Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Serial Measurements of Splanchnic Vein Diameters in Rats Using High-Frequency Ultrasound

The purpose of this study was to investigate serial ultrasound imaging in rats as a fully non-invasive method to (1) quantify the diameters of splanchnic veins in real time as an indirect surrogate for the capacitance function of those veins, and (2) assess the effects of drugs on venous dimensions. A 21 MHz probe was used on anesthetized male Sprague–Dawley rats to collect images containing the portal vein (PV), superior mesenteric vein (SMV), abdominal inferior vena cava (IVC), and splenic vein (SpV; used as a landmark in timed studies) and the abdominal aorta (AA). Stable landmarks were established that allowed reproducible quantification of cross-sectional diameters within an animal. The average diameters of vessels measured every 5 min over 45 min remained within 0.75 ± 0.15% (PV), 0.2 ± 0.09% (SMV), 0.5 ± 0.12% (IVC), and 0.38 ± 0.06% (AA) of baseline (PV: 2.0 ± 0.12 mm; SMV: 1.7 ± 0.04 mm; IVC: 3.2 ± 0.1 mm; AA: 2.3 ± 0.14 mm). The maximal effects of the vasodilator sodium nitroprusside (SNP; 2 mg/kg, i.v. bolus) on venous diameters were determined 5 min post SNP bolus; the diameters of all noted veins were significantly increased by SNP, while mean arterial pressure (MAP) decreased 29 ± 4 mmHg. By contrast, administration of the venoconstrictor sarafotoxin (S6c; 5 ng/kg, i.v. bolus) significantly decreased PV and SpV, but not IVC, SMV, or AA, diameters 5 min post S6c bolus; MAP increased by 6 ± 2 mmHg. In order to determine if resting splanchnic vein diameters were stable over much longer periods of time, vessel diameters were measured every 2 weeks for 8 weeks. Measurements were found to be highly reproducible within animals over this time period. Finally, to evaluate the utility of vein imaging in a chronic condition, images were acquired from 4-week deoxycorticosterone acetate salt (DOCA-salt) hypertensive and normotensive (SHAM) control rats. All vessel diameters increased from baseline while MAP increased (67 ± 4 mmHg) in DOCA-salt rats compared to SHAM at 4 weeks after pellet implantation. Vessel diameters remained unchanged in SHAM animals. Together, these results support serial ultrasound imaging as a non-invasive, reliable technique able to measure acute and chronic changes in the diameter of splanchnic veins in intact rats.
Information Assurance and Corporate Strategy: A Delphi Study of Choices, Challenges, and Developments for the Future

In this article, we identified processes associated with strengthening the alignment between information assurance, information systems and corporate strategies so that organizations could more effectively address legal and regulatory challenges. Our results are based on data gathered from 43 preliminary interviews and a subsequent Delphi exercise. The Delphi panel rated these processes in terms of desirability and feasibility. After three rounds a consensus of opinion was achieved. The results of the Delphi together with some practical implications are presented.
DACH1 Is a Cell Fate Determination Factor That Inhibits Cyclin D1 and Breast Tumor Growth

ABSTRACT Obstacles to the expansion of cells with proliferative potential include the induction of cell death, telomere-based senescence, and the pRb and p53 tumor suppressors. Not infrequently, the molecular pathways regulating oncogenesis recapitulate aberrations of processes governing embryogenesis. The genetic network, consisting of the dachshund (dac), eyes absent (eya), eyeless, and sine oculis (so) genes, regulates cell fate determination in metazoans, with dac serving as a cointegrator through a So DNA-binding factor. Here, DACH1 inhibited oncogene-mediated breast oncogenesis, blocking breast cancer epithelial cell DNA synthesis, colony formation, growth in Matrigel, and tumor growth in mice. Genetic deletion studies demonstrated a requirement for cyclin D1 in DACH1-mediated inhibition of DNA synthesis. DACH1 repressed cyclin D1 through a novel mechanism via a c-Jun DNA-binding partner, requiring the DACH1 α-helical DS domain which recruits corepressors to the local chromatin. Analysis of over 2,000 patients demonstrated increased nuclear DACH1 expression correlated inversely with cellular mitosis and predicted improved breast cancer patient survival. The cell fate determination factor, DACH1, arrests breast tumor proliferation and growth in vivo providing a new mechanistic and potential therapeutic insight into this common disease.
An Analytical Model for the Computation of No-Load Eddy-Current Losses in the Rotor of a Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machine

