Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Subthreshold doses of nebulized prostacyclin and rolipram synergistaically protect against lung ischemia-reperfusion

Background. Pulmonary edema caused by increased microvascular permeability is an important feature of lung ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury. Methods. We investigated the impact of co-aerosolized prostaglandin (PG)I2 and the 3',5-cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP)-specific phosphodiesterase inhibitor rolipram on microvascular leakage following I/R injury. Buffer-perfused rabbit lungs were exposed to 270 minutes of warm ischemia while anoxic ventilation and a positive intravascular pressure were maintained. Results. On reperfusion, a massive increase of the capillary filtration coefficient and severe edema formation were noted, whereas microvascular pressures displayed only minor changes. Short-time aerosolization of subthreshold doses of either rolipram (33 &mgr;g) or PGI2 (2.6 &mgr;g) at the beginning of ischemia did not attenuate the leakage response, whereas the co-aerosolization of both agents largely blocked any permeability increase and edema formation, independent of hemodynamic effects. The same was true when the co-aerosolization was undertaken before onset of ischemia. Similarly, the intravascular administration of rolipram and PGI2 showed a synergistic reduction of I/R-induced vascular leak but demanded 10-fold higher doses. Intravascular release of cAMP was markedly enhanced on combined PGI2-rolipram administration but depended on the mode of delivery of these agents. Conclusions. Low doses of aerosolized prostacyclin and rolipram synergistically protect against severe lung I/R injury and can be used independently of lung perfusion. This strategy may be suitable for an improvement of organ preservation in lung transplantation including early management of non-heart-beating donors.
Low-dropout voltage reference: An approach to buffered architectures with low sensitivity

A modified circuit topology for bandgap references capable of providing very high load current with output which has small sensitivity against temperature variations is presented. Employing a proportional-to-absolute-temperature (PTAT) current source and a complementary-to-absolute-temperature (CTAT) voltage source in a novel closed-loop configuration, the output voltage can be tuned over a wide range of voltages lower or higher than Silicon bandgap voltage of 1.2V. These features make the configuration a promising competitor for low-dropout regulators. Low-power and low-voltage design considerations of the circuit offering many advantages are addressed. With different specifications, two design examples in 0.18-yKm standard CMOS technology are reported. Thanks to a modified amplifier topology, the 0.9V and 1.3V bandgap references have fast stable operation for the load currents ranging from 0mA to 100mA with load capacitors as low as 10pF and no equivalent series resistance (ESR). Simulated values of the temperature coefficient for both design cases are smaller than 37ppm/oC.
Lymphohematopoietic Cancer Mortality and Morbidity of Workers in a Refinery/Petrochemical Complex in Korea

Objectives The purpose of this retrospective cohort study was to investigate the relationship between exposure of Korean workers to petrochemicals in the refinery/petrochemical industry and lymphohematopoietic cancers. Methods The cohort consisted of 8,866 male workers who had worked from the 1960s to 2007 at one refinery and six petrochemical companies located in a refinery/petrochemical complex in Korea that produce benzene or use benzene as a raw material. Standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) and standardized incidence ratios (SIRs) were calculated for 1992-2007 and 1997-2005 based on the death rate and cancer incidence rate of the Korean male population according to job title (production, maintenance, laboratory, and office workers). Results The overall mortality and most cause-specific mortalities were lower among these workers than those of the general Korean population. Increased SMRs were observed for leukemia (4/1.45; SMR 2.77, 95% CI: 0.75-7.09) and lymphohematopoietic cancers (5/2.51; SMR 2, 95% CI: 0.65-4.66) in production workers, and increased SIRs were also observed in leukemia (3/1.34; SIR 2.24, 95% CI: 0.46-6.54) and lymphohematopoietic cancers (5/3.39; SIR 1.47, 95% CI: 0.48-3.44) in production workers, but the results were not statistically significant. Conclusion The results showed a potential relationship between leukemia and lymphohematopoietic cancers and exposure to benzene in refinery/petrochemical complex workers. This study yielded limited results due to a short observational period; therefore, a follow-up study must be performed to elucidate the relationship between petrochemical exposure and cancer rates.
A Dynamic Programming Algorithm for the Segmentation of Greek Texts

In this paper we introduce a dynamic programming algorithm to perform linear text segmentation by global minimization of a segmentation cost function which consists of: (a) within-segment word similarity and (b) prior information about segment length. The evaluation of the segmentation accuracy of the algorithm on a text collection consisting of Greek texts showed that the algorithm achieves high segmentation accuracy and appears to be very innovating and promissing.
All Four Members of the Ten-m/Odz Family of Transmembrane Proteins Form Dimers*

