Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Pilot Study of Clinical Agreement in Cardiovascular Preparticipation Examinations: How Good is the Standard of Care?

Objective:To evaluate the interobserver agreement between physicians regarding a abnormal cardiovascular assessment on athletic preparticipation examinations. Design:Cross-sectional clinical survey. Setting:Outpatient Clinic, United States Military Academy, West Point, NY. Participants:We randomly selected 101 out of 539 cadet-athletes presenting for a preparticipation examination. Two primary care sports medicine fellows and a cardiologist examined the cadets. Interventions:After obtaining informed consent from all participants, all 3 physicians separately evaluated all 101 cadets. The physicians recorded their clinical findings and whether they thought further cardiovascular evaluation (echocardiography) was indicated. Main Outcome Measures:Rate of referral for further cardiovascular evaluation, clinical agreement between sports medicine fellows, and clinical agreement between sports medicine fellows and the cardiologist. Results:Each fellow referred 6 of the 101 evaluated cadets (5.9%). The cardiologist referred none. Although each fellow referred 6 cadets, only 1 cadet was referred by both. The κ statistic for clinical agreement between fellows is 0.114 (95% CI, −0.182 to 0.411). There was no clinical agreement between the fellows and the cardiologist. Conclusions:This pilot study reveals a low level of agreement between physicians regarding which athletes with an abnormal examination deserved further testing. It challenges the standard of care and questions whether there is a need for improved technologies or improved training in cardiovascular clinical assessment.
Energy expenditure, television viewing and obesity.

OBJECTIVE To measure energy expenditure (EE) of television viewing, sitting, and resting and duration of self-selected television viewing in obese and non-obese men and women. DESIGN Cross-over randomized study consisting of two separate 24-h stays in a whole-room indirect calorimeter. SUBJECTS 123 obese and non-obese healthy men and women (age: 38 +/- 9, BMI: 29.4 +/- 7.9) MEASUREMENTS Rates of energy expenditure during resting (RMR), sitting (EEsit) and television viewing (EEtv) using indirect calorimetry technique on two separate 24-h stays in a whole-room indirect calorimeter. Physical activities and work of body movements during these periods using a large force platform system located inside the calorimeter. RESULTS Rates of EE for television viewing, adjusted for differences in body composition were 18% higher than resting metabolic rate (RMR), but similar to rates of other sedentary activities. There were no significant differences between obese and non-obese subjects in metabolic rates during resting, television viewing, and other sedentary activities. Average time of self-selected television viewing was significantly greater in obese than in non-obese subjects and also in women than in men. CONCLUSION EE rate for television viewing in adults is higher than RMR and similar to other sedentary activities. Obese adults choose television viewing as a form of leisure activity more often than non-obese individuals and as a result they could significantly reduce other forms of physical activities and total daily EE.
Fifteen-Year Prospective Analysis of Television Viewing and Adiposity in African American and Caucasian Men and Women

There are limited data from long-term prospective studies on the association between television (TV) viewing and obesity. We investigated this association between TV viewing and body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WST) over 15 years on 3,269 participants from the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study. We used cross-lagged panel models at exam Years 5, 10, 15, and 20 over 15 years to assess the association between TV viewing and obesity. The cross-lagged effects of TV viewing on anthropometry were significant from exam Year 5 to Year 10 (B = 0.034 for BMI and 0.036 for WST). However, the cross-lagged effects of TV viewing at Years 10 and 15 on obesity at Years 15 and 20, respectively, were nonsignificant. The findings indicate that higher levels of TV viewing predicted higher BMI and WC in young adulthood, but this association was not observed as individuals aged over the following decade.
Evidence That Wallerian Degeneration and Localized Axon Degeneration Induced by Local Neurotrophin Deprivation Do Not Involve Caspases