This paper describes an analytical model for computing the rotor eddy-current losses in the case of permanent magnet synchronous machines, based on a formal resolution of Maxwell's equations. We focus on the computation of the eddy currents in the machine magnets, in which the diffusion equation is analytically solved, using an accurate electromagnetic model of the stator slotting. The model originality lies in its capacity of taking into account both the diffusion phenomenon and the magnet's finite length over the pole pitch, imposing that the total current over the magnet's surface should be zero at each instant. This important problem is studied by solving a Fredholm integral equation. A validation using a 2-D time-stepping finite-element model is also performed, and the obtained losses are shown to be in good agreement with those given by the analytical method, for a shorter computation time.
Diagnosis of primary ciliary dyskinesia: summary of the ERS Task Force report

Key points Primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) is a genetically and clinically heterogeneous disease characterised by abnormal motile ciliary function. There is no “gold standard” diagnostic test for PCD. The European Respiratory Society (ERS) Task Force Guidelines for diagnosing PCD recommend that patients should be referred for diagnostic testing if they have several of the following features: persistent wet cough; situs anomalies; congenital cardiac defects; persistent rhinitis; chronic middle ear disease with or without hearing loss; or a history, in term infants, of neonatal upper and lower respiratory symptoms or neonatal intensive care admission. The ERS Task Force recommends that patients should be investigated in a specialist PCD centre with access to a range of complementary tests: nasal nitric oxide, high-speed video microscopy analysis and transmission electron microscopy. Additional tests including immunofluorescence labelling of ciliary proteins and genetic testing may also help determine the diagnosis. Educational aims This article is intended for primary and secondary care physicians interested in primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD), i.e. those who identify patients for testing, and those involved in diagnosing and managing PCD patients. It aims: to inform readers about the new European Respiratory Society Task Force Guidelines for diagnosing patients with PCD to enable primary and secondary care physicians to: identify patients who need diagnostic testing; understand the diagnostic tests that their patients will undergo, the results of the tests and their limitations; and ensure that appropriate care is subsequently delivered. What primary and secondary care physicians should know about the diagnosis of primary ciliary dyskinesia http://ow.ly/obix30drts1
Evaluation of Structural Properties and Catalytic Activities in Knoevenagel Condensation Reaction of Zeolitic Imidazolate Framework-8 Synthesized under Different Conditions

In the present study, the zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8) was synthesized at both room temperature and high temperatures. The effects of solvents, molar ratios of precursors, reaction time, and temperature on the structural properties of the as-prepared materials were investigated. Moreover, the surface morphologies of the obtained specimens were characterized using X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, and nitrogen adsorption methods. The results show that ZIF-8 was formed in methanol and water at room temperature and in dimethylformamide (DMF) at high temperatures. Further, in methanol, the molar ratios of precursors and reaction time have negligible effects on the morphologies and structures of ZIF-8; however, in DMF, the reaction temperature has a significant influence on the microstructures of ZIF-8. The catalytic activities of the obtained materials were evaluated using the Knoevenagel condensation reaction, and ZIF-8 proves to be an excellent solid base catalyst.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology the Sex >aggression Link: a Perception-behavior Dissociation

