Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Acid challenge delays gastric pressure adaptation, blocks gastric emptying and stimulates gastric fluid secretion in the rat

Abstract Functional dyspepsia can be associated with impaired gastric relaxation in response to food intake and delayed gastric emptying. In this study, we investigated whether luminal hydrochloric acid (HCl) may reproduce these motor alterations in phenobarbital‐anaesthetized rats via activation of extrinsic neural pathways. Intragastric pressure (IGP) changes induced by a 2‐mL fluid bolus were recorded with an oesophageal catheter, and gastric emptying was determined via the fluid volume recovered from the stomach 30‐min post‐bolus. Experiments involving acute nerve transections or pharmacological blockade of nitric oxide synthesis revealed that the initial increase of IGP after a 0.35 mol L−1 HCl bolus is dampened by duodenogastric and gastrogastric relaxation reflexes depending on vagal and splanchnic pathways as well as nitric oxide. Compared with saline, HCl (0.15–0.5 mol L−1) delayed the subsequent decrease (adaptation) of IGP, inhibited gastric emptying and stimulated gastric fluid secretion as seen in stomachs with ligated pylorus. The acid‐evoked delay in IGP adaptation and inhibition of gastric emptying involved duodenogastric and duodenopyloric extrinsic nerve reflexes, whereas the gastric fluid secretion was independent of the extrinsic innervation. It is proposed that the gastropyloric motor changes induced by luminal acid challenge have a bearing on the motor disturbances underlying functional dyspepsia.
Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment and 2-Year Mortality in Elderly Patients Hospitalized for Heart Failure

Background—In older adults hospitalized for heart failure, a poor score on a comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA) is associated with worse prognosis during hospitalization and at 1 month after discharge. However, the association between the CGA score and long-term mortality is uncertain. Methods and Results—This is a prospective study of 487 patients aged ≥75 years admitted for decompensated heart failure. At discharge, a CGA score (range, 0–10) was calculated based on limitation in activities of daily living, mobility limitation, comorbidity, cognitive decline, and previous medication use. The analysis of the association between the CGA score and 2-year subsequent mortality was performed with Cox regression and adjusted for the main confounders. A 1-point increase in the CGA score was associated with a 19% higher mortality (hazard ratio, 1.19; 95% confidence interval, 1.11–1.27). Results were similar regardless of age, sex, left ventricular ejection fraction, and the coexistence of atrial fibrillation, ischemic heart disease, or hypertensive cardiopathy. All components of the CGA score showed a consistent association with higher death risk: the hazard ratio (95% confidence interval) of mortality was 1.78 (1.25–2.54) with ≥3 versus 0 limitations in activities of daily living, 1.36 (1.0–1.86) with moderate or severe versus no or mild limitation in mobility, 1.98 (1.29–3.03) with a ≥5 versus ⩽1 score on the Charlson index, 2.48 (1.84–3.34) with previous cognitive decline, and 1.77 (0.99–3.18) in those using ≥8 versus ⩽3 medications. Conclusions—The score on a simple CGA is associated with long-term mortality in older patients hospitalized for heart failure.
Image denoising based on a mixture of circular symmetric Laplacian models in complex wavelet domain

For maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation of noise-free data from noisy observation, it is necessary to consider a proper distribution for modeling probability density function (pdf) of noise-free data. Recently, it has been shown that bivariate pdfs, that exploit dependencies between coefficients in adjacent scales of wavelet coefficients, can better model the statistical property of wavelet coefficients. Thus wavelet based image denoising algorithms employing bivariate pdfs achieves better performance compared with the ones based on the independence assumption. In this paper, we design a bivariate MAP estimator which uses a mixture of circular symmetric Laplacian pdfs. This model not only is bivariate but also is mixture. Mixture pdf models the heavy-tailed natures of the data and the bivariate pdf model the interscale dependencies of wavelet coefficients. Experimental results show that our new algorithm achieves better results than several methods, such as denoising based on univariate mixture pdfs and denoising employing bivariate pdfs, visually and in terms of peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR).
[Improving the accuracy of caregiver-provided in-home total parenteral nutrition care].

