Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of perioperative administration of ropivacaine with epinephrine on postoperative pediatric adenotonsillectomy recovery.

OBJECTIVES To determine whether perioperative administration of ropivacaine hydrochloride with epinephrine decreases postoperative pain following adenotonsillectomy and to determine the pharmacokinetics of ropivacaine following injection. DESIGN Prospective, randomized, double-blind clinical trial. SETTING University pediatric ambulatory center. PARTICIPANTS A total of 130 children, aged 2 to 12 years, undergoing adenotonsillectomy. INTERVENTION Patients received injections, in the tonsillar fossae, of isotonic sodium chloride solution or 0.5% ropivacaine hydrochloride with epinephrine immediately following tonsillectomy. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Modified objective pain score, time to 100 mL of oral intake, serial plasma ropivacaine levels, use of analgesics, incidence of retching and emesis, and other symptoms. RESULTS Fifty-three patients (80%) in the ropivacaine group had detectable plasma levels in at least 3 of the 4 measurement time periods. The mean +/- SD peak concentration (C(max)) was 0.71 +/- 0.33 micro g/mL and the half-life was 0.96 hours. The average modified objective pain scores over all time points favored the placebo group (P =.06 test of between-subjects effects). Similarly, the average behavior score over time favored the placebo group (P =.046 test of between-subjects effects). Neck pain was better in the placebo group when averaged over postoperative days 1, 3, 7, and 14 (P =.04). The percentage of patients who had retching in the recovery room was greater in the ropivacaine group (41% vs 19%, P =.006). CONCLUSIONS The injection of 0.5% ropivacaine with epinephrine immediately following adenotonsillectomy results in a measurable plasma level. Ropivacaine with epinephrine injection does not reduce pain postoperatively and adversely affects behavior scores, neck pain scores, and retching frequency compared with placebo. Ropivacaine with epinephrine injection for postoperative analgesia is not recommended for this patient population.
Ligand-Mediated Assembly and Real-Time Cellular Dynamics of Estrogen Receptor α-Coactivator Complexes in Living Cells

ABSTRACT Studies with live cells demonstrate that agonist and antagonist rapidly (within minutes) modulate the subnuclear dynamics of estrogen receptor α (ER) and steroid receptor coactivator 1 (SRC-1). A functional cyan fluorescent protein (CFP)-taggedlac repressor-ER chimera (CFP-LacER) was used in live cells to discretely immobilize ER on stably integratedlac operator arrays to study recruitment of yellow fluorescent protein (YFP)-steroid receptor coactivators (YFP–SRC-1 and YFP-CREB binding protein [CBP]). In the absence of ligand, YFP–SRC-1 is found dispersed throughout the nucleoplasm, with a surprisingly high accumulation on the CFP-LacER arrays. Agonist addition results in the rapid (within minutes) recruitment of nucleoplasmic YFP–SRC-1, while antagonist additions diminish YFP–SRC-1–CFP-LacER associations. Less ligand-independent colocalization is observed with CFP-LacER and YFP-CBP, but agonist-induced recruitment occurs within minutes. The agonist-induced recruitment of coactivators requires helix 12 and critical residues in the ER–SRC-1 interaction surface, but not the F, AF-1, or DNA binding domains. Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching indicates that YFP–SRC-1, YFP-CBP, and CFP-LacER complexes undergo rapid (within seconds) molecular exchange even in the presence of an agonist. Taken together, these data suggest a dynamic view of receptor-coregulator interactions that is now amenable to real-time study in living cells.
UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) When the spell is broken: gentrification, urban tourism and privileged discontent in the Amsterdam canal district

