did not affect the clotting/fibrinolytic status (estimated by plasminogen activator inhibitor 1, tissue plasmino-gen activator and a2 antiplasmin levels), or the enzymatic activity of the lipoprotein associated phospholipase A2 (Lp-PLA2) and paraoxonase 1 (PON1). In conclusion, eprosartan should be mainly considered as an anti-hypertensive agent with neutral effects on most of the metabolic parameters in hypertensive patients.
The Nordic health registers – an important source when evaluating the safety of antidepressants during pregnancy

Depression during pregnancy occurs frequently and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are often the drug of choice when treating pregnant women. Most published studies found no increased risks of congenital malformations in association with SSRIs, but there are reports of various malformations for SSRIs as a group and for specific SSRIs. To assess potential adverse effects of SSRIs as one group may be questioned because of their dissimilarities and very large datasets are needed when studying specific SSRIs. The national health and population registers in the Nordic countries offer excellent opportunities to assess long term effects of exposure during fetal life. As each of the Nordic countries is small, collaborative studies including information from all the Nordic countries are warranted to fully understand risks associated with exposure to antidepressants in fetal life.
Cardiovascular and autonomic responses to immersion and post immersion exercise in healthy individuals and those with prehypertensive and hypertensive conditions

iii exercise to examine if there were differences in autonomic function, as assessed through HRV measures, following exercise performed on land and exercise performed in water. While not resulting in statistically significant differences, the results supported the concept that water immersion exercise may be effective in eliciting post exercise hypotension. This study also showed that the effects of exercise were still apparent in HRV measures performed 10-15 minutes after the cessation of low intensity exercise, demonstrating that the autonomic nervous system function had not returned to preexercise levels. The third study investigated blood pressure and autonomic responses to immersion, as assessed by HRV measures, in individuals who were normotensive or with prehypertensive/hypertensive conditions. The results showed that blood pressure increased rapidly following immersion in normotensive and prehypertensive/ hypertensive participants, and while not significantly different the increases were greater in the prehypertensive/hypertensive group. The response of the autonomic nervous system to immersion was apparent in both groups; however, there were differences between normotensive and prehypertensive/hypertensive groups for some HRV measures. The results indicated that the responses of the prehypertensive/ hypertensive group, assessed through measures of HRV, were less rapid and of a smaller magnitude than that observed in the normotensive group. This finding has implications in the prescription of immersion exercise in this population. Overall the findings of this research make a significant contribution to the current state of knowledge regarding immersion and water exercise in both normotensive and prehypertensive/hypertensive adults. While further research in this area remains to be done, water exercise, as an exercise mode with considerable health benefits for individuals who are either normotensive or with prehypertensive/hypertensive conditions, holds considerable promise.
Smoking among Secondary School Students in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia

This study was done to determine the prevalence of smoking and factors influencing cigarette smoking among secondary school students in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. This is a cross-sectional school survey conducted on 4500 adolescent students based on a structured questionnaire. Data was collected using the supervised self administered questionnaire the Youth Risk Behaviour Surveillance in the Malaysian National Language Bahasa Malaysia. The prevalence of smoking among the students was 14.0%. About a third of the students (37.8%) started smoking at 13 to 14 years of age. The prevalence of smoking among the male students was higher (26.6%) compared to the female students (3.1 %). Adolescent smoking was associated with (1) sociodemographic factors (age, ethnicity, rural/urban status); (2) environmental factors (parental smoking, staying with parents); (3) behavioural factors (playing truant and risk-taking behaviours such as physical fighting, drug use, alcohol use, sexual activity, lack of seatbelt use, riding with a drunk driver); (4) lifestyle behaviours (being on diet and lack of exercise); (5) personal factors (feeling sad and suicidal behaviours). In conclusion, smoking is a major problem among Malaysian adolescents. Certain groups of adolescents tend to be at higher risk of smoking. This problem should be curbed early by targeting these groups of high risk adolescents. Asia Pac J Public Health 2005; 17(2): 130-136.
[Psychopathology, quality of life and social functioning in dialysis treatment and kidney transplantation patients].