BACKGROUND & PROBLEMS According to current surveys conducted between September and December 2011, the accuracy of primary caregiver-administered Home Total Parenteral Nutrition Care (HTPNC) was 62.0%. Further, nursing staffs provide instruction on HTPNC to only 22.2% of caregivers responsible for administering HTPNC. Main related causes were: (1) difficult to comprehend health education tools; (2) inconsistent nursing guidelines; (3) a lack of relevant standard operating procedures; and (4) poor caregiver adoption of TPN skills. PURPOSE This project was developed to (1) increase the accuracy of primary caregiver-administered HTPNC to 90% and (2) increase the percentage of nurse-administered HTPNC to 90%. RESOLUTIONS We developed appropriate nursing guidelines, created a health education CD-ROM with input from a cross-disciplinary team and total parenteral nutrition focus group, designed reusable teaching model aids for repetitive practice, and held regular group health education sessions. RESULTS The nursing staff HTPNC instruction rate increased to 100%. Caregiver HTPNC implementation accuracy increased to 100% prior to patient discharge. CONCLUSIONS This approach was successful in achieving its stated goals. Further, using reusable teaching model aids may reduce caregiver anxiety and increase caregiver confidence. The greatest benefit of this project was its extension of teaching model aids to relevant units, allowing for routine monitoring by the department of nursing quality management.
Perceptions of Weight and Health Practices in Hispanic Children: A Mixed-Methods Study

Background. Perception of weight by parents of obese children may be associated with willingness to engage in behavior change. The relationship between parents' perception of their child's weight and their health beliefs and practices is poorly understood, especially among the Hispanic population which experiences disparities in childhood obesity. This study sought to explore the relationship between perceptions of weight and health beliefs and practices in a Hispanic population. Methods. A cross-sectional, mixed-methods approach was used with semistructured interviews conducted with parent-child (2–5 years old) dyads in a primarily Hispanic, low-income population. Parents were queried on their perceptions of their child's health, health practices, activities, behaviors, and beliefs. A grounded theory approach was used to analyze participants' discussion of health practices and behaviors. Results. Forty parent-child dyads completed the interview. Most (58%) of the parents of overweight and obese children misclassified their child's weight status. The qualitative analysis showed that accurate perception of weight was associated with internal motivation and more concrete ideas of what healthy meant for their child. Conclusions. The qualitative data suggest there may be populations at different stages of readiness for change among parents of overweight and obese children, incorporating this understanding should be considered for interventions.
Comparison Study of Swarm Intelligence Techniques for the Annual Crop Planning Problem

Annual crop planning (ACP) is an NP-hard type optimization problem in agricultural planning. It involves finding the optimal solution for the seasonal hectare allocations of a limited amount of agricultural land, among various competing crops that are required to be grown on it. This study investigates the effectiveness of employing three relatively new swarm intelligence (SI) metaheuristic techniques in determining the solutions to the ACP problem with case study from an existing irrigation scheme. The SI metaheuristics studied are cuckoo search (CS), firefly algorithm (FA), and glowworm swarm optimization (GSO). Solutions obtained from these techniques are compared with that of a similar population-based technique, namely, genetic algorithm (GA). Results obtained show that each of the three SI algorithms provides superior solutions for the case studied.
Physical health of people with severe mental illness

Over 60 years ago the BMJ reported an association between mental illness and poor physical health.1 Subsequent research, in many countries, has consistently confirmed that psychiatric patients have high rates of physical illness, much of which goes undetected. 2 3 Such investigations have led to calls for health professionals to be more aware of these findings and for better medical screening and treatment of psychiatric patients. So far there is no evidence that this is happening, and the excess illness and mortality continue unabated, with people being managed as psychiatric outpatients being nearly twice as likely to die as the general population.4 People with schizophrenia are subjected to the long term effects of antipsychotic medication and have high rates of substance misuse. Yet much of their excess mortality is due to natural causes. They eat less well, smoke more, and take less exercise than the general population.5 Smoking related fatal disease is …
Enhancer Sharing Promotes Neighborhoods of Transcriptional Regulation Across Eukaryotes

