Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of dobutamine on left ventricular functional geometry after acute myocardial infarction: experimental study.

INTRODUCTION Acute myocardial infarction causes left ventricular (LV) remodelling, which forms the substrate for its early and late complications. The aim of this experimental study was to evaluate the acute changes in LV functional geometry after acute myocardial infarction using echocardiography and to investigate the effect of continuous intravenous dobutamine administration on those changes. METHODS In 22 pigs acute myocardial infarction was induced by ligation of the anterior descending branch of the left coronary artery. In 11 animals dobutamine was administered at a rate of 5 microg/kg/min (Group B), while the remainder (Group A) served as controls. Before infarction and 5, 15, 45 and 75 minutes after, the fractional shortening of the long (FSL) and short (FSS) axes of the LV were measured echocardiographically and the ejection fraction (EF) was calculated. RESULTS In Group A FSL and EF reduced significantly after infarction (p < 0.0001), while FSS increased significantly (p < 0.05). In Group B FSL and EF reduced significantly 5 minutes after infarction and then returned progressively to normal values after 15 min (EF) and 45 min (FSL). FSS did not change significantly during 75 minutes after infarction. CONCLUSIONS Dobutamine, administered at a rate of 5 microg/kg/min during acute experimental anterior myocardial infarction, before the appearance of early complications, may prevent the acute, unfavourable remodelling of the LV, as manifested by a decrease in FSL and EF and a compensatory increase in FSS.
‘But It's Your Job To Be Friendly’: Employees Coping With and Contesting Sexual Harassment from Customers in the Service Sector

This article analyses how employees in the service sector respond to sexual harassment from customers and attempts to explain why this is so. There are only a small number of previous studies examining the issue of customer-perpetrated sexual harassment. Those that have been conducted have detailed the nature and prevalence of sexual harassment from customers, but this research lags behind employee experience and some emerging policy responses to this issue. The extant literature, whilst growing, remains largely limited to documenting the phenomenon. In this article, we attempt to create a deeper analysis of customer-perpetrated harassment by conducting a new review of the literature to develop propositions about how employees respond to it and the factors that influence their responses. These propositions are analysed in relation to a qualitative pilot study with 15 interviewees who had experienced sexual harassment from customers to understand how they reacted and why. The article shows how the social norms and precarious working conditions of the service sector constrain employees from seeking formal redress, leading to the enactment of informal coping strategies and temporary contestations of the situation. This research is important for building our understanding of the influence of workplace context for framing employee responses to customer sexual harassment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Selective Interaction of Syntaxin 1A with KCNQ2: Possible Implications for Specific Modulation of Presynaptic Activity

KCNQ2/KCNQ3 channels are the molecular correlates of the neuronal M-channels, which play a major role in the control of neuronal excitability. Notably, they differ from homomeric KCNQ2 channels in their distribution pattern within neurons, with unique expression of KCNQ2 in axons and nerve terminals. Here, combined reciprocal coimmunoprecipitation and two-electrode voltage clamp analyses in Xenopus oocytes revealed a strong association of syntaxin 1A, a major component of the exocytotic SNARE complex, with KCNQ2 homomeric channels resulting in a ∼2-fold reduction in macroscopic conductance and ∼2-fold slower activation kinetics. Remarkably, the interaction of KCNQ2/Q3 heteromeric channels with syntaxin 1A was significantly weaker and KCNQ3 homomeric channels were practically resistant to syntaxin 1A. Analysis of different KCNQ2 and KCNQ3 chimeras and deletion mutants combined with in-vitro binding analysis pinpointed a crucial C-terminal syntaxin 1A-association domain in KCNQ2. Pull-down and coimmunoprecipitation analyses in hippocampal and cortical synaptosomes demonstrated a physical interaction of brain KCNQ2 with syntaxin 1A, and confocal immunofluorescence microscopy showed high colocalization of KCNQ2 and syntaxin 1A at presynaptic varicosities. The selective interaction of syntaxin 1A with KCNQ2, combined with a numerical simulation of syntaxin 1A's impact in a firing-neuron model, suggest that syntaxin 1A's interaction is targeted at regulating KCNQ2 channels to fine-tune presynaptic transmitter release, without interfering with the function of KCNQ2/3 channels in neuronal firing frequency adaptation.
Structured Treatment Interruptions and Low Doses of IL-2 in Patients with Primary HIV Infection. Inflammatory, Virological and Immunological Outcomes