OBJECTIVES Psychiatric evaluation of organ transplant candidates is now routinely proposed also in Italy. This study purposed to assess the psychological status in patients on hemo-dialysis, peritoneal dialysis and renal transplantation; moreover other purpose is to investigate the possible differences among the three groups. MATERIALS AND METHODS 157 subjects were consecutively enrolled, to the service of U.O. Trapianti d'Organo of San Salvatore Hospital in L'Aquila (Italy), between October 2007 and August 2009; 127 were in dialysis (80.9%), of which 101 were in hemodialysis (64.3%) (HD group) and 26 in peritoneal dialysis (16.6%) (PD group) and 30 (19.1%) Kidney transplant (PT group). The subjects were examined with clinical evaluation and through the following psychometric instruments: HAM-D, HAM-A, Jalowiec Coping Scale, STAI-Y1, STAI-Y2, DISS, SF-36. RESULTS 30% out of our sample showed the presence of some psychopathological signs and symptoms, especially depression and anxiety. At HAM-D there were no differences between HD group (6.73; DS + 5.58) and PD group (5.27, DS + 5.63); the mean value at HAM-D in PT group was 4.4 (DS + 3.16) (p < 0.05). At HAM-A there were no differences between three groups. The HD group showed an higher value at STAI-Y1 (38.61; DS + 10.64) than PD (34.95; DS + 6.75) and PT (33.89; DS + 6.14) groups (p < 0.05). The quality of life (physical role, general health, vitality and role emotional) was lower in HD and PD groups, higher in group PT. The HD e PD groups showed a higher level of disability than PT group (p < 0.05). All subjects used "positive: coping styles. CONCLUSIONS We consider essential to investigate the issues observed in this study, with the need to integrate psychosocial and functional needs assessment within a course of diagnosis and treatment for people who are undergoing dialysis procedures, or after waiting for a transplantation. Dialysis affects the quality of life, leading to limitations in activities and high level of disability. The PT group showed better quality of life and less impairment in functioning in the investigated areas. If the impact of psychological and/or psychiatric aid remains difficult to appraise, these results emphasize the impact of psychological status and the appropriateness of psychosocial support intervention on patients facing the transplant process or in dialysis treatments.
Deletion of M2 Gene Open Reading Frames 1 and 2 of Human Metapneumovirus: Effects on RNA Synthesis, Attenuation, and Immunogenicity

ABSTRACT The M2 gene of human metapneumovirus (HMPV) contains two overlapping open reading frames (ORFs), M2-1 and M2-2. The expression of separate M2-1 and M2-2 proteins from these ORFs was confirmed, and recombinant HMPVs were recovered in which expression of M2-1 and M2-2 was ablated individually or together [rΔM2-1, rΔM2-2, and rΔM2(1+2)]. Each M2 mutant virus directed efficient multicycle growth in Vero cells. The ability to recover HMPV lacking M2-1 contrasts with human respiratory syncytial virus, for which M2-1 is an essential transcription factor. Expression of the downstream HMPV M2-2 ORF was not reduced when translation of the upstream M2-1 ORF was silenced, indicating that it is initiated separately. The rΔM2-2 mutants exhibited a two- to fivefold increase in the accumulation of mRNA, normalized to the genome template, suggesting that M2-2 has a role in regulating RNA synthesis. Replication and immunogenicity were tested in hamsters. Animals infected intranasally with rΔM2-1 or rΔM2(1+2) did not have recoverable virus in the lungs or nasal turbinates on days 3 or 5 postinfection and did not develop HMPV-neutralizing serum antibodies or resistance to HMPV challenge. Thus, M2-1 appears to be essential for significant virus replication in vivo. In animals infected with rΔM2-2, virus was recovered from only 1 of 12 animals and only in the nasal turbinates on a single day. However, all of the animals developed a high titer of HMPV-neutralizing serum antibodies and were highly protected against challenge with wild-type HMPV. The HMPV rΔM2-2 virus is a promising and highly attenuated HMPV vaccine candidate.
Clinical Characteristics, Management, and Outcomes of Japanese Patients Hospitalized for Heart Failure With Preserved Ejection Fraction　- A Report From the Japanese Heart Failure Syndrome With Preserved Ejection Fraction (JASPER) Registry.