Enhancers physically interact with transcriptional promoters, looping over distances that can span multiple regulatory elements. Given that enhancer–promoter (EP) interactions generally occur via common protein complexes, it is unclear whether EP pairing is predominantly deterministic or proximity guided. Here, we present cross-organismic evidence suggesting that most EP pairs are compatible, largely determined by physical proximity rather than specific interactions. By reanalyzing transcriptome datasets, we find that the transcription of gene neighbors is correlated over distances that scale with genome size. We experimentally show that nonspecific EP interactions can explain such correlation, and that EP distance acts as a scaling factor for the transcriptional influence of an enhancer. We propose that enhancer sharing is commonplace among eukaryotes, and that EP distance is an important layer of information in gene regulation.
Interactive Global Illumination using Selective Photon Tracing

We present a method for interactive global illumination computation which is embedded in the framework of Quasi-Monte Carlo photon tracing and density estimation techniques. The method exploits temporal coherence of illumination by tracing photons selectively to the scene regions that require illumination update. Such regions are identified with a high probability by a small number of the pilot photons. Based on the pilot photons which require updating, the remaining photons with similar paths in the scene can be found immediately. This becomes possible due to the periodicity property inherent to the multi-dimensional Halton sequence, which is used to generate photons. If invalid photons cannot all be updated during a single frame, frames are progressively refined in subsequent cycles. The order in which the photons are updated is decided by inexpensive energy- and perception-based criteria whose goal is to minimize the perceivability of outdated illumination. The method buckets all photons on-the-fly in mesh elements and does not require any data structures in the temporal domain, which makes it suitable for interactive rendering of complex scenes. Since mesh-based reconstruction of lighting patterns with high spatial frequencies is inefficient, we use a hybrid approach in which direct illumination and resulting shadows are rendered using graphics hardware.
Validation of the Health-Related Productivity Questionnaire Diary (HRPQ-D) on a Sample of Patients with Infectious Mononucleosis: Results from a Phase 1 Multicenter Clinical Trial

The objective of this work was to assess the performance of the newly developed Health-Related Productivity Questionniare-Diary (HRPQ-D). Patients completed the HRPQ-D daily for 1-week periods during weeks 1, 2, 4, and 8 of a clinical trial for infectious mononucleosis. Productivity data were collected on a daily basis in terms of absenteeism, presenteeism, and combined lost productivity for three work venues (work outside home, housework, and classes/homework). These were then correlated with patient symptom scores. Symptom scores were positively correlated with lost work hours because of absenteeism and combined lost productivity scores. However, negative correlations were observed between symptom scores and the lost work hours due to presenteeism. The HRPQ-D demonstrated good construct validity, making it a useful tool for determining productivity levels across different work venues within clinical trial or survey research applications.
Cleaved caspase-3 immunocytochemical staining for pancreatic islets and pancreatic endocrine tumors: A potential marker for biological malignancy

Aims: Involvement of caspase (C)-3 has been implicated in β-cells from diabetic subjects. This study is aimed to immunocytochemically identify cleaved caspase-3 (CC-3) positive cells in pancreatic endocrine tumors (PETs) compared with control islets. Methods: Using commercially available rabbit anti-CC-3, immunocytochemical staining was performed in 42 cases of PETs compared with control islets. Results: Control islets revealed some CC-3 positive cells, ranging 3.6 to 7.3 % of total islet cells. Small islets in the pseudocapsule of PETs showed higher immunopositive cells at about 9 % for CC-3, suggesting an accelerated apoptosis in these compressed, elongated islets before proceeding to imminent cell death. Majority of primary PETs except 9 cases were negative for CC-3 immunostaining: five insulinomas, one somatostatinoma, one gastrinoma and one pancreatic peptidoma (PPoma) were positive for CC-3. Conclusions. /Interpretation: Majority of primary PETs (28/37, 76 %) were negative for CC-3, suggesting that majority of PETs are not on apoptotic program of the normal islets. Since 21 of 24 (88 %) of potentially malignant primary non-ß cell PETs were negative, whereas 5 of 12 (42 %) benign insulinomas were positive for CC-3 immunostaining, CC-3 negative immunostaining may serve as a possible malignant marker for all PETs.
Non-commercial Research and Educational Use including without Limitation Use in Instruction at Your Institution, Sending It to Specific Colleagues That You Know, and Providing a Copy to Your Institution's Administrator. All Other Uses, Reproduction and Distribution, including without Limitation Comm

