Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterization of the A‐type potassium current in murine gastric antrum

A‐type currents are rapidly inactivating potassium currents that operate at subthreshold potentials. A‐type currents have not been reported to occur in the phasic muscles of the stomach. We used conventional voltage‐clamp techniques to identify and characterize A‐type currents in myocytes isolated from the murine antrum. A‐type currents were robust in these cells, with peak current densities averaging 30 pA pF−1 at 0 mV. These currents underwent rapid inactivation with a time constant of 83 ms at 0 mV. Recovery from inactivation at −80 mV was rapid, with a time constant of 252 ms. The A‐type current was blocked by 4‐aminopyridine (4‐AP) and was inhibited by flecainide, with an IC50 of 35 μM. The voltage for half‐activation was −26 mV, while the voltage of half‐inactivation was −65 mV. There was significant activation and incomplete inactivation at potentials positive to −60 mV, which is suggestive of sustained current availability in this voltage range. Under current‐clamp conditions, exposure to 4‐AP or flecainide depolarized the membrane potential by 7‐10 mV. In intact antral tissue preparations, flecainide depolarized the membrane potential between slow waves by 5 mV; changes in slow waves were not evident. The effect of flecainide was not abolished by inhibiting enteric neurotransmission or by blocking delayed rectifier and ATP‐sensitive K+ currents. Transcripts encoding Kv4 channels were detected in isolated antral myocytes by RT‐PCR. Immunocytochemistry revealed intense Kv4.2‐ and Kv4.3‐like immunoreactivity in antral myocytes. These data suggest that the A‐type current in murine antral smooth muscle cells is likely to be due to Kv4 channels. This current contributes to the maintenance of negative resting membrane potentials.
Reduced-Complexity Adaptive Receiver Algorithms for 4G SU-MIMO Systems

In this paper we present reduced-complexity high- performance receivers for single-user MIMO systems that employ coded OFDM transmission with bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM). High data-rate versions of these systems have been proposed for 4G. The near-optimum inner-outer decoder structures for these MIMO/BICM/OFDM/QAM systems have complexity that grows exponentially fast with the number of multiplexed streams (number of transmit antennas) and the number of bits represented by the QAM constellations. We focus on reduced-complexity inner-outer decoder structures that exploit adaptive soft-output M algorithms for soft inner decoding. Our simulations show that these receivers can be systematically optimized to yield substantial complexity reductions without significant loss in performance.
Neuronal Migration Disorders Increase Susceptibility to Hyperthermia‐Induced Seizures in Developing Rats

Summary: Purpose: Retrospective studies suggest that adult patients with intractable epilepsy may have a history of febrile seizures in childhood. Risk factors for a febrile seizure may include the rate of increase in the core temperature (T‐core), its peak (Tmax), the duration of the temperature increase, or an underlying brain pathology. Recently, neuronal migration disorders (NMD) have been diagnosed with increasing frequency in patients with epilepsy, but the link between NMD, febrile seizures, and epilepsy is unclear. We studied rat pups rendered hyperthermic to ascertain the incidence of seizures, mortality, and extent of hippocampal cell loss in each group.
DeepStack: Expert-level artificial intelligence in heads-up no-limit poker