The selective degeneration of an axon, without the death of the parent neuron, can occur in response to injury, in a variety of metabolic, toxic, and inflammatory disorders, and during normal development. Recent evidence suggests that some forms of axon degeneration involve an active and regulated program of self-destruction rather than a passive “wasting away” and in this respect and others resemble apoptosis. Here we investigate whether selective axon degeneration depends on some of the molecular machinery that mediates apoptosis, namely, the caspase family of cysteine proteases. We focus on two models of selective axon degeneration: Wallerian degeneration of transected axons and localized axon degeneration induced by local deprivation of neurotrophin. We show that caspase-3 is not activated in the axon during either form of degeneration, although it is activated in the dying cell body of the same neurons. Moreover, caspase inhibitors do not inhibit or retard either form of axon degeneration, although they inhibit apoptosis of the same neurons. Finally, we cannot detect cleaved substrates of caspase-3 and its close relatives immunocytochemically or caspase activity biochemically in axons undergoing Wallerian degeneration. Our results suggest that a neuron contains at least two molecularly distinct self-destruction programs, one for caspase-dependent apoptosis and another for selective axon degeneration.
Neurocognitive processes of the religious leader in Christians

Our recent work suggests that trait judgment of the self in Christians, relative to nonreligious subjects, is characterized by weakened neural coding of stimulus self‐relatedness in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) but enhanced evaluative processes of self‐referential stimuli in the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC). The current study tested the hypothesis that Christian belief and practice produce a trait summary about the religious leader (Jesus) in the believers and thus episodic memory retrieval is involved to the minimum degree when making trait judgment of Jesus. Experiment 1 showed that to recall a specific incident to exemplify Jesus' trait facilitated behavioral performances associated with the following trait judgment of Jesus in nonreligious subjects but not in Christians. Experiment 2 showed that, for nonreligious subjects, trait judgments of both government and religious leaders resulted in enhanced functional connectivity between MPFC and posterior parietal cortex (PPC)/precuneus compared with self judgment. For Christian subjects, however, the functional connectivity between MPFC and PPC/precuneus differentiated between trait judgments of the government leader and the self but not between trait judgments of Jesus and the self. Our findings suggest that Christian belief and practice modulate the neurocognitive processes of the religious leader so that trait judgment of Jesus engages increased employment of semantic trait summary but decreased memory retrieval of behavioral episodes. Hum Brain Mapp, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Caloric Restriction Experience Reprograms Stress and Orexigenic Pathways and Promotes Binge Eating

Long-term weight management by dieting has a high failure rate. Pharmacological targets have focused on appetite reduction, although less is understood as to the potential contributions of the stress state during dieting in long-term behavioral modification. In a mouse model of moderate caloric restriction in which a 10–15% weight loss similar to human dieting is produced, we examined physiological and behavioral stress measures. After 3 weeks of restriction, mice showed significant increases in immobile time in a tail suspension test and stress-induced corticosterone levels. Increased stress was associated with brain region-specific alterations of corticotropin-releasing factor expression and promoter methylation, changes that were not normalized with refeeding. Similar outcomes were produced by high-fat diet withdrawal, an additional component of human dieting. In examination of long-term behavioral consequences, previously restricted mice showed a significant increase in binge eating of a palatable high-fat food during stress exposure. Orexigenic hormones, melanin-concentrating hormone (MCH) and orexin, were significantly elevated in response to the high-fat diet only in previously restricted mice. Furthermore, administration of the MCH receptor-1 antagonist GSK-856464 [4-(4-ethyl-5-methylsulfanyl-1,2,4-triazol-3-yl)pyridine] significantly reduced total caloric intake in these mice during high-fat access. These results reveal reprogramming of key central pathways involved in regulating stress responsivity and orexigenic drives by moderate caloric restriction experience. In humans, such changes would be expected to reduce treatment success by promoting behaviors resulting in weight regain, and suggest that management of stress during dieting may be beneficial in long-term maintenance.
Bennett clocking of quantum-dot cellular automata and the limits to binary logic scaling