BACKGROUND Despite the specific characteristics of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) having been demonstrated predominantly from registries in Western countries, important international differences exist in terms of patient characteristics, management and medical infrastructure between Western and Asian countries.Methods and Results:We performed nationwide registration of consecutive Japanese hospitalized HFpEF patients with left ventricular EF ≥50% from 15 sites between November 2012 and March 2015. Follow-up data were obtained up to 2 years post-discharge. A total of 535 patients were registered. The median age was 80 years and 50% were female. The most common comorbid conditions were hypertension (77%) and atrial fibrillation (AF: 62%), but body mass index was relatively low. In-hospital mortality rate was 1.3% and the median length of hospitalization was 16 days. By 2 years post-discharge, 40.8% of patients had all-cause death or HF hospitalization. Approximately one-half of deaths had a cardiac cause. Lower serum albumin on admission was one of the strongest independent determinants of worse clinical outcome. CONCLUSIONS Japanese HFpEF patients were less obese, but had a substantially higher prevalence of AF and lower incidence of subsequent events compared with previous reports. Our findings indicated that specific preventative and therapeutic strategies focusing on AF and nutritional status might need to be considered for Japanese hospitalized patients with HFpEF.
hClock: hierarchical QoS for packet scheduling in a hypervisor

Higher consolidation ratios in virtualized datacenters, SSD based storage arrays and converged IO fabric are mandating the need for more flexible and powerful models for physical network adapter bandwidth allocation. Existing solutions such as fair-queuing mechanisms, traffic-shapers and hierarchical allocation techniques are insufficient in terms of dealing with various use cases for a cloud service provider. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of a hierarchical bandwidth allocation algorithm called hClock. hClock supports three controls in a hierarchical manner: (1) minimum bandwidth guarantee, (2) rate limit and (3) shares (a.k.a weight). Our prototype implementation in VMware ESX server hypervisor, built with several optimizations to minimize CPU overhead and increase parallelism, shows that hClock is able to enforce hierarchical controls for a variety of workloads with diverse traffic patterns at scale.
Tetragonal CH3NH3PbI3 is ferroelectric

Significance Halide perovskite (HaP) semiconductors are revolutionizing the field of photovoltaic (PV) solar energy conversion by showing remarkable performance of solar cells made with HaPs. “Ferroelectrics” is one frequently suggested reason because it may allow the spatial separation of the flow of electrons from where they were generated (holes). Unlike common, electrically insulating, ferroelectric materials, HaPs [especially tetragonal methylammonium lead triiodide (MAPbI3)] are semiconducting, and to find out whether they are ferroelectric requires an approach that is different from what is done customarily. Using such an approach, we prove that tetragonal MAPbI3 is definitely ferroelectric. What still remains to be seen is whether this ferroelectric nature is important for how MAPbI3-based solar cells operate around room temperature. Halide perovskite (HaP) semiconductors are revolutionizing photovoltaic (PV) solar energy conversion by showing remarkable performance of solar cells made with HaPs, especially tetragonal methylammonium lead triiodide (MAPbI3). In particular, the low voltage loss of these cells implies a remarkably low recombination rate of photogenerated carriers. It was suggested that low recombination can be due to the spatial separation of electrons and holes, a possibility if MAPbI3 is a semiconducting ferroelectric, which, however, requires clear experimental evidence. As a first step, we show that, in operando, MAPbI3 (unlike MAPbBr3) is pyroelectric, which implies it can be ferroelectric. The next step, proving it is (not) ferroelectric, is challenging, because of the material’s relatively high electrical conductance (a consequence of an optical band gap suitable for PV conversion) and low stability under high applied bias voltage. This excludes normal measurements of a ferroelectric hysteresis loop, to prove ferroelectricity’s hallmark switchable polarization. By adopting an approach suitable for electrically leaky materials as MAPbI3, we show here ferroelectric hysteresis from well-characterized single crystals at low temperature (still within the tetragonal phase, which is stable at room temperature). By chemical etching, we also can image the structural fingerprint for ferroelectricity, polar domains, periodically stacked along the polar axis of the crystal, which, as predicted by theory, scale with the overall crystal size. We also succeeded in detecting clear second harmonic generation, direct evidence for the material’s noncentrosymmetry. We note that the material’s ferroelectric nature, can, but need not be important in a PV cell at room temperature.
On the Evaluation of the Number of Conducting Channels in Multiwall Carbon Nanotubes

The correct evaluation of the number of conducting channels in multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) is essential in view of the derivation of accurate equivalent circuit models for electrical nanointerconnects made by this innovative material. The authors have recently proposed an approach to evaluate this number for a single CNT shell that takes properly into account its chirality, diameter, and temperature. In this letter, we use this approach to evaluate the number of channels in an MWCNT and compare its results to the existing literature. It is found that so far, the number of conducting channels has been sensibly overestimated by 25%-40% at room temperature.
Is the major Drosophila heat shock protein present in cells that have not been heat shocked?

