Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Attenuation of Blood Pressure Response to Laryngoscopy and Tracheal Intutation with Sodium Nitroprusside

The time course and magnitude of change in mean arterial pressure (MAP) and heart rate (HR) following a single rapid intravenous injection of 1 fig/kg and 2μg/kg of sodium nitroprusside (SNP) were determined in six anesthetized patients in the absence of concurrent stimulation produced by laryngoscopy or surgery. These data indicated that SNP administered 15 seconds before starting laryngoscopy would match the blood pressure lowering effects of SNP with the increase in blood pressure produced by laryngoscopy and tracheal intubation.The change in MAP and HR during and after laryngoscopy for tracheal intubation was determined in patients receiving 1 μg/kg (10 patients) or 2 μg/kg (10 patients) of SNP 15 seconds before starting laryngoscopy. These data were compared with data for 10 patients not receiving SNP. All patients studied were scheduled for elective saphenous vein to coronary artery bypass graft operations. Immediately after tracheal intubation the maximum increase in MAP above awake levels was 18 torr (p < 0.05) and 13 torr (p < 0.05) with 1 μg/ kg and 2 μg/kg of SNP, respectively, given 15 seconds before laryngoscopy whereas mean arterial pressure increased 40 torr (p < 0.05) after tracheal intubation in patients not given SNP. The magnitude of MAP increase was not significantly different with 1 μg/kg or 2 μg/kg of SNP (p > 0.05) whereas the increase without SNP was significantly greater (p < 0.05) than with prior SNP. SNP had no effect on the increase in HR associated with tracheal intubation.A single rapid intravenous injection of SNP (1 to 2 μg/kg) is a practical pharmacologic method to attenuate blood pressure increases during direct laryngoscopy and tracheal intubation. Prevention of hypertension during the sequence surrounding tracheal intubation is particularly important in patients with decreased myocardial reserve or intracranial pathology.
Deep Tillage and Crop Rotation Effects on Cotton, Soybean, and Grain Sorghum on Clayey Soils

Deep tillage (subsoiling) of clayey soils in the fall when the profile is dry is a new concept that results in increased yields and net returns from soybean [Glycine max (L). Merr. ] grown without irrigation. Crop rotation may also result in increased crop yields. Field studies were conducted on Tunica clay (clayey over loamy, smectitic, nonacid, thermic, Vertic Haplaquept) near Stoneville, MS (33°26' N lat) to determine the individual and combined effects of fall deep tillage and crop rotations on crop yields and net returns. Treatments included monocrop cotton [Gossypium hirsutum (L.)], soybean, and grain sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench], and biennial rotations of cotton with grain sorghum and soybean with grain sorghum grown without irrigation and in either a conventional-till (CT) or deep-till (DT) production system. Yields from all cotton and soybean crop sequences grown in the DT respectively averaged 541 kg ha -1 and 525 kg ha -1 greater than comparable cotton (2184 kg ha -1 ) and soybean (2983 kg ha -1 ) crop sequences grown in the CT. Net returns from monocrop cotton ($552 ha -1 ) and soybean ($462 ha -1 ) in the DT respectively averaged $392 ha -1 and $121 ha -1 more than similar crop sequences in the CT. Rotations increased cotton and soybean yields but not net returns because of the low value of the grain sorghum component. These data indicate that fall deep tillage should be incorporated into monocrop cotton and soybean crop sequences to maximize and stabilize net returns from these crops on Tunica clay.
Evolution of dispersal in spatially and temporally variable environments: The importance of life cycles

Spatiotemporal variability of the environment is bound to affect the evolution of dispersal, and yet model predictions strongly differ on this particular effect. Recent studies on the evolution of local adaptation have shown that the life cycle chosen to model the selective effects of spatiotemporal variability of the environment is a critical factor determining evolutionary outcomes. Here, we investigate the effect of the order of events in the life cycle on the evolution of unconditional dispersal in a spatially heterogeneous, temporally varying landscape. Our results show that the occurrence of intermediate singular strategies and disruptive selection are conditioned by the temporal autocorrelation of the environment and by the life cycle. Life cycles with dispersal of adults versus dispersal of juveniles, local versus global density regulation, give radically different evolutionary outcomes that include selection for total philopatry, evolutionary bistability, selection for intermediate stable states, and evolutionary branching points. Our results highlight the importance of accounting for life‐cycle specifics when predicting the effects of the environment on evolutionarily selected trait values, such as dispersal, as well as the need to check the robustness of model conclusions against modifications of the life cycle.
DISCRETE-TIME MODELING AND SYNTHESIS OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