Background Interventions during primary HIV infection (PHI) can modify the clinical course during the chronic phase. The long-term effect of structured treatment interruptions (STI) followed by low doses of interleukin-2 (IL-2) in treated PHI patients is unknown. Methods Twelve PHI patients with viral load (VL) <20 copies/mL, CD4 cells >500 cells/mm3, and CD4/CD8 ratio >1, on antiretroviral therapy (ART) initiated within the first 90 days of infection and continued for at least 12 months were included. They underwent four STI and were then allocated (week 0 of the study) to ART alone or ART plus low doses of IL-2. ART was stopped once VL <20 copies/mL ('final stop'). Primary endpoints were VL<3000 copies/mL and CD4 cells >500 cells/mm3 at 48 weeks; secondary endpoints were immune activation, inflammatory markers until 48 weeks and the time before resuming ART (CD4 <350 cells/mm3 or AIDS) after ‘final stop’, compared between groups. Results Ten out of 12 patients were males, median age was 35 years and the main risk was men-who-have-sex-with-men. Only one out of 12 patients (in the STI group) maintained VL<3000 copies/mL and CD4 cells >500 cells/mm3 without ART at 48 weeks. All other virological and immunological parameters were comparable between groups at week 0, 'final stop' and week 48. However, the proportion of CD8-CD38+ cells, tumor necrosis factor and srIL-2 were higher in the IL-2 group at 'final stop' and week 24. All these differences vanished during follow-up. At 5 years after the final stop 3 out of 6 patients in the IL-2 group and 6 out of 6 patients in the STI group have resumed ART (P = 0.19). Conclusions STI and IL-2 failed to achieve virological control after ART interruption. STI were not deleterious in long-term follow-up, an important issue for eradication and functional cure trials. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02300623
The preventive role of deferoxamine against acute doxorubicin-induced cardiac, renal and hepatic toxicity in rats.

The iron chelating activity of deferoxamine (DFO) has been exploited to obtain protection against the peroxidative damage in rat heart which was induced by the administration of an acute dose of doxorubicin (DXR, 25 mg x kg(-1), i.v. ). The peroxidative lesions were evaluated both biochemically and histopathologically, 48 h after DXR administration. Abnormal biochemical changes including a marked increase in the levels of serum creatine kinase isoenzyme (CK-MB), and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), as well as elevated serum creatinine, blood urea nitrogen and transaminases (ALT and AST) levels were observed. Myocardial tissue from DXR treated rats showed a marked increase in malondialdehyde (MDA) production and depletion of reduced glutathione (GSH) contents. Similar results were also observed in both kidney and liver tissues. Pretreatment of rats with DFO, given i.p. 30 min prior to DXR injection, substantially reduced the peroxidative damage in the myocardium, hepatic and renal tissues and markedly lowered the serum CK-MB, LDH and the other biochemical variables. The protective effects obtained by DFO administration, however, were not complete and did not reach those of the control group. The significant protection against DXR-induced cardiomyopathy by DFO was evident from the histopathological findings observed by light microscopy. DFO at a dosing level equivalent to 10-fold of that of DXR was useful to obtain protective effects. Higher DFO dosing levels did not, however, show more improvement in the DXR-induced cardiotoxicity and at the same time exhibited hepatoxicity which was confirmed by microscopical examination. These results strongly suggest that DFO protects against acute DXR-induced cardiotoxicity in a dose-dependent manner with recognizing the presence of mild DFO-related biochemical and cytological hepatic toxicity.
Expression as Prevention: Modeling the Impact of Family Emotional Expression on the Association between Temperament and Adolescent Substance Use

EXPRESSION AS PREVENTION: MODELING THE IMPACT OF FAMILY EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION ON THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN TEMPERAMENT AND ADOLESCENT SUBSTANCE USE Katherine M. Zinsser, MA George Mason University, 2010 Thesis Director: Susanne A. Denham, Ph.D. At moderate levels, adolescents‟ propensity to take risks is developmentally appropriate; however, some teens go beyond appropriate experimentation and develop dependencies on illicit substances. The connections between difficult temperament and later adolescent behavior problems have been well supported but not all children who display difficult temperaments develop serious behavior or conduct problems. Recently, researchers have turned to examining the home environment and its impact on the development of risky behavior problems such as substance use and abuse. This study examines the emotional environment in the home, temperament, and their connections to the development of substance use problems adolescence. Latent growth curve analyses were conducted using longitudinal data from the National Institute on Child Development‟s Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD) (N=1,364) and revealed an indirect association between effortful control and adolescent use of alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs that is transmitted through the change in positive family emotional expression over time. The inclusion of gender in the model exposed a stable drinking rate for girls across all levels of effortful control, but found that boys who drank tended to be rated lower by mothers on effortful control scales in preschool. The implications of these findings, and the role of prevention interventions in the home throughout childhood, are discussed.
The locus of the orthographic consistency effect in speech recognition: a cross-linguistic study