Computer code based on continual problem re-solving beats human professional poker players at a two-player variant of poker. Artificial intelligence masters poker Computers can beat humans at games as complex as chess or go. In these and similar games, both players have access to the same information, as displayed on the board. Although computers have the ultimate poker face, it has been tricky to teach them to be good at poker, where players cannot see their opponents' cards. Moravčík et al. built a code dubbed DeepStack that managed to beat professional poker players at a two-player poker variant called heads-up no-limit Texas hold'em. Instead of devising its strategy beforehand, DeepStack recalculated it at each step, taking into account the current state of the game. The principles behind DeepStack may enable advances in solving real-world problems that involve information asymmetry. Science, this issue p. 508 Artificial intelligence has seen several breakthroughs in recent years, with games often serving as milestones. A common feature of these games is that players have perfect information. Poker, the quintessential game of imperfect information, is a long-standing challenge problem in artificial intelligence. We introduce DeepStack, an algorithm for imperfect-information settings. It combines recursive reasoning to handle information asymmetry, decomposition to focus computation on the relevant decision, and a form of intuition that is automatically learned from self-play using deep learning. In a study involving 44,000 hands of poker, DeepStack defeated, with statistical significance, professional poker players in heads-up no-limit Texas hold’em. The approach is theoretically sound and is shown to produce strategies that are more difficult to exploit than prior approaches.
Tumor Necrosis Factor Is a Therapeutic Target for Immunological Unbalance and Cardiac Abnormalities in Chronic Experimental Chagas' Heart Disease

Background. Chagas disease (CD) is characterized by parasite persistence and immunological unbalance favoring systemic inflammatory profile. Chronic chagasic cardiomyopathy, the main manifestation of CD, occurs in a TNF-enriched milieu and frequently progresses to heart failure. Aim of the Study. To challenge the hypothesis that TNF plays a key role in Trypanosoma cruzi-induced immune deregulation and cardiac abnormalities, we tested the effect of the anti-TNF antibody Infliximab in chronically T. cruzi-infected C57BL/6 mice, a model with immunological, electrical, and histopathological abnormalities resembling Chagas' heart disease. Results. Infliximab therapy did not reactivate parasite but reshaped the immune response as reduced TNF mRNA expression in the cardiac tissue and plasma TNF and IFNγ levels; diminished the frequency of IL-17A+ but increased IL-10+ CD4+ T-cells; reduced TNF+ but augmented IL-10+ Ly6C+ and F4/80+ cells. Further, anti-TNF therapy decreased cytotoxic activity but preserved IFNγ-producing VNHRFTLV-specific CD8+ T-cells in spleen and reduced the number of perforin+ cells infiltrating the myocardium. Importantly, Infliximab reduced the frequency of mice afflicted by arrhythmias and second degree atrioventricular blocks and decreased fibronectin deposition in the cardiac tissue. Conclusions. Our data support that TNF is a crucial player in the pathogenesis of Chagas' heart disease fueling immunological unbalance which contributes to cardiac abnormalities.
Abnormal Lung Function in Adults With Congenital Heart Disease: Prevalence, Relation to Cardiac Anatomy, and Association With Survival

Background— Restrictive lung defects are associated with higher mortality in patients with acquired chronic heart failure. We investigated the prevalence of abnormal lung function, its relation to severity of underlying cardiac defect, its surgical history, and its impact on outcome across the spectrum of adult congenital heart disease. Methods and Results— A total of 1188 patients with adult congenital heart disease (age, 33.1±13.1 years) undergoing lung function testing between 2000 and 2009 were included. Patients were classified according to the severity of lung dysfunction based on predicted values of forced vital capacity. Lung function was normal in 53% of patients with adult congenital heart disease, mildly impaired in 17%, and moderately to severely impaired in the remainder (30%). Moderate to severe impairment of lung function related to complexity of underlying cardiac defect, enlarged cardiothoracic ratio, previous thoracotomy/ies, body mass index, scoliosis, and diaphragm palsy. Over a median follow-up period of 6.7 years, 106 patients died. Moderate to severe impairment of lung function was an independent predictor of survival in this cohort. Patients with reduced force vital capacity of at least moderate severity had a 1.6-fold increased risk of death compared with patients with normal lung function (P=0.04). Conclusions— A reduced forced vital capacity is prevalent in patients with adult congenital heart disease; its severity relates to the complexity of the underlying heart defect, surgical history, and scoliosis. Moderate to severe impairment of lung function is an independent predictor of mortality in contemporary patients with adult congenital heart disease.
Secondary Waste Form Screening Test Results—Cast Stone and Alkali Alumino-Silicate Geopolymer