Expansion of urban tourism in historic districts in European cities is putting increasing pressure on these areas as places to live. In Amsterdam, an ever-growing number of tourists visit the famous canal district, which also forms the home of a group of long-term, upper-middle-class residents. While such residents are generally depicted as instigators of urban transformation, in this case, they are on the receiving end. Bringing together the literature on the socio-spatial impact of tourism, belonging and the lived experience of place, this article explores the changing relationship between these established residents and their neighbourhood and provides insight into their growing sense of discontent and even powerlessness in the face of neighbourhood change.
Relationship between serum valproate and lithium levels and efficacy and tolerability in bipolar maintenance therapy

Background. In spite of widespread recognition of the importance of maintenance treatment for bipolar disorder, there are relatively few available well-designed clinical trials that have provided rigorous evidence for the efficacy of specific agents. One approach used effectively in analyses of lithium studies has been the stratification of efficacy and tolerability results based on serum drug concentrations. Therefore, we conducted a similar analysis of the efficacy of divalproex or lithium, based on serum concentrations in the maintenance treatment of bipolar I disorder in a recent 12-month placebo-controlled trial. Methods. This was a post-hoc analysis of results obtained in a 12-month, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of divalproex and lithium involving 372 patients (intent-to-treat). The patient set was stratified into four therapeutic drug concentration ranges (Non-therapeutic, Low Therapeutic, Medium Therapeutic, and High Therapeutic) for both divalproex and lithium. Efficacy measures were Kaplan–Meier survival analyses of time to discontinuation for any reason, time to discontinuation for a protocol-defined manic episode, and time to discontinuation for a manic or depressive episode. Results. Significant differences between divalproex at the Medium Therapeutic range (75–99.9 µg/ml) and placebo were demonstrated in Kaplan–Meier survival results for discontinuation for any reason (median survival time: divalproex, 8 months; placebo, 4 months; P<0.05) and for discontinuation for a manic or depressive episode (median survival time: divalproex, 8 months; placebo, 3 months, P=0.003). At 12 months, the proportion of divalproex-treated patients (Medium Therapeutic range) who did not discontinue for a protocol-defined manic episode (85%) was higher than the proportion of lithium (Medium Therapeutic range; 70%) or placebo-treated (83%) patients. Conclusions. Divalproex at the Medium Therapeutic range provided significantly better bipolar maintenance treatment response than placebo in survival analyses, suggesting a possible serum concentration target range for clinicians in providing optimal treatment response. The value of this analytic approach, used for the first time here for divalproex, is discussed, along with a call for further research into optimal therapeutic drug levels.
The Effect of Heparan Sulfate Application on Bone Formation during Distraction Osteogenesis

Bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) are recognized for their ability to induce bone formation in vivo and in vitro. Their osteogenic and osteoinductive properties are tightly regulated by the secretion of specific BMP antagonists, which have been shown to physically bind and sometimes be blocked by the extracellular proteoglycan heparan sulphate side chains (from hereon referred to as HS). The purpose of this study was to investigate if local application of 5 µg of HS proteoglycan to a bone regenerate site in a mouse model of distraction osteogenesis (DO) can accelerate bone healing and affect the expression of key members of the BMP signaling pathway. DO was performed on the right tibia of 115 adult male wild-type mice. At mid-distraction (day 11), half the group was injected locally with 5 µg of HS, while the other half was injected with saline. The mice were sacrificed at 2 time-points: mid-consolidation (34 days) and full consolidation (51 days). The distracted tibial zone was then collected for analysis by μCT, radiology, biomechanical testing, immunohistochemistry, and histology. While μCT data showed no statistically significant difference in bone formation, the results of biomechanical testing in stiffness and ultimate force were significantly lower in the HS-injected bones at 51 days, compared to controls. Immunohistochemistry results also suggested a decrease in expression of several key members of the BMP signaling pathway at 34 days. Furthermore, wound dehiscence and infection rates were significantly elevated in the HS group compared to the controls, which resulted in a higher rate of euthanasia in the treatment group. Our findings demonstrate that exogenous application of 5 µg of HS in the distracted gap of a murine model had a negative impact on bone and wound healing.
Influence of the Tropics on the Southern Annular Mode