Four studies suggest that priming may yield directionally different effects on social perception and behavior if perceptual and behavioral experiences with the stimulus diverge. This seems true for sex and aggression: Men are more likely to behave aggressively than women, whereas women are more likely to perceive aggressive behavior than men. Using a sequential priming paradigm, Study 1 demonstrates that a basic semantic link between sex and aggression exists for both genders. This link, however, has opposing behavioral and perceptual consequences for men and women. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrate that sex priming facilitates aggressive behavior only for men. Study 4 shows that only women perceive the ambiguously aggressive behavior of a male target person as more aggressive after sex priming. Thus, the perceptual and behavioral responses to sex priming are consistent with the experiences men and women typically have with sex and aggression. Ever since the seminal study by Higgins, Rholes, and Jones (1977), the notion that social perception is influenced by previous activation of relevant knowledge structures has been of paramount importance to social psychological research. In line with this notion, it has been demonstrated that an ambiguously described target person (e.g., Donald) is judged on the basis of previously activated or "primed" trait constructs (for recent reviews, see Higgins, 1996; Wyer & Srull, 1989). For example, refusing to pay one's rent may be seen as more hostile if this trait category has been previously primed (Srull & Wyer, 1979). Importantly, such priming effects do not depend on conscious processing of the priming event. Rather, they may occur automatically when the relevant trait category is primed subliminally, outside of judges' awareness (Bargh & Pietromonaco, 1982). Social psychologists have typically investigated the effects of priming on social perception (e. However, there is growing evidence (for a review, see Bargh, 1997) demonstrating that priming effects are for numerous discussions and extensive comments on a previous version of this article. We also thank Galen V. Bodenhausen for method-ological advice; Zinnhobel for their help in developing the materials and collecting the data; and Jens Unger for the computer programming. not limited to perception. Rather, they extend to other psychological responses and may directly influence evaluation (Bargh, In fact, these different effects may be produced by the very same priming techniques. For example, unscrambling sentences containing hostile content (Srull & Wyer, 1979) induces participants to perceive an ambiguously described target person as more …
Spatially balanced sampling and ground‐level imagery for vegetation monitoring on reclaimed well pads

Land reclamation associated with natural gas development has become increasingly important to mitigate land surface disturbance in western North America. Since well pads occur on sites with multiple land use and ownership, the progress and outcomes of these efforts are of interest to multiple stakeholders including industry, practitioners and consultants, regulatory agents, private landowners, and the scientific community. Reclamation success criteria often vary within, and among, government agencies and across land ownership type. Typically, reclamation success of a well pad is judged by comparing vegetation cover from a single transect on the pad to a single transect in an adjacent reference site and data are collected by a large number of technicians with various field monitoring skills. We utilized “SamplePoint” image analysis software and a spatially balanced sampling design, called balanced acceptance sampling, to demonstrate how spatially explicit quantitative data can be used to determine if sites are meeting various reclamation success criteria and used chi‐square tests to show how sites in vegetation percent cover differ from a statistical standpoint. This method collects field data faster than traditional methods. We demonstrate how quantitative and spatially explicit data can be utilized by multiple stakeholders, how it can improve upon current reference site selection, how it can satisfy reclamation monitoring requirements for multiple regulatory agencies, how it may help improve future seed mix selection, and discuss how it may reduce costs for operations responsible for reclamation and how it may reduce observer bias.
Effects of estrogen on hyperglycemia and liver dysfunction in diabetic male rats.

OBJECTIVE To study the possible beneficial effect of estrogen (17β-estradiol E(2)) on hyperglycemia, oxidative stress and liver dysfunctions in STZ-induced diabetic rats. A total of 40 albino male rats were randomly divided into four groups: a control group (I), a diabetic group (II), a group given 17β estradiol (E(2)) for 15 days (III), and a diabetic group given E(2) for 30 days (IV). Diabetes was induced in the rats by 65 mg/kg streptozosin (STZ) via an intraperitoneal (i.p.) injection. E(2) was given in a dose of 500ug/kg/day by oral gavage. RESULTS E(2) administration significantly lowered plasma glucose levels, increased plasma insulin levels, and improved glucose tolerance of groups III and IV. In addition, E(2) enhanced glutathione peroxidase (GPX) and reduced lipid peroxidation in the hepatic tissues (as compared to diabetic rats). E(2) caused significant decrease of plasmatic phosphatase alkaline (PAL), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), aspartate and lactate transaminases (AST and ALT) activities of group III and IV compared to group II. Moreover, E(2) restored the histological structure of the liver and pancreas of treated groups and increased the insulin receptors expression in the liver of groups III and IV compared to diabetic rats. Notably, these beneficial effects of E(2) on diabetic rats were more prominent in group IV compared to those of group III. CONCLUSION E(2) has a beneficial effect on hyperglycemia, oxidative stress and ameliorates the liver dysfunction in diabetic rats and these effects may be mediated through stimulating β-cell proliferation in pancreas and increased the insulin receptor expression in the liver tissues.
A 2.7 GHz to 7 GHz Fractional-N LC-PLL Utilizing Multi-Metal Layer SoC Technology in 28 nm CMOS