We examine power dissipation in different clocking schemes for molecular quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) circuits. ‘Landauer clocking’ involves the adiabatic transition of a molecular cell from the null state to an active state carrying data. Cell layout creates devices which allow data in cells to interact and thereby perform useful computation. We perform direct solutions of the equation of motion for the system in contact with the thermal environment and see that Landauer’s Principle applies: one must dissipate an energy of at least kBT per bit only when the information is erased. The ideas of Bennett can be applied to keep copies of the bit information by echoing inputs to outputs, thus embedding any logically irreversible circuit in a logically reversible circuit, at the cost of added circuit complexity. A promising alternative which we term ‘Bennett clocking’ requires only altering the timing of the clocking signals so that bit information is simply held in place by the clock until a computational block is complete, then erased in the reverse order of computation. This approach results in ultralow power dissipation without additional circuit complexity. These results offer a concrete example in which to consider recent claims regarding the fundamental limits of binary logic scaling.
The parallel approach to force/position control of robotic manipulators

Forcdposition control strategies provide an effective framework to deal with tasks involving interaction with the environment. In this paper the parallel approach to forcdposition control of robotic manipulators is presented. It allows a com- plete use of the available sensor measurements by operating the control action in a full-dimensional space without using selection matrices. Conflicting situations between the position and force tasks are managed using a priority strategy: the force control loop is designed to prevail over the position control loop. This choice ensures limited deviations from the prescribed force tra- jectory in every situation, guaranteeing automatic recovery from unplanned collisions. A dynamic foreelposition parallel control law is presented and its performance in presence of an elastic environment is analyzed; simplification of the dynamic control law is also discussed leading to a PID-type parallel controller. Two case studies are worked out that show the effectiveness of the approach in application to an industrial robot.
Reasoning with Realistic Disjunctives

The research reported here investigated how people interpret and reason with disjunctive statements. Experiment 1 demonstrated a general preference for exclusive over inclusive interpretations, although this varied as a function of the context in which the statement occurred, and there were some contexts in which other, quite different, interpretations were possible. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that the logical inferences subjects would draw from disjunctive statements also varied with context. It is concluded that or permits a number of different interpretations, which are determined by contextual cues. Previous research may have underestimated disjunctive reasoning performance by using contexts that lead to non-logical responses; certainly in the present experiments reasoning was generally accurate given the interpretation adopted.
The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox in the Brain: The Transferred Potential

Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) correlations between human brains are studied to verify if the brain has a macroscopic quantum component. Pairs of subjects were allowed to interact and were then separated inside semisilent Faraday chambers 14.5 m apart when their EEG activity was registered. Only one subject of each pair was stimulated by lOO flashes. When the stimulated subject showed distinct evoked potentials, the nonstimulated subject showed "transferred potentials" similar to those evoked in the stimulated subject. Control subjects showed no such transferred potentials. The transferred potentials demonstrate brain-to-brain nonlocal EPR correlation between brains, supporting the brain's quantum nature at the macrolevel.
USP18 downregulation in peripheral blood mononuclear cells predicts nonresponse to interferon-based triple therapy in patients with chronic hepatitis C, genotype 1: a pilot study