AbstractPerturbations in the southern annular mode (SAM) are shown to be significantly correlated with SST anomalies in the central tropical Pacific during austral winter and SST anomalies in the eastern tropical Pacific during austral summer. The SAM signature in the Pacific sector resembles a tropically forced Rossby wave train, the so-called Pacific–South American pattern, while the signature in the Indian Ocean sector is a zonally elongated meridional dipole. Thus, the SAM contains strong zonally asymmetric variability and tends to behave differently in the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, with internal dynamics prevailing in the Indian Ocean sector and the forced response to tropical SST anomalies exerting a strong influence in the Pacific sector. The tropically forced component of the SAM in the Pacific sector is related to a geographically fixed active Rossby wave source to the east of Australia within the core of the subtropical jet. In addition to the well-documented positive trend in summer, the.
Increased bone density after recombinant human growth hormone (GH) therapy in adults with isolated GH deficiency.

The physiological role of GH in the adult skeleton is unknown. In this study, 12 adults (10 males and 2 females) with isolated GH deficiency were treated with GH as a single daily sc injection (0.125 IU/kg.week for the first 4 weeks and subsequently at 0.25 IU/kg.week) for 1 yr in a double blind, placebo-controlled manner. Bone mineral density of the spine (T12-L3) was measured by quantitative computed tomography, and bone mineral content (BMC) of the forearm by single photon absorptiometry at entry into the study and subsequently at 6 monthly intervals. All baseline bone mineral measurements were reduced compared with those in an age- and sex-matched control population. In the treatment cohort, quantitative computed tomography spinal trabecular bone mineral density increased by 7.8 g/L after 6 months of GH replacement (mean +/- SEM, 151.7 +/- 6.0 vs. 159.5 +/- 5.9 g/L; n = 11; P < 0.01), and this increment was maintained at 1 yr (160.7 +/- 6.3 g/L). Proximal forearm (cortical) BMC showed no change after 6 months of GH replacement, but there was a significant increase of 0.06 g/cm after 12 months of GH replacement (from 1.38 +/- 0.04 to 1.44 +/- 0.04 g/cm; n = 12; P < 0.05). Distal forearm (cortical and trabecular) BMC also increased significantly during the study period from 1.46 +/- 0.04 g/cm to 1.52 +/- 0.05 g/cm; n = 12, P < 0.05. No significant changes occurred in bone mineral measurements during 6 months of placebo therapy. Midthigh muscle and fat cross-sectional area increased and decreased, respectively, during the active treatment phase. These results demonstrate that GH plays an important role in maintaining the integrity of the adult skeleton.
Exploring the Use of Electropalatography and Ultrasound in Speech Habilitation

Electropalatography (EPG) and ultrasound have been recently explored as articulatory visual feedback tools in speech habilitation at the University of British Columbia's Interdisciplinary Speech Research Laboratory (UBC, ISRL). Although research studies imply that such tools are effective in speech habilitation, most studies have utilized trained listeners. To determine the impact of speech habilitation on everyday communication, it is also important to include everyday, untrained listeners in the treatment evaluation process. Two everyday listener studies were conducted, using data from two of the exploratory UBC treatment studies. The listeners observed improvement post­ treatment for some but not all speakers or speech targets. More research is needed to determine the relative effectiveness ofEPG and ultrasound in speech habilitation in terms of speaker variables and treatment targets, and in comparison with each other and differenttreatment methods. The current paper has two purposes: (I) to provide an overview ofEPG and ultrasound in speech habilitation, and (2) to present the two preliminary listener studies, suggesting directions for future research and clinical application.
Trajectories of Objectively Measured Physical Activity among Secondary Students in Canada in the Context of a Province-Wide Physical Education Policy: A Longitudinal Analysis