To address this issue, orthographic effects must be considered as a function of the processing mechanisms tapped by the tasks. In auditory tasks involving metaphonological components, the influence of orthographic knowledge has been consistently observed when the relation between the phonological and the orthographic representations of the stimuli was manipulated. For example, judging that two words rime is faster for orthographically similar pairs like “turn-burn” than with orthographically dissimilar pairs like “turn-learn” [1]. However, evidence is less clear as regards the impact of orthographic knowledge on speech recognition processes. At this stage, we proposed to make a distinction between the prelexical and lexical levels of processing [2, 3, 4]. In our view, the prelexical level is strictly perceptual, involving modular operations that are influenced only by early linguistic experience. Perceptual segmentation of the acoustic representation would be carried out at this level. On the contrary, the lexical or post-perceptual level would involve attentional processes and other sources of knowledge that re-elaborate the output of the first level before it reaches conscious recognition. Orthographic effects in spoken word recognition may arise at either the lexical or the prelexical processing level. Here, we provide information that may allow us to decide betw een these two interpretations.
Naturaliser l'empathie.

L'empathie, capacite a partager les emotions avec autrui, est reconnue comme un puissant moyen de communication interindividuelle et l'un des elements cles dans la relation therapeutique. Elle est au coeur de la perspective humaniste en psychologie clinique, qui est generalement consideree comme la moins scientifique. L'approche naturaliste developpee dans cet article avance l'idee que l'empathie repose sur des mecanismes de traitement de l'information qui ont ete faconnes au cours de l'evolution permettant une communication implicite avec autrui et qui seraient a la base de l'intersubjectivite. Cette perspective s'articule avec les theories de l'esprit (theorie de la simulation et theorie theorique) qui tentent de rendre compte, chez l'homme, de la capacite a comprendre les autres comme des agents intentionnels, c'est-a-dire dotes d'intentions, de desirs et de croyances. Dans ce contexte, l'empathie peut etre consideree comme un processus de simulation necessaire pour comprendre autrui mais pas suffisant pour interpreter son comportement.
Cortical Structures Associated With Sports Participation in Children: A Population-Based Study

ABSTRACT We studied cortical morphology in relation to sports participation and type of sport using a large sample of healthy children (n = 911). Sports participation data was collected through a parent-reported questionnaire. Magnetic resonance scans were acquired, and different morphological brain features were quantified. Global volumetric measures were not associated with sports participation. We observed thicker cortex in motor and premotor areas associated with sports participation. In boys, team sports participation, relative to individual sports, was related to thinner cortex in prefrontal brain areas involved in the regulation of behaviors. This study showed a relationship between sports participation and brain maturation.
Noise tunable clock delayed domino logic using latched keeper

In this work, domino logic with a latched keeper technique is proposed. The circuit, which is used to implement the technique, utilizes a latch with standard domino. By using the simple structure, we can obtain better performance, noise immunity, and lower power consumption. The simulation results for a 65 nm CMOS technology show an improvement between 5% and 55.7% in delay and 8% and 15% in power consumption, over its previous suggestions.
Surrogacy families: parental functioning, parent-child relationships and children's psychological development at age 2.

BACKGROUND Findings are presented of the second phase of a longitudinal study of families created through surrogacy. METHODS At the time of the child's 2nd birthday, 37 surrogacy families were compared with 48 egg donation families and 68 natural conception families on standardised interview and questionnaire measures of the psychological well-being of the parents, parent-child relationships and the psychological functioning of the child. RESULTS The surrogacy mothers showed more positive parent-child relationships, and the surrogacy fathers reported lower levels of parenting stress, than their natural conception counterparts. The surrogacy children did not differ from the natural conception children with respect to socio-emotional or cognitive development. CONCLUSIONS Surrogacy does not appear to impact negatively on parenting or child development in families with 2-year-old children.
Predictors of attempts to stop smoking and their success in adult general population samples: a systematic review.

AIMS To identify the predictors of attempts to stop smoking and the predictors of quit attempt success in adult general population samples. METHODS We performed an electronic search of EMBASE, Pubmed, Web of Science, PsychINFO and the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group specialized register for articles that examined, in prospective adult general population samples, predictors of quit attempts and the success of quit attempts. Experts were contacted for knowledge of other relevant studies. Eight studies met the inclusion criteria and results were extracted independently by two researchers. RESULTS There was considerable methodological heterogeneity between studies. Motivational factors dominated the prediction of quit attempts, whereas only cigarette dependence consistently predicted success after an attempt had been made. Social grade also appeared to predict success but was only examined in two studies. None of the other socio-demographic factors consistently predicted making a quit attempt or success. CONCLUSIONS Population-level studies from a number of countries show that past quit attempts and measures of motivation to stop are highly predictive of quit attempts, whereas only measures of dependence are consistently predictive of success of those attempts. Gender, age and marital status and educational level are not related consistently to quit attempts or quit success across countries.
(Dis)owning Bikram: Decolonizing vernacular and dewesternizing restructuring in the yoga wars