When eukaryotic cells are exposed to elevated temperatures they respond by vigorously synthesizing a small group of proteins called the heat shock proteins. An essential element in defining the role of these proteins is determining whether they are unique to a stressed state or are also found in healthy, rapidly growing cells at normal temperatures. To date, there have been conflicting reports concerning the major heat-induced protein of Drosophila cells, HSP 70. We report the development of monoclonal antibodies specific for this protein. These antibodies were used to assay HSP 70 in cells incubated under different culture conditions. The protein was detectable in cells maintained at normal temperatures, but only when immunological techniques were pushed to the limits of their sensitivity. To test for the possibility that these cells contain a reservoir of protein in a cryptic antigenic state (i.e., waiting posttranslational modification for use at high temperature), we treated cells with cycloheximide or actinomycin D immediately before heat shock. HSP 70 was not detected in these cells. Finally, we tested for the presence of a reservoir of inactive messages by using a high stringency hybridization of 32P- labeled cloned gene sequences to electrophoretically separated RNAs. Although HSP 70 mRNA was detectable in rapidly growing cells, it was present at less than 1/1,000th the level achieved after induction.
Selection of Appropriate Reference Genes for RT-qPCR Analysis in a Streptozotocin-Induced Alzheimer’s Disease Model of Cynomolgus Monkeys (Macaca fascicularis)

Reverse transcription quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) has been widely used to quantify relative gene expression because of the specificity, sensitivity, and accuracy of this technique. In order to obtain reliable gene expression data from RT-qPCR experiments, it is important to utilize optimal reference genes for the normalization of target gene expression under varied experimental conditions. Previously, we developed and validated a novel icv-STZ cynomolgus monkey model for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) research. However, in order to enhance the reliability of this disease model, appropriate reference genes must be selected to allow meaningful analysis of the gene expression levels in the icv-STZ cynomolgus monkey brain. In this study, we assessed the expression stability of 9 candidate reference genes in 2 matched-pair brain samples (5 regions) of control cynomolgus monkeys and those who had received intracerebroventricular injection of streptozotocin (icv-STZ). Three well-known analytical programs geNorm, NormFinder, and BestKeeper were used to choose the suitable reference genes from the total sample group, control group, and icv-STZ group. Combination analysis of the 3 different programs clearly indicated that the ideal reference genes are RPS19 and YWHAZ in the total sample group, GAPDH and RPS19 in the control group, and ACTB and GAPDH in the icv-STZ group. Additionally, we validated the normalization accuracy of the most appropriate reference genes (RPS19 and YWHAZ) by comparison with the least stable gene (TBP) using quantification of the APP and MAPT genes in the total sample group. To the best of our knowledge, this research is the first study to identify and validate the appropriate reference genes in cynomolgus monkey brains. These findings provide useful information for future studies involving the expression of target genes in the cynomolgus monkey.
Cancer Metabolism: New Validated Targets for Drug Discovery

Recent studies in cancer metabolism directly implicate catabolic fibroblasts as a new rich source of i) energy and ii) biomass, for the growth and survival of anabolic cancer cells. Conversely, anabolic cancer cells upregulate oxidative mitochondrial metabolism, to take advantage of the abundant fibroblast fuel supply. This simple model of “metabolic-symbiosis” has now been independently validated in several different types of human cancers, including breast, ovarian, and prostate tumors. Biomarkers of metabolic-symbiosis are excellent predictors of tumor recurrence, metastasis, and drug resistance, as well as poor patient survival. New pre-clinical models of metabolic-symbiosis have been generated and they genetically validate that catabolic fibroblasts promote tumor growth and metastasis. Over 30 different stable lines of catabolic fibroblasts and >10 different lines of anabolic cancer cells have been created and are well-characterized. For example, catabolic fibroblasts harboring ATG16L1 increase tumor cell metastasis by >11.5-fold, despite the fact that genetically identical cancer cells were used. Taken together, these studies provide >40 novel validated targets, for new drug discovery and anti-cancer therapy. Since anabolic cancer cells amplify their capacity for oxidative mitochondrial metabolism, we should consider therapeutically targeting mitochondrial biogenesis and OXPHOS in epithelial cancer cells. As metabolic-symbiosis promotes drug-resistance and may represent the escape mechanism during anti-angiogenic therapy, new drugs targeting metabolic-symbiosis may also be effective in cancer patients with recurrent and advanced metastatic disease.