As an animal navigates its surroundings, the sounds reaching its two ears change in waveform similarity (interaural correlation) and in time of arrival (interaural time difference, ITD). Humans are exquisitely sensitive to these binaural cues, and it is generally agreed that this sensitivity involves coincidence detectors and internal delays that compensate for external acoustic delays (ITDs). Recent data show an unexpected relationship between the tuning of a neuron to frequency and to ITD, leading to several proposals for sources of internal delay and the neural coding of interaural temporal cues. We review the alternatives, and argue that an understanding of binaural mechanisms requires consideration of sensitivity not only to ITDs, but also to interaural correlation. Introduction Spatial hearing offers a unique window on temporal processing in the nervous system. In contrast to the receptor organs for vision and touch, the cochlea does not have an explicit representation of the spatial position of sound sources, because this organ performs frequency analysis rather than spatial analysis. The spatial position of a sound source is computed in the CNS from implicit information sent downstream by the cochlea. It has long been known that the computation of azimuth (horizontal position of a source) is predominantly based on temporal differences between the two ears, but the underlying mechanisms are currently a matter of much controversy. Sound sources off the midsagittal plane travel different distances to the two ears and thereby generate interaural time delays (ITDs), both in the arrival time of the stimulus wavefront ('onset ITD') and throughout the stimulus ('ongoing ITD') (Figure 1d). In humans, ongoing ITDs of low frequencies are the main source of information used to determine horizontal localization of sound [1–3]. Even the largest ITDs, which occur for sound sources that face one ear, are tiny. Their extreme values (henceforth referred to as the 'ecological range') are AE700 ms in humans and AE400 ms in cats, but ITDs can be discriminated at values of 10–20 ms [4]. Considering that the duration of an action potential is $50 times longer, this acuity is an intriguing biological feat.
Characterization of the Structure and Intermolecular Interactions between the Connexin40 and Connexin43 Carboxyl-terminal and Cytoplasmic Loop Domains*

Gap junctions are intercellular channels that allow the passage of ions, small molecules, and second messengers that are essential for the coordination of cellular function. They are formed by two hemichannels, each constituted by the oligomerization of six connexins (Cx). Among the 21 different human Cx isoforms, studies have suggested that in the heart, Cx40 and Cx43 can oligomerize to form heteromeric hemichannels. The mechanism of heteromeric channel regulation has not been clearly defined. Tissue ischemia leads to intracellular acidification and closure of Cx43 and Cx40 homomeric channels. However, coexpression of Cx40 and Cx43 in Xenopus oocytes enhances the pH sensitivity of the channel. This phenomenon requires the carboxyl-terminal (CT) part of both connexins. In this study we used different biophysical methods to determine the structure of the Cx40CT and characterize the Cx40CT/Cx43CT interaction. Our results revealed that the Cx40CT is an intrinsically disordered protein similar to the Cx43CT and that the Cx40CT and Cx43CT can interact. Additionally, we have identified an interaction between the Cx40CT and the cytoplasmic loop of Cx40 as well as between the Cx40CT and the cytoplasmic loop of Cx43 (and vice versa). Our studies support the “particle-receptor” model for pH gating of Cx40 and Cx43 gap junction channels and suggest that interactions between cytoplasmic regulatory domains (both homo- and hetero-connexin) could be important for the regulation of heteromeric channels.
The International Journal of Biostatistics Missing Confounding Data in Marginal Structural Models : A Comparison of Inverse Probability Weighting and Multiple Imputation