ABSTRACT Undertaking analysis in the area of critical yoga studies, this article identifies two strategies of anticolonial resistance to Bikram Choudhury's copyrighting of a sequence of twenty-six yoga poses. First, it examines decolonial vernacular, which contests Western commodification of yoga through the use and misuse of terms and phrases, such as “yoga piracy” and “cultural patents,” derived from intellectual property rights, international human rights, and cultural property regimes. Second, it considers dewesternizing restructuring emerging from the creation of the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library, a database of information on yogic practice and medicine, which uses non-Western classification systems to interrupt the legal and economic structures through which patents and copyrights are enunciated. Together, these anticolonial strategies force intellectual property rights regimes to integrate Otherness, making space for the recognition of Indian agency in knowledge production.
Non-negative source-filter dynamical system for speech enhancement

Model-based speech enhancement methods, which rely on separately modeling the speech and the noise, have been shown to be powerful in many different problem settings. When the structure of the noise can be arbitrary, which is often the case in practice, modelbased methods have to focus on developing good speech models, whose quality will be key to their performance. In this study, we propose a novel probabilistic model for speech enhancement which precisely models the speech by taking into account the underlying speech production process as well as its dynamics. The proposed model follows a source-filter approach where the excitation and filter parts are modeled as non-negative dynamical systems. We present convergence-guaranteed update rules for each latent factor. In order to assess performance, we evaluate our model on a challenging speech enhancement task where the speech is observed under non-stationary noises recorded in a car. We show that our model outperforms state-of-the-art methods in terms of objective measures.
CAPITAL MISALLOCATION AND AGGREGATE FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY

We propose a sectoral–shift theory of aggregate factor productivity for a class of multisector economies with AK technologies and a constant production possibilities frontier. Loans are partly secured by collateral and partly based on reputation. We find that both the growth rate and total factor productivity (TFP) respond to random and persistent endogenous fluctuations in the sectoral distribution of physical capital, which, in turn, responds to reversible exogenous shifts in relative sector productivities. Endogenous debt limits on secured and unsecured loans slow down capital reallocation, preventing the equalization of risk-adjusted equity yields across sectors. Economywide factor productivity and the aggregate growth rate are both negatively correlated with the dispersion of sectoral rates of return, sectoral TFP, and sectoral growth rates. We also find highly volatile limit cycles in economies with small amounts of collateral.
Mobilizing Law in Response to Collective Problems: A Test of Black's Theory of Law

Donald Black's theory of law states that the quantity of law can be explained in terms of stratification, morphology, culture, organization, and social control. Empirical tests of this theory have produced disparate findings. For the most part, previous tests have focused on criminal law and on the use of law to deal with personal problems. In the present study, survey data are used to test the effect of stratification, morphology, culture, organization, and social control on the willingness of people to mobilize law in response to various neighborhood problems. The only strong and consistent finding is that other social control is positively associated with mobilization of law while Black's theory predicts a negative association. We suggest a distinction between societal and personal social control to explain the pattern of results.
Observations on the display and management of emotion in naturally occurring activities: the case of “Hysteria”in calls to 9-1-1

This paper focuses on a particular type of emotional display known in the vernacular as hysteria, and on the socio-logic of such an affective state. Using calls to 9-1-1 as a case study, we discuss the ways in which the notion ofhysteria' is used in a particular occupational milieu and in certain situations to assess and account for a person's conduct. In that milieu, behaviors that might be deemed hysterical are those brought to the foreground by the interactional demands of the work situation. Someone is hysterical when he or she cannot cooperate in the accomplishment of some task required by the situation (as defined by those having or assuming a responsibility for what transpires in that situation). More generally, then, what might be termed a strong expression of sorrow, distress, or grief in one social context may be hysterical in another. Thus hysteria is as much interactional and (in certain institutional or work settings) organizational as emotional.
What are adolescent antecedents to antisocial personality disorder?

BACKGROUND This paper fills a gap because there are very few studies that prospectively predict antisocial personality disorder (APD) from psychopathology earlier in life in clinic-referred samples of young males. METHOD The paper addresses the continuity between conduct disorder (CD) and other forms of psychopathology during ages 13 17 and modified APD at ages 18 and 19 (modified to remove the DSM-IV requirement of pre-existing CD by age 15) in the Developmental Trends Study. RESULTS The results show that 82 90% of APD cases met criteria for CD at least once during ages 13 17, and very few youths who met criteria for ODD during this period progressed to APD without intermediate CD. While CD is a strong predictor of modified APD, when other factors were accounted for in regression analyses, the best predictors were callous/unemotional behaviour, depression and marijuana use. ADHD during ages 13 17 was not significant in the final model. Males with CD during adolescence who progressed to APD tended to commit more violence, as evident from their court records. CONCLUSIONS Implications are discussed for the conceptualization of developmental models leading to APD, the strengthening of relevant symptoms of CD predictive of APD, and preventive and remedial interventions.