A fractional-N LC-PLL in 28 nm CMOS that uses vertical layout integration techniques to achieve area reduction without performance penalties is proposed. The design utilizes multi-metal layers to vertically integrate dual interposed inductors on top of the active PLL circuit elements, resulting in an area of 0.07 mm2. The PLL covers a wide-frequency range from 2.7 GHz to 7 GHz, consuming a total power of 14 mW. At 7 GHz, the RMS jitter is 0.56 ps in integer mode and 1.1 ps in fractional mode.
Cardiac Syndrome X Electrocardiographic Patterns Using Signal-Averaged Orthogonal Leads and VCG Indices

Cardiac syndrome X (CSX) is a clinical condition, characterized by angina, positive stress test and negative coronary angiography. Myocardial ischemia is suggested to influence the ischemic changes in the electrocardiogram (ECG), observed during stress test. The aim of this study, is to obtain CSX patterns of the high-resolution vectorcardiographic (VCG) loops in the horizontal (H), frontal (F) and right sagittal (RS) planes of the Frank corrected orthogonal leads (X,Y, Z), and to assess their similarity with the reference VCG loops of normal subjects. The results suggest that CSX VCG profile in resting state could be considered as a variant of the normal profile; however, it contains some VCG changes seen in the ischemic heart disease.
Extracting low-dimensional features by means of Deep Network Architectures

Inspired by nature, arti cial neural networks are an attempt to create a learning machine that is comparable to real brains. Due to the complexity of brains, and a lack of understand there of, arti cial neural networks are only remotely related to their natural counterparts. Also, in practice it has proven intractable to work with arbitrarily large neural networks as they are hard to control and even harder to learn, since it is computationally expensive and the result may still be far from optimal. Because of these reasons neural networks up to now have been rather limited in size and capability. With a newly proposed algorithm called pretraining it is now possible to train neural networks with a very complex structure, i.e. so called deep network. This algorithm is applied before an error correction algorithm, e.g. backpropagation. It carefully tunes the neural connection weights of a network such that they reach a good starting point for error backpropagation and converge quickly towards a good solution. In this thesis we will concentrate on a special kind of neural network for unsupervised learning, so-called auto-associative neural networks or simply autoencoder. These networks learn an identity mapping for the data in the input space. While the network learn this mapping it forces the data through a bottle-neck layer. Thus, the network has to learn a code that categorizes the data according to its intrinsic structure without the use of any label information. We will suggest a framework for successful feature extraction using deep autoencoders and will use these extracted features to perform classi cation of various types of real-life data. Also, a new approach to model selection for auto-associative networks will be proposed. The advantage of this method compared to conventional methods is the huge economization of training time, which can be immense if the network is very deep and conists of millions of neural connections.
The pattern of utilisation and accuracy of a commercial nucleic acid amplification test for the rapid diagnosis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in routine clinical practice.