Background and aims Patients with advanced liver fibrosis owing to chronic hepatitis C virus genotype 1 represent a difficult-to-treat group even if a protease inhibitor is added to pegylated interferon alpha and ribavirin. Therefore, only patients with a high chance of cure should be treated with interferon-based treatment. Patients and methods Expression of IFNG, IFNLR1, and interferon-sensitive genes CXCL9, IFI16, IFI27, ISG15, and USP18 in peripheral blood mononuclear cells was assessed before and during the initial 12 weeks of treatment. The studied group consisted of 26 treatment-experienced patients of average age of 50 years with advanced liver fibrosis compared to seven healthy volunteers. Fourteen patients were treated with pegylated interferon alpha 2b, ribavirin, and boceprevir and 12 patients with telaprevir. The overall sustained virological response (SVR) rate was 69% (18/26). Results A significant difference in the initial expression (median, interquartile range [IQR]) of CXCL9 2.9×, IQR: 1.7–12.4 vs 1.2×, IQR: 0.5–1.8; (P=0.01) IFNG 7.3×, IQR: 1.7–32.6 vs 0.7×, IQR: 0.4–1.3; P=0.002 and USP18 3.7×, IQR: 2.1–7.7 vs 1.4×, IQR: 0.9–1.6; (P=0.03) was found between the SVR and non-SVR groups. Expression of all analyzed genes was progressively increasing during the first 12 weeks of therapy, but a significant difference between SVR and non-SVR group was found only in USP18 expression at week 12 (P=0.001). Initial expression of four genes predicted SVR in univariate analysis (CXCL9 [OR: 12.00, 95% CI: 1.21–118.89], IFI27 [OR: 12.00, 95% CI: 1.21–118.89], IFNG [OR: 10.50, 95% CI: 1.50–73.67], USP18 [OR: 21.00, 95% CI: 2.05–215.18]). In multivariate analysis, only the initial expression of USP18 was identified as a predictor of SVR (P=0.047). Conclusion Initial expression of USP18 and the course of its activation could be a reliable predictor of SVR achievement.
Switching Attention Within Working Memory is Reflected in the P3a Component of the Human Event-Related Brain Potential

The flexible access to information in working memory is crucial for adaptive behavior. It is assumed that this is realized by switching the focus of attention within working memory. Switching of attention is mirrored in the P3a component of the human event-related brain potential (ERP) and it has been argued that the processes reflected by the P3a are also relevant for selecting information within working memory. The aim of the present study was to further evaluate whether the P3a mirrors genuine switching of attention within working memory by applying an object switching task: Participants updated a memory list of four digits either by replacing one item with another digit or by processing the stored digit. ERPs were computed separately for two types of trials: (1) trials in which an object was repeated and (2) trials in which a switch to a new object was required in order to perform the task. Object-switch trials showed increased response times compared with repetition trials in both task conditions. In addition, switching costs were increased in the processing compared with the replacement condition. Pronounced P3a’s were obtained in switching trials but there were no difference between the two updating tasks (replacement or processing). These results were qualified by the finding that the magnitude of the visual location shift also affects the ERPs in the P3a time window. Taken together, the present pattern of results suggest that the P3a reflects an initial process of selecting information in working memory but not the memory updating itself.
Quantitative evaluation of edge detectors using the minimum kernel variance criterion

In this paper, we introduce a new criterion for analytically evaluating different edge detectors (both gradient and zero-crossing based methods) without the need of ground-truth information. The criterion is based on the observation that most edge detectors make a decision of whether a pixel is an edgel or not based on the result of convolution of the image with a kernel. The variance of the convolution output therefore directly affects the performance of an edge detector. We show how to compute the variance of a convolution. We then describe results from comparing four well-known edge detectors using the proposed criterion.
Cardiac Function Following Traumatic Brain Injury.