PNNL is conducting screening tests on the candidate waste forms to provide a basis for comparison and to resolve the formulation and data needs identified in the literature review. This report documents the screening test results on the Cast Stone cementitious waste form and the Geopolymer waste form. Test results suggest that both the Cast Stone and Geopolymer appear to be viable waste forms for the solidification of the secondary liquid wastes to be treated in the ETF. The diffusivity for technetium from the Cast Stone monoliths was in the range of 1.2 × 10-11 to 2.3 × 10-13 cm2/s during the 63 days of testing. The diffusivity for technetium from the Geopolymer was in the range of 1.7 × 10-10 to 3.8 × 10-12 cm2/s through the 63 days of the test. These values compare with a target of 1 × 10-9 cm2/s or less. The Geopolymer continues to show some fabrication issues with the diffusivities ranging from 1.7 × 10-10 to 3.8 × 10-12 cm2/s for the better-performing batch to from 1.2 × 10-9 to 1.8 × 10-11 cm2/s for the poorer-performing batch. In the future more comprehensive and longer term performance testing will be conducted, to further more » evaluate whether or not these waste forms will meet the regulation and performance criteria needed to cost-effectively dispose of secondary wastes. « less
Please Scroll down for Article Social Neuroscience Neural Activation to Babyfaced Men Matches Activation to Babies

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Website Morphing 2.0: Switching Costs, Partial Exposure, Random Exit, and When to Morph

Website morphing infers latent customer segments from clickstreams and then changes websites' look and feel to maximize revenue. The established algorithm infers latent segments from a preset number of clicks and then selects the best “morph” using expected Gittins indices. Switching costs, potential website exit, and all clicks prior to morphing are ignored. We model switching costs, potential website exit, and the potentially differential impact of all clicks to determine when to morph for each customer. Morphing earlier means more customer clicks are based on the optimal morph; morphing later reveals more about the customer's latent segment. We couple this within-customer optimization to between-customer expected Gittins index optimization to determine which website “look and feel” to give to each customer at each click. We evaluate the improved algorithm with synthetic data and with a proof-of-feasibility application to Japanese bank card loans. The proposed algorithm generalizes the established algorithm, is feasible in real time, performs substantially better when tuning parameters are identified from calibration data, and is reasonably robust to misspecification. Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi. org/10.1287/mnsc.2014. 1961 . This paper was accepted by Eric Bradlow, special issue on business analytics.
Qualifying the Expressivity/Efficiency Tradeoff: Reformation-Based Diagnosis

This paper presents an approach to model-based diagnosis that first compiles a first-order system description to a propositional representation, and then solves the diagnostic problem as a linear programming instance. Relevance reasoning is employed to isolate parts of the system that are related to certain observation types and to economically instantiate the theory, while methods from operations research offer promising results to generate near-optimal diagnoses efficiently.
A Machine Learning Approach to Coreference Resolution of Noun Phrases

In this paper, we present a learning approach to coreference resolution of noun phrases in unrestricted text. The approach learns from a small, annotated corpus and the task includes resolving not just a certain type of noun phrase (e.g., pronouns) but rather general noun phrases. It also does not restrict the entity types of the noun phrases; that is, coreference is assigned whether they are of organization, person, or other types. We evaluate our approach on common data sets (namely, the MUC-6 and MUC-7 coreference corpora) and obtain encouraging results, indicating that on the general noun phrase coreference task, the learning approach holds promise and achieves accuracy comparable to that of nonlearning approaches. Our system is the first learning-based system that offers performance comparable to that of state-of-the-art nonlearning systems on these data sets.
Effectiveness of multicomponent interventions on incidence of delirium in hospitalized older patients with hip fracture: a systematic review