Physics-based modeling of sound sources, particularly of musical instruments, can be carried out in many forms. In this paper an overview is presented focusing on methods that are potential in real-time simulation and synthesis, in contrast to solving equations that characterize the behavior of the sound source under study. Modeling paradigms discussed here cover the digital waveguides (DWGs), finite difference time domain schemes (FDTDs), wave digitalfilters (WDFs), modal decompositiontechniques,and source-filter models. The interrelationsbetween these approaches are discussed and cases of applying them for real-time sound synthesis are presented.
Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background from Cosmological Supernovae

Based on new developments in the understanding of supernovae (SNe) as gravitational-wave (GW) sources we estimate the GW background from all cosmic SNe. For a broad range of frequencies around 1 Hz, this background is crudely comparable to the GW background expected from standard inflationary models. While our estimate remains uncertain within several orders of magnitude, the SN GW background may become detectable by second-generation space-based interferometers such as the proposed Big Bang Observatory (BBO). By the same token, the SN GWs may become a foreground for searches of the inflationary GWs, in particular, for sub-Hz frequencies where the SN background is Gaussian and where the BBO will be most sensitive. SN simulations lasting far beyond the usual cutoff of about 1 s are needed for more robust predictions in the sub-Hz frequency band. An even larger GW background can arise from a hypothetical early population of massive stars, although their GW source strength as well as their abundance are currently poorly understood.
A single institution study on patient's self-reporting appraisal and functional outcomes of the first set of men following radical perineal prostatectomy

Introduction This study evaluates the functional outcomes and satisfaction of an initial series of 47 patients after radical perineal prostatectomy performed in our department. Material and methods The first set of 47 consecutive patients underwent perineal prostatectomy during 2008 and 2009. Continence, sexual outcomes, and satisfaction of the treatment were evaluated using a self-reporting questionnaire, which was mailed to all patients after 15 to 33 months of follow-up. 26 patients (55.3%) returned a completed form and participated in the study. Additionally, final outcomes were compared to results reported elsewhere. Results Amid respondents, 91.7% were satisfied with the chosen treatment and 8.3% regret the previous decision. 38.5% patients reported any urine leakage, 15.4% drip up to 100 ml a day, and only one patient (3.8%) was totally incontinent. 76.9% men report a decline in prior sexual function. Six patients (23.1%) patients have any degree of spontaneous erections and undertake sexual activity. However, as erectile outcomes are adjusted to nine nerve-sparing cases, 66.7% have spontaneous erections and 55.5% undertake sexual activity, but only 40% of them describe their sexual function as satisfying. Conclusions Our survey demonstrates that, because of short operating time, fast recovery, low postoperative pain score, early patient mobilization and feeding, and a small (8-10 cm) and inconspicuous skin incision, radical perineal prostatectomy fully deserves to be recognized as a low-morbidity procedure. The perineal approach provides a quality of life and patients satisfaction rate comparable to trendy, highly equipped procedures and emerges as an attractive alternative to them. Even novice “perineal surgeons” may achieve favorable results.
Gastric Atrophy and Intestinal Metaplasia before and after Helicobacter pylori Eradication: A Meta-Analysis

Objective: Whether gastric atrophy (GA) and intestinal metaplasia (IM) are reversible after the eradication of Helicobacter pylori remains controversial. The purpose of this meta-analysis was to systematically review histological alterations in GA and IM by comparing histological scores before and after H. pylori eradication. Methods: English-language articles in the medical literature containing information about the association between infection with H. pylori and gastric premalignant lesions (i.e. GA and IM) were identified by searching the Medline, PubMed, and EMBASE databases with suitable key words up to December 2009. Review Manager 4.2. 8 was used for the meta-analysis. Results: Twelve studies containing a total of 2,658 patients were included in the first meta-analysis. Before treatment, 2,648 patients had antrum GA, 2,401 patients had corpus GA, 2,582 patients had antrum IM, and 2,460 patients had corpus IM. Comparing the histological alterations before and after H. pylori eradication, the pooled weighted mean difference (WMD) with 95% CI for antral GA was 0.12 (0.00–0.23), p = 0.06. For corpus GA, the pooled WMD was 0.32 (0.09–0.54), p = 0.006. For antral IM, the pooled WMD was 0.02 (–0.12–0.16), p = 0.76, and for corpus IM, the pooled WMD was –0.02 (–0.05–0.02), p = 0.42. Conclusion: Our study shows that eradication of H. pylori results in significant improvement in GA in the corpus but not in the antrum; it also does not improve gastric mucous IM. Consequently, all patients with GA in the corpus should be tested for H. pylori infection, and eradication therapy should be prescribed for H. pylori-positive patients in those with GA in corpus.
Income Diversification: A Strategy for Rural Region Risk Management