To the Editor: We read with great interest in a recent issue of Critical Care Medicine by Krishnamoorthy et al (1), investigating early cardiac dysfunction following traumatic brain injury (TBI). After moderate-severe TBI, the authors observed that 1) systolic dysfunction occurred in 22% of patients, 2) younger age and lower admission Glasgow The author replies: We agree with the comments by Dr. Regal (1) that taking into consideration the underlying clinical condition and the speed of delirium resolution will provide opportunities for practitioners to appreciate the full spectrum of acute brain dysfunction. At present, we do not have a consistent etiopathologic definition of ICU delirium; although there is available evidence that delirium predisposed by different contributors portends different prognoses to patients (2). As shown by Patel et al (2), patients whose delirium resolve with a sedation holiday classified as rapidly reversible, sedation-related delirium had fewer ventilator days (p < 0.001), ICU days (p = 0.001), and hospital days (p < 0.001), compared with the patients with persistent delirium. This is an area of active research, and further work will shed light on how to better classify and characterize these patients. We believe though that use of the Confusion Assessment Method for the ICU-7 (CAM-ICU-7) Delirium Severity Scale (3), recently published in Critical Care Medicine, will help in these efforts. CAM-ICU-7 could provide an easy reference for busy clinicians to clinically determine if the delirium severity is on an upward or downward trajectory. Consistent use of the CAM-ICU-7 could identify both the resolution and the fluctuation without any additional time allocation. Additionally, an easily utilizable ICU delirium severity scale could help the research community to further answer the excellent points raised by Dr. Regal (1). Dr. Khan received support for article research from the National Institutes of Health.
A new systolic array for discrete Fourier transform

An approach for realizing the N-point discrete Fourier transform (DFT) of an input sequence is presented. It is then combined with H.T. King's (1981) approach to construct a two-dimensional array for computing the two-dimensional DFT. This mixed model takes stream input and produces stream output. In addition, no extra I/O time delay is required before performing the row (column) transform of the two-dimensional DFT. >
STABILITY and SOLID-TIMI 52: Lipoprotein associated phospholipase A2 (Lp-PLA2) as a biomarker or risk factor for cardiovascular diseases

Lipoprotein associated phospholipase A2 (Lp-PLA2) - an enzyme with several pro-inflammatory properties - has been hypothesized to be involved in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis and plaque vulnerability. Lp-PLA2 activity has been demonstrated to be an independent predictor of coronary heart disease (CHD) and ischemic stroke. However, it has been recently reported that carriers of loss of function variants in PLA2G7 gene (encoding Lp-PLA2) had no lower CHD risk than non-carriers. The Stabilization of Atherosclerotic Plaque by Initiation of Darapladib Therapy (STABILITY), and the Stabilization of Plaque Using Darapladib - Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction 52 (SOLID-TIMI 52) studies are two phase III, randomized, placebo-controlled, clinical trials that were conducted to evaluate the clinical efficacy and safety of the Lp-PLA2 inhibitor (darapladib), against a background of optimal medical therapy, in patients with stable CHD and acute coronary syndrome, respectively. In both studies, darapladib failed to reduce the risk of major coronary events as compared to placebo. In addition, darapladib was associated with significantly higher rates of drug discontinuation, and adverse side effects such as diahrrea and malodorous feces, urine, and skin, as compared to placebo. These data suggest that Lp-PLA2 may be a biomarker of vascular inflammation rather than a causal pathway of cardiovascular (CV) diseases. It also challenges the notion that inhibition of Lp-PLA2 is a worthwhile approach in patients with CHD. Alternate therapies that target inflammation are awaited to reduce residual risk in patients with CV diseases.
Renshaw cell interneuron specialization is controlled by a temporally restricted transcription factor program

The spinal cord contains a diverse array of physiologically distinct interneuron cell types that subserve specialized roles in somatosensory perception and motor control. The mechanisms that generate these specialized interneuronal cell types from multipotential spinal progenitors are not known. In this study, we describe a temporally regulated transcriptional program that controls the differentiation of Renshaw cells (RCs), an anatomically and functionally discrete spinal interneuron subtype. We show that the selective activation of the Onecut transcription factors Oc1 and Oc2 during the first wave of V1 interneuron neurogenesis is a key step in the RC differentiation program. The development of RCs is additionally dependent on the forkhead transcription factor Foxd3, which is more broadly expressed in postmitotic V1 interneurons. Our demonstration that RCs are born, and activate Oc1 and Oc2 expression, in a narrow temporal window leads us to posit that neuronal diversity in the developing spinal cord is established by the composite actions of early spatial and temporal determinants.