ABSTRACT Background: Delirium is the most frequent complication among the hospitalized elderly with hip fracture. Although, delirium is associated with longer hospital stay, higher mortality rates, worse functional outcomes, and higher institutionalization rates yet health service planners have hugely ignored its existence. This review aims to identify the effectiveness of multicomponent interventions to prevent delirium in hospitalized elderly patients with hip fracture. Methods: This review includes experimental, non-experimental, and observational studies. Electronic searches were conducted in MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Embase, and Web of science. Results: After inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied, nine full text articles were included in the review. The studies reported the following effect on delirium: We pooled data regarding incidence of delirium from the three RCTs. The effect was in favor of the intervention group (odds ratio 0.64, 95% CI 0.46–0.87). All three RCTs reported that duration of delirium was shorter in the intervention group than in the usual care group (mean 2.9 vs. 3.1 days, median 3 vs. 4 days, median 5.0 vs. 10.2 days). Four other studies reported on the duration of delirium with Milisen and colleagues reported shorter duration of delirium within the intervention group. Four studies reported on severity of delirium with two research groups reporting significant results. Conclusion: Early engagement of multidisciplinary staff who addresses the risk factors of delirium as soon as the patient presents to the acute care environment is the key element of a successful delirium prevention program. Once delirium had developed, the multicomponent interventions did not appear to make a difference to the duration or severity of delirium.
Warfarin for non-rheumatic atrial fibrillation: five year experience in a district general hospital

Objectives: To assess the long term efficacy of and risks associated with computer aided oral anticoagulation for non-rheumatic atrial fibrillation (NRAF) in a district hospital setting. Design: Retrospective, age stratified, event driven clinical database analysis. Setting: District general hospital. Participants: 739 patients receiving warfarin for NRAF between 1996 and 2001. Patients were selected from an anticoagulation database through appropriate filter settings. Main outcome measures: Anticoagulation control (international normalised ratio (INR)) and hospitalisations for bleeding complications, thromboembolic events, and stroke. Results: Over 1484 patient-years, computer assisted anticoagulation was uncontrolled in 38.3% of patients (INR < 2.0 or > 3.0). No significant differences in INR control were observed with respect to patient age (< 65, 65–75, and > 75 years), although to achieve adequate control of anticoagulation, the frequency of testing increased significantly with age. Annual risks of bleeding complications, thromboembolism, and stroke were 0.76%, 0.35%, and 0.84%, respectively. No significant differences in these events were observed between the three age groups studied. Patients who had thromboembolic events and haemorrhagic complications were significantly more likely to have been under-anticoagulated (INR < 2.0) and over-anticoagulated (INR > 3.0), respectively, at the time of their clinical event. Conclusions: Computerised long term oral anticoagulation for NRAF in a community setting of elderly and diverse patients is safe and effective. Anticoagulation control, bleeding events, thromboembolic episodes, and stroke rates are directly comparable with those reported in major clinical trials. The authors therefore support the strategy of rate control with long term oral anticoagulation for NRAF in general clinical practice.
A Novel Strategy for the Enhancement of Drug Absorption Using a Claudin Modulator

Claudin, a tight junction integral membrane protein and a family of proteins, forms the actual sealing element of the tight junction. There are more than 20 members of the claudin family with different tissue-specific expression and barrier functions. Thus, a family of claudin may be a target for modifying the absorption of drugs. Here, we examined whether modulation of claudin could be used to enhance drug absorption. In the current studies, we used a C-terminal fragment of Clostridium perfringens enterotoxin (C-CPE) as a modulator of claudin-4. The absorption of dextran was assessed in an in situ loop assay in rats to evaluate the absorption-enhancing effects of C-CPE. Treatment with C-CPE dose-dependently enhanced the absorption of dextran (mol. wt. 4000). These effects were not accompanied by injury of the intestinal mucosa as assessed by leakage of lactose dehydrogenase and histological observation. C-CPE was over 400-fold more potent at enhancing dextran absorption than capric acid, a clinically used enhancer of absorption. C-CPE interacted directly with claudin-4, and C-CPE lacking a part the C terminus neither bound claudin-4 nor enhanced absorption in the rat jejunum. These results suggest that C-CPE enhances the absorption of dextran in rat jejunum, apparently through interactions with claudin-4, and this effect may represent an effective novel strategy for enhancing the absorption of drugs.
A framework for frameless TDMA using slot chains