Lower levels of physical activity are associated with childhood obesity. School physical education (PE) policies have been identified as critical to improve child and adolescent physical activity levels but there has been little evaluation of such policies. In the province of Manitoba, Canada, the government implemented a mandatory PE policy in secondary schools designed to increase the daily physical activity levels of adolescents. The objective of this study was to examine the longitudinal changes in and the factors associated with the physical activity trajectories of adolescents in Manitoba during their tenure as secondary school students in the context of this school PE policy. The results found, despite the PE policy, a grade-related decline in the physical activity trajectories of adolescents; however, the decline in physical activity was attenuated among adolescents with low and moderate baseline physical activity compared to adolescents with high baseline physical activity and among adolescents who attended schools in neighbourhoods of low compared to high socioeconomic status. There are several possible explanations for these findings, including the influence of the PE policy on the PA patterns of adolescent subpopulations that tend to be at higher risk for inactivity in both childhood and adult life.
Association Of Surfactant Protein-D With Obesity.

BACKGROUND Obesity is associated with inflammatory diseases and obese individual's poses high risk for infections. Surfactant protein D (SP-D) is an important regulator of immunity and inflammation. Latest studies have suggested that it is also involved in lipid homeostasis and obese subjects have decrease concentration of SP-D as compared to normal weight peoples. The aim of the current study was to elucidate the relationship among serum SP-D and BMI. METHODS This cross sectional study was performed at Dow University of health sciences (DUHS), Karachi. We analysed 90 obese and non-obese subjects for serum SP-D concentration. SP-D was estimated by ELISA. Data was analysed by SPSS 16. Mean SP-D level and demographical variables between the groups were compared by t test, Associations of SP-D with BMI investigated by regression analysis. RESULTS obese subjects have significant lower levels of Serum SP-D than non-obese and negatively associated with BMI in both genders (p=0.000). CONCLUSIONS This study concluded that obese subjects have lower concentration of SP-D as compare to non-obese and there is an inverse association between the SP-D and BMI.
Maximum relaxation rate of the diaphragm during weaning from mechanical ventilation.

BACKGROUND--The maximum relaxation rate (MRR; percentage fall in pressure/10 ms) of oesophageal (POES) and transdiaphragmatic (PDI) pressure slows under conditions of loaded breathing, and has been measured previously in normal subjects. MRR has not been measured in intubated patients weaning from mechanical ventilation. METHODS--Five postoperative patients who were expected to wean and nine patients who had previously failed were studied. POES and PDI MRR, peak oesophageal pressure during spontaneous breathing, maximum oesophageal pressure, and the inspiratory duty cycle were measured at rest during mechanical ventilation, in the first two minutes of spontaneous breathing, and after reventilation in those patients who failed, or before extubation in those patients who succeeded. RESULTS--At rest POES MRR in intubated patients had a range of 5.6-11 and PDI MRR 6.9-10.0, with a coefficient of variation of 9.9% and 7.3% respectively. POES and PDI MRR were similar before and after extubation in five postoperative patients, and POES MRR was reflected by endotracheal MRR measured at the airway. In five patients who failed to wean POES and PDI MRR slowed by 47% and 44%, and fully recovered after 10 minutes reventilation. In four patients who were successfully weaned MRR was unchanged during spontaneous breathing. At the time when MRR decreased, the respiratory muscles were heavily loaded in relation to their strength. CONCLUSIONS--Weaning failure occurs when the applied load exceeds the capacity of the respiratory muscles, and this is associated with a slowing of respiratory muscle MRR.
Mixed Feelings: Multimodal Perception of Virtual Roughness