BACKGROUND Several nucleic acid amplification (NAA) tests are available for the rapid detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) in clinical specimens. AIMS To identify the pattern of utilisation and accuracy of the AMPLICOR test in routine clinical practice in an acute care setting. DESIGN A retrospective descriptive study. METHOD We studied 159 consecutive specimens in which the AMPLICOR (Roche; Branchburg, NJ) test was requested by attending doctors. The sensitivities and specificities of the AMPLICOR for detection of active tuberculosis (TB) were calculated in relation to types of specimens, smear and culture results. RESULTS The number of requests more than doubled from 1999 to 2000. Thirty-eight percent of the specimens were not from the respiratory tract. The majority of the specimens had requests for one or more additional test (mean 1.8). The rate of active TB was 18%. The sensitivities of the AMPLICOR on per specimen, per patient, per smear negative specimen and per smear negative patient basis were found to be 81%, 80%, 66.7% and 71.4% respectively. The specificities for these groups accordingly were 99%, 98.6%, 99% and 98.6% respectively. The sensitivity and specificity for respiratory specimens were 97.5% and 98.5%, while for non-respiratory specimens, they were 60% and 100%. In smear negative specimens, the sensitivity and specificity for respiratory specimens were 60% and 98.5%, while for non-respiratory specimens, they were 75% and 100%. The AMPLICOR assay was negative in all 21 specimens of pleural or spinal fluid. CONCLUSIONS There is a growing demand for NAA in the rapid diagnosis of TB with a high proportion of non-respiratory specimens. The number of additional diagnostic tests performed on each specimen should be limited. In routine clinical practice, the AMPLICOR assay is a useful confirmatory test for active pulmonary TB. The utility of the AMPLICOR assay for MTB detection in exudative fluid specimens needs further evaluation.
Riluzole treatment, survival and diagnostic criteria in Parkinson plus disorders: The NNIPPS Study

Parkinson plus diseases, comprising mainly progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and multiple system atrophy (MSA) are rare neurodegenerative conditions. We designed a double-blind randomized placebo-controlled trial of riluzole as a potential disease-modifying agent in Parkinson plus disorders (NNIPPS: Neuroprotection and Natural History in Parkinson Plus Syndromes). We analysed the accuracy of our clinical diagnostic criteria, and studied prognostic factors for survival. Patients with an akinetic-rigid syndrome diagnosed as having PSP or MSA according to modified consensus diagnostic criteria were considered for inclusion. The psychometric validity (convergent and predictive) of the NNIPPS diagnostic criteria were tested prospectively by clinical and pathological assessments. The study was powered to detect a 40% decrease in relative risk of death within PSP or MSA strata. Patients were randomized to riluzole or matched placebo daily and followed up to 36 months. The primary endpoint was survival. Secondary efficacy outcomes were rates of disease progression assessed by functional measures. A total of 767 patients were randomized and 760 qualified for the Intent to Treat (ITT) analysis, stratified at entry as PSP (362 patients) or MSA (398 patients). Median follow-up was 1095 days (range 249–1095). During the study, 342 patients died and 112 brains were examined for pathology. NNIPPS diagnostic criteria showed for both PSP and MSA excellent convergent validity with the investigators’ assessment of diagnostic probability (point-biserial correlation: MSA rpb = 0.93, P < 0.0001; PSP, rpb = 0.95, P < 0.0001), and excellent predictive validity against histopathology [sensitivity and specificity (95% CI) for PSP 0.95 (0.88–0.98) and 0.84 (0.77–0.87); and for MSA 0.96 (0.88–0.99) and 0.91 (0.86–0.93)]. There was no evidence of a drug effect on survival in the PSP or MSA strata (3 year Kaplan–Meier estimates PSP-riluzole: 0.51, PSP-placebo: 0.50; MSA-riluzole: 0.53, MSA-placebo: 0.58; P = 0.66 and P = 0.48 by the log-rank test, respectively), or in the population as a whole (P = 0.42, by the stratified-log-rank test). Likewise, rate of progression was similar in both treatment groups. There were no unexpected adverse effects of riluzole, and no significant safety concerns. Riluzole did not have a significant effect on survival or rate of functional deterioration in PSP or MSA, although the study reached over 80% power to detect the hypothesized drug effect within strata. The NNIPPS diagnostic criteria were consistent and valid. They can be used to distinguish between PSP and MSA with high accuracy, and should facilitate research into these conditions relatively early in their evolution.