Standard statistical analyses of observational data often exclude valuable information from individuals with incomplete measurements. This may lead to biased estimates of the treatment effect and loss of precision. The issue of missing data for inverse probability of treatment weighted estimation of marginal structural models (MSMs) has often been addressed, though little has been done to compare different missing data techniques in this relatively new method of analysis. We propose a method for systematically dealing with missingness in MSMs by treating missingness as a cause for censoring and weighting subjects by the inverse probability of missingness. We developed a series of simulations to systematically compare the effect of using case deletion, our inverse weighting approach, and multiple imputation in a MSM when there is missing information on an important confounder. We found that multiple imputation was slightly less biased and considerably less variable than the inverse probability approach. Thus, the lower variability achieved through multiple imputation makes it desirable in most practical cases where the missing data are strongly predicted by the available data. Inverse probability weighting is, however, a superior alternative to naive approaches such as complete-case analysis.
Simazine and Metolachlor Removal by Subsurface Flow Constructed Wetlands

A subsurface flow constructed wetlands system was used in this pilot‐scale field study to treat runoff from a container nursery. The goal of the study was to determine the statistical significance of certain factors on the removal of simazine (2‐chloro‐4,6‐bis[ethylamino]‐s‐triazine) and metolachlor (2‐chloro‐N‐[2‐ethyl‐6‐methylphenyl]‐N‐[2‐methoxy‐1‐methylethyl] acetamide). The factors analyzed included the hydraulic flowrate, media depth, cell aspect ratio, and the presence or absence of Scirpus validus. Analysis of variance using the general linear model procedure determined that vegetation and flowrate significantly (α = 0.05) affected herbicide mass removal. The results showed that vegetated subsurface flow cells generally remove more simazine and metolachlor than nonvegetated cells. Decreasing the hydraulic loading rate and, therefore, the areal simazine mass loading rate to vegetated cells from 1659 to 415 mg/m2 caused an increase in the percentage of total mass removed from approximately 60 to 96%. Similarly, metolachlor mass removal percentage increased from approximately 62 to 96% when the areal mass loading to vegetated cells decreased from 1037 to 260 mg/m2. Media depth and aspect ratio did not significantly (α = 0.05) affect effluent simazine and metolachlor concentrations. Peak effluent metolachlor concentrations were less than 300 μg/L from vegetated cells receiving hydraulic loading rates of 204 and 102 m3/d·ha. Peak simazine concentrations in the effluent of vegetated cells receiving similar hydraulic loadings were approximately 1400 and 750 μg/L (204 and 102 m3/d·ha), respectively.
Recent Advances in Mesh Morphing

Meshes have become a widespread and popular representation of models in computer graphics. Morphing techniques aim at transforming a given source shape into a target shape. Morphing techniques have various applications ranging from special effects in television and movies to medical imaging and scientific visualization. Not surprisingly, morphing techniques for meshes have received a lot of interest lately.
May Long Term Oxcarbazepine Treatment Be Lead to Secondary Hyperparathyroidism?

Background and Purpose The adverse effects of newer antiepileptic drugs are not well-known. This study assessed the impact of oxcarbazepine (OXC) treatment on bone turnover. Methods Forty-four children with idiopathic focal (and/or secondarily generalized) epilepsy who had been treated with OXC for more than 1 year were compared with 33 healthy, age- and sex-matched children. Serum calcium, phosphorus, alkaline phosphatase, parathyroid hormone, osteocalcin, calcitonin, and 25-hydroxyvitamin D, and bone mineral density were measured to evaluate and compare bone mineralization between the two groups. Results The serum levels of calcium, osteocalcin, 25-hydroxyvitamin D, and bone mineral density did not differ significantly between the study and control groups. However, serum levels of parathyroid hormone, alkaline phosphatase, phosphorus, and calcitonin differed significantly between the two groups. Conclusions These findings suggest that OXC treatment leads to secondary hyperparathyroidism with high-turnover bone disease and/or impaired intestinal calcium absorption.