TDMA MAC protocols suffer from two draw-backs that have reduced its practical appeal, especially for infrastructure-less wireless networks: the need for time synchronization, and the use of Jrames. While there has been extensive research towards achieving the required time synchronization, the frames are assumed to be inherent in TDMA. In this paper we present a framework for frameless TDMA based on a new concept we refer to as a slot chain. A slot chain is a series of slots with a starting slot and inter-slot period that is chosen to match a given capacity request. The key challenge in using slot chains instead of frames is ensuring that slot chains representing arbitrary capacity requests are conflict free. We present an algorithm for interleaving slot chains in a conflict-free manner. The algorithm is optimal for a class of requests called geometric and is z-approximate for general requests, where z can be made arbitrarily small. We show that any TDMA MAC protocol can readily replace using frames with using slot chains. Our simulation analysis shows that using slot chains results in much better capacity utilization when traffic is heterogeneous — as much as 100% in some cases.
The cag Pathogenicity Island of Helicobacter pylori Is Disrupted in the Majority of Patient Isolates from Different Human Populations

ABSTRACT The cag pathogenicity island (cag-PAI) is one of the major virulence determinants of Helicobacter pylori. The chromosomal integrity of this island or the lack thereof is speculated to play an important role in the progress of the gastroduodenal pathology caused by H. pylori. We determined the integrity of the cag-PAI by using specific flanking and internally anchored PCR primers to know the biogeographical distribution of strains carrying fully integral cag-PAI with proinflammatory behavior in vivo. Genotypes based on eight selected loci were studied in 335 isolates obtained from eight different geographic regions. The cag-PAI appeared to be disrupted in the majority of patient isolates throughout the world. Conservation of cag-PAI was highest in Japanese isolates (57.1%). However, only 18.6% of the Peruvian and 12% of the Indian isolates carried an intact cag-PAI. The integrity of cag-PAI in European and African strains was minimal. All 10 strains from Costa Rica had rearrangements. Overall, a majority of the strains of East Asian ancestry were found to have intact cag-PAI compared to strains of other descent. We also found that the cagE and cagT genes were less often rearranged (18%) than the cagA gene (27%). We attempted to relate cag-PAI rearrangement patterns to disease outcome. Deletion frequencies of cagA, cagE, and cagT genes were higher in benign cases than in isolates from severe ulcers and gastric cancer. Conversely, the cagA promoter and the left end of the cag-PAI were frequently rearranged or deleted in isolates linked to severe pathology. Analysis of the cag-PAI genotypes with a different biogeoclimatic history will contribute to our understanding of the pathogen-host interaction in health and disease.
A Self-Learning Universal Concept Spotter

We describe the Universal Spotter, a system for identifying in-text references to entities of an arbitrary, user-specified type, such as people, organizations, equipment, products, materials, etc. Starting with some initial seed examples, and a training text corpus, the system generates rules that will find further concepts of the same type. The initial seed information is provided by the user in the form of a typical lexical context in which the entities to be spotted occur, e.g., "the name ends with Co.", or "to the right of produced or made", and so forth, or by simply supplying examples of the concept itself, e.g., Ford Taurus, gas turbine, Big Mac. In addition, negative examples can be supplied, if known. Given a sufficiently large training corpus, an unsupervised learning process is initiated in which the system will: (1) find instances of the sought-after concept using the seed-context information while maximizing recall and precision; (2) find additional contexts in which these entities occur; and (3) expand the initial seed-context with selected new contexts to find even more entities. Preliminary results of creating spotters for organizations and products are discussed.