Recent literature shows that income diversification is an important strategy for rural households to manage drought risk in arid and semiarid regions. This article examines whether income diversification can help rural households to overcome the adverse impact of drought in Northern China. Based on field interview data from 291 rural households in 13 townships of Northern China, we found that rural households tend to have a more diversified portfolio of income; the spatial location of rural households determines the type and number of income sources, the degree of income diversification, and the income combinations, especially under the context of frequent drought strikes. These results indicate that income diversification could help rural households to reduce the adverse impact of drought, enhance their resistance and resilience to drought, and make their livelihood system more stable. Income diversification not only is a useful strategy in terms of managing disaster risk and improving social welfare, but also may offer a new perspective for the research of vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive ability of rural social-ecosystem.
Inhibitory Effect on Arterial Injury-Induced Neointimal Formation by Adoptive B-Cell Transfer in Rag-1 Knockout Mice

We investigated the effect of B-cell reconstitution in immune-deficient Rag-1 knockout (KO) mice subjected to arterial injury. After 21 days, injury induced a 4- to 5-fold increase in neointimal formation in Rag-1 KO mice fed normal chow compared with wild-type (WT) mice (0.020±0.0160 [n=8] versus 0.0049±0.0022 [n=8] mm2, respectively;P <0.05) and in western-type diet–fed Rag-1 KO mice compared with WT mice (0.0312±0.0174 [n=7] versus 0.0050±0.0028 [n=6] mm2, respectively;P <0.05). To investigate the role of B cells in response to injury, Rag-1 KO mice were reconstituted with B cells derived from the spleens of WT mice, with donors and recipients on the same diet. Reconstitution of Rag-1 KO mice with B cells from WT mice (both fed normal chow) reduced neointimal formation compared with the effect in unreconstituted Rag-1 KO mice (0.0076±0.0039 [n=9] versus 0.020±0.0160 [n=8] mm2, respectively;P <0.05). Reconstitution of Rag-1 KO mice with B cells from WT mice (both fed a western diet) reduced neointimal formation compared the effect in Rag-1 KO mice (0.0087±0.0037 [n=8] versus 0.0312±0.0174 [n=7] mm2, respectively;P <0.05). Injured carotid arteries from reconstituted Rag-1 KO mice had detectable IgM and IgG, indicating viable transfer of B cells. The results suggest that B cells modulate the response to arterial injury.
Foundations for a Model-Driven Integration of Business Services in a Safety-Critical Application Domain

Current architectures for systems integration provide means for forming agile business processes by manually or dynamically configuring the components.However, a major challenge in the safety-critical Air Traffic Management (ATM) domain is to interconnect business services taking into account service level agreements regarding the underlying network infrastructures. In such domains, manual configuration is forbidden due to the resulting error-prone and time-consuming tasks, while dynamic configuration is not allowed due to nondeterministic decision making. In this paper we propose a model-driven system configuration approach (MDSC),which explicitly models the components of the network infrastructures and their capabilities to automatically generate a logical network configuration. Based on an industry application example, we show the feasibility of the proposed integration platform in the ATM domain and discuss the advantages and limitations.
Overview of the Pathogenesis of ANCA-Associated Vasculitis

Background: Antineutrophil cytoplasmic autoantibodies (ANCA) are associated with a spectrum of necrotizing vasculitis including granulomatosis with polyangiitis, microscopic polyangiitis, eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis, and renal-limited necrotizing and crescentic glomerulonephritis. Clinical observations and in vitro and in vivo experimental evidence strongly indicate that ANCA are pathogenic. Summary: The etiology and pathogenesis of ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV) are multifactorial, with contributions from genetic factors, environmental exposures, infections, characteristics of the innate and adaptive immune system, and the intensity and duration of the injury. Acute vascular inflammation is induced when resting neutrophils that have ANCA autoantigens sequestered in cytoplasmic granules are exposed to priming factors - for example, cytokines induced by infection or phlogogenic factors released by complement activation - that cause the release of ANCA antigens on the surface of neutrophils and in the microenvironment around the neutrophils. ANCA bind to these ANCA antigens, which activates neutrophils by Fcγ receptor engagement and F(ab′)2 binding at the neutrophil cell surface. ANCA-activated neutrophils release factors that activate the alternative complement pathway, which generates C5a, a chemoattractant for neutrophils; C5a also primes the arriving neutrophils for activation by ANCA. Activated neutrophils adhere to and penetrate vessel walls, and they release toxic oxygen radicals and destructive enzymes that cause apoptosis and necrosis of the neutrophils as well as of the adjacent vessel wall cells and matrix. Key Messages: Patients with active AAV have ongoing asynchronous onsets of countless acute lesions, with each lesion evolving through stereotypical phases within 1 or 2 weeks. Induction of remission results in termination of new waves of acute lesions and allows all lesions to progress to scarring or resolution.
VTB-RTRRP: Variable Threshold Based Response Time Reliability Real-Time Prediction