The texture of a real or virtual surface can both increase the sense of realism of an object as well as convey information about an object's identity, type, location, function, and so on. It is important therefore that interface designers understand the range of textural information available to them through current interaction devices in virtual environments. Previous work (e.g. [2]), has examined the perceived roughness of a set of force feedback generated textures (conveyed via a PHANToM device) in order to work towards such an understanding. In doing so, this work has highlighted the possible perceptual limitations involved in reliably and confidently judging the relative roughness of a set of haptic textures. How many textures can we distinguish between for example and how likely is it that we reliably judge any one as rougher than, less rough than or the same as the other? The work presented here empirically investigates the effects of adding auditory textural cues to the existing haptic textures. Does the existence of an additional cue (in the auditory modality) change the answers to our questions above for example? We propose that the addition of auditory stimuli will increase the potential range and resolution of texture roughness percepts available through force feedback interaction.
An Online Optimization Framework for Distributed Fog Network Formation With Minimal Latency

Fog computing is emerging as a promising paradigm to perform distributed, low-latency computation by jointly exploiting the radio and computing resources of end-user devices and cloud servers. However, the dynamic and distributed formation of local fog networks is highly challenging due to the unpredictable arrival and departure of neighboring fog nodes. Therefore, a given fog node must properly select a set of neighboring nodes and intelligently offload its computational tasks to this set of neighboring fog nodes and the cloud in order to achieve low-latency transmission and computation. In this paper, the problem of fog network formation and task distribution is jointly investigated while considering a hybrid fog-cloud architecture. The overarching goal is to minimize the maximum communication and computation latency by enabling a given fog node to form a suitable fog network and optimize the task distribution under uncertainty on the arrival process of neighboring fog nodes. To solve this problem, a novel online optimization framework is proposed, in which the neighboring nodes are selected by using a threshold-based online algorithm that uses a target competitive ratio, defined as the ratio between the latency of the online algorithm and the offline optimal latency. The proposed framework repeatedly updates its target competitive ratio and optimizes the distribution of the fog node’s computational tasks in order to minimize latency. The simulation results show that, for specific settings, the proposed framework can successfully select a set of neighboring nodes while reducing latency by up to 19.25% compared with a baseline approach based on the well-known online secretary framework. The results also show how, using the proposed framework, the computational tasks can be properly offloaded between the fog network and a remote cloud server in different network settings.
Designing EPCIS through Linked Data and REST principles

The EPC Information Service (EPCIS) is a set of specifications defined by the EPC Global Network and aimed at enabling heterogeneous applications to share EPC-related data, both within and across enterprises. The standard specifies the EPCIS Capture and Query Interfaces by leveraging HTTP binding and WS* specifications. In this paper we investigate how some emerging Web of Data paradigms could be exploited in order to ease the collaboration and exchange of EPC-related data across enterprises. These paradigms, namely Linked Data and the REST architectural style, are relatively recent and, while both have roots on the Web, their mutual relation is still matter of study. Here we discuss how they can complement each other to ease the collaboration and information exchange across enterprises in the EPCIS domain. For such a purpose we refer to a framework, called InterDataNet (IDN) that we conceived and developed to ease the realization of the Web of Data vision by leveraging complementary aspects of Linked Data and RESTful services. We then discuss how IDN capabilities can be exploited to actually build collaborative web-based applications based on EPCIS-related data exchange and handling.
On the effectiveness of enforcement of insider trading laws

Empirical research has found significant effects of enforcement of insider trading laws on cost of equity. The reduction in cost of eq uity is expected when the adverse selection problem (i.e. the degree of insider trading) decrea ses. In this paper we model the game between a supervisor enforcing insider trading legi slation and a trader possibly trading on inside information. The resulting equilibrium strat egies illustrate when enforcement is indeed effective or, equivalently, when insiders are somet i s deterred from using their inside information and how further reduction in insider tr ading can be achieved. We discuss legal and economic implications as well as implications f or empirical research. It appears that equilibrium strategies exist with enforcement but w here all insider information is still used. This may be important for empirical research. We al so find situations where improvements in the quality of the risk analysis system of the supe rvisor make the degree of insider trading increase. Furthermore, we find that reducing the am ount of inside information for example by tighter disclosure requirements not necessarily lea ds to less insider trading since this effect may be offset by a more frequent use of inside info rmation so that the degree of insider trading does not change.