To provide high quality of network service, the response time reliability (RTR), the probability that the response time of a service is within the maximum allowable time determined by users, attracts researchers from both academic and industry. For those networked systems that can adjust their configuration adaptively, such as cloud computing systems, ad hoc networks, and network function virtualization systems, it is essential to predict the RTR of the system, and use the prediction result as a constraint to optimize the system configuration, e.g., tradeoff between reliability and energy efficiency. In general, the RTR changes along with the workload of the system. Due to the complex communication process, it is not easy to derive the analytical model between workload and RTR, and the maximum response time that users can tolerate also changes with the system workload according to users’ experience. This paper proposes a variable threshold-based RTR real-time prediction framework based on data-driven approaches to forecast the RTR for networked systems. In this framework, the response time threshold varies with the workload, reflecting both users’ acceptable and perceived response time, and a real-time updating model between workload and RTR is built for RTR prediction based on the latest monitored dada. Finally, a communication network is taken as the example to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method from different perspectives. The experimental results illustrate that this continually updating model can obtain more accurate RTR prediction.
nDPI: Open-source high-speed deep packet inspection

Network traffic analysis was traditionally limited to packet header, because the transport protocol and application ports were usually sufficient to identify the application protocol. With the advent of port-independent, peer-to-peer, and encrypted protocols, the task of identifying application protocols became increasingly challenging, thus creating a motivation for creating tools and libraries for network protocol classification. This paper covers the design and implementation of nDPI, an open-source library for protocol classification using both packet header and payload. nDPI was extensively validated in various monitoring projects ranging from Linux kernel protocol classification, to analysis of 10 Gbit traffic, reporting both high protocol detection accuracy and efficiency.
Isolation and characterization of sea urchin egg cortical granules

A method has been developed to isolate cortical granules (CG) free in suspension. It involves the mechanical disruption of the CG from CG lawns (CGL; Dev. Biol. 43:62-74, 1975) and concentration of the CG by low speed centrifugation. The isolated CG are intact and are a relatively pure population as judged by electron microscopy. Granule integrity is confirmed by the fact that isolated intact CG are radioiodinated to only 0.05% of the specific activity of hypotonically lysed CG. Purity of the CG preparation is assessed by the enrichment (four- to sevenfold) of CG marker enzymes and the absence or low activity of plasma membrane, mitochondrial, cytoplasmic, and yolk platelet marker enzyme activities. CG isolated from 125I-surface- labeled eggs have a very low specific radioactivity, demonstrating that CG contamination by the plasma membrane-vitelline layer (PM-VL) is minimal. CG yield is approximately 1% of the starting egg protein. The CG isolation method is simple and rapid, 4 mg of CG protein being obtained in 1 h. Isolated CG and PM-VL display distinct electrophoretic patterns on SDS gels. Actin is localized to the PM-VL, and all bands present in the CGL are accounted for in the CG and PM-VL. Calmodulin is associated with the CGL, CG, and PM-VL fractions, but is not specifically enriched in these fractions as compared with whole egg homogenates. This method of isolating intact CG from unfertilized sea urchin eggs may be useful for exploring the mechanism of Ca2+-mediated CG exocytosis.
Association of cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator gene variants with acute lung injury in African American children with pneumonia*

Objectives:The cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator regulates fluid balance in alveolar epithelial cells and appears to modulate the inflammatory response. To determine whether more severe lung injury in children who develop community-acquired pneumonia is associated with variations known to affect function in the gene coding for cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator. Design:A prospective cohort genetic association study of lung injury in children with community-acquired pneumonia. Setting:Three major tertiary care children’s hospitals. Subjects:Caucasian and African American children with community-acquired pneumonia either evaluated in the emergency department or admitted to the hospital. Interventions:None. Measurements and Main Results:Caucasian and African American children with pneumonia were genotyped for the most common variants reported to affect cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator function, the p.508del mutation, the (TG)mTn variable repeat region, and the M470V polymorphism in the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator gene. Genotypes and haplotypes were determined, and the association of high-risk alleles or high-risk haplotypes (defined as the presence of at least one variant known to decrease the level of functional cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator) with the need for mechanical ventilation or the development of acute lung injury was evaluated. Forty-two children in the Caucasian cohort (n = 304) required mechanical ventilation; 32 developed acute lung injury. Forty-three children in the African American cohort (n = 474) required mechanical ventilation; 29 developed acute lung injury. In African American children, high-risk (TG)mTn alleles known to result in decreased levels of functional cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator were associated with the need for mechanical ventilation (p = .0013) and the development of acute lung injury (p = .0061). Multivariable analysis demonstrated that high-risk (TG)mTn alleles were independently associated with mechanical ventilation (odds ratios = 3.19; 95% confidence interval, 1.63–6.26) and acute lung injury (odds ratios = 3.36; 95% confidence interval, 1.50–7.53) in African American children. Conclusion:Genetic variation in cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator is associated with acute lung injury in African American children with community-acquired pneumonia.