Ten-m/Odz/teneurins are a new family of four distinct type II transmembrane molecules. Their extracellular domains are composed of an array of eight consecutive EGF modules followed by a large globular domain. Two of the eight modules contain only 5 instead of the typical 6 cysteine residues and have the capability to dimerize in a covalent, disulfide-linked fashion. The structural properties of the extracellular domains of all four mouse Ten-m proteins have been analyzed using secreted, recombinant molecules produced by mammalian HEK-293 cells. Electron microscopic analysis supported by analytical ultracentrifugation data revealed that the recombinant extracellular domains of all Ten-m proteins formed homodimers. SDS-PAGE analysis under nonreducing conditions as well as negative staining after partial denaturation of the molecules indicated that the globular COOH-terminal domains of Ten-m1 and -m4 contained subdomains with a pronounced stability against denaturing agents, especially when compared with the homologous domains of Ten-m2 and -m3. Cotransfection experiments of mammalian cells with two different extracellular domains revealed that Ten-m molecules have also the ability to form heterodimers, a property that, combined with alternative splicing events, allows the formation of a multitude of molecules with different characteristics from a limited set of genes.
Impact of small cells location on performance and QoS of heterogeneous cellular networks

We propose an analysis of the impact of the deployment of small base stations in a wireless network constituted of macro base stations. This analysis is particularly focused on the influence of the position and the transmitting power of small base stations on the performance of the network. In this aim, we consider an analytical model for heterogeneous cellular networks, composed of macro cells and small cells. The network model framework developed allows to derive closed form formulas for the Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) received by a mobile, whatever its location. Moreover, the proposed analytical model is validated by numerical simulations and it is shown that it is a good approximation of the SINR. Performance and quality of service (QoS) in terms of throughput and coverage can therefore be analyzed in a simple way. It makes it possible to analyze the deployment of small cells in an existing macro cells network.
Pulmonary Vein Antral Isolation and Nonpulmonary Vein Trigger Ablation without Additional Substrate Modification for Treating Longstanding Persistent Atrial Fibrillation

PV Ablation for Persistent Atrial Fibrillation. Introduction: Effectiveness of antral pulmonary vein isolation (PVAI) and ablation of non‐PV triggers (non‐PVTA) in controlling longstanding persistent atrial fibrillation (AF) has not been reported. We sought to describe clinical outcomes with this ablation strategy in patients (pts) followed for at least 1 year.
Potential drug-drug interactions in a medical intensive care unit of a university hospital.

BACKGROUND/AIM Drug-drug interactions (DDIs) can impact patient safety. Occurrence of clinically important DDIs is higher for intensive care unit (ICU) patients. This observational study aimed to evaluate the potential DDIs in medical ICU patients of a university hospital. MATERIALS AND METHODS The Medical Pharmacology Department organized consultation reports for ICU patients in order to detect the DDIs. To focus on clinically important DDIs, interactions in the C, D, or X risk rating categories of the Lexi-Interact online database were analyzed. Frequency and clinical risk rating categories of DDIs were detected. Relationship between number of prescriptions and DDIs were assessed. The most frequent drug/drug groups were identified. RESULTS Of 101 ICU patients, 45.5% were found to have DDIs. We detected 125 C (72.2%), 37 D (21.4%), and 11 X (6.4%) risk category interactions. A statistically significant increase in the number of DDIs was shown with the number of prescriptions (P = 0.002). The most frequent DDIs were between agents acting on the cardiovascular system and corticosteroids (12.8%). CONCLUSION Results of this study show that pharmacological consultation plays a critical role in the recognition of DDIs for improvement of medication management and effective therapeutic endpoints without any adverse or toxic reactions.
Bid Cost Minimization Versus Payment Cost Minimization: A Game Theoretic Study of Electricity Auctions

Currently, most independent system operators in the U.S. run auctions by minimizing the total bid cost ["bid cost minimization" (BCM)], and then calculate payments based on market clearing prices. Under this setup, the payment cost could be significantly higher than the minimized bid cost. Recently, an alternative auction mechanism that minimizes the consumer payment cost ["payment cost minimization" (PCM)] has been discussed. Literature has shown that for the same set of bids, PCM leads to reduced consumer payments. However, market participants may bid differently under the two auctions, and therefore, the payment reduction may not be realized. This necessitates the study of strategic behaviors of participants. In this paper, suppliers' bidding strategies in a day-ahead energy market are investigated for both auctions by using a game theoretic framework with Nash equilibrium as the solution concept. To simplify the solution process, the originally continuous strategies are discretized to form matrix games. Discretization may cause the loss of equilibria and the creation of artificial solutions. To reduce these side effects, "approximate Nash equilibria" are introduced to recover lost equilibria, and additional strategy samples are evaluated to eliminate artificially created solutions. Games are then solved by examining supplier payoffs obtained from running auctions. Characteristics of auctions are exploited, leading to improved computational efficiency. Numerical testing results show that the PCM leads to significant payment reductions and relatively small increases of production costs as compared to BCM. Also, the ¿hockey-stick¿ bidding is more likely to occur under BCM. Finally, long-term impacts of PCM are discussed, and whether it would lower costs to consumers in the long run, including capacity payments, remains to be investigated.
Implicit Alcohol-Related Expectancies and the Effect of Context.

OBJECTIVE The current study examined the impact of varying pictorial cues and testing contexts on implicit alcohol-related expectancies. METHOD Seventy-six participants were assigned randomly to complete an Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) in either a pub or lecture context. The IRAP exposed participants to pictorial cues that depicted an alcoholic beverage in the foreground of a pub (alcohol-congruent stimuli) or university lecture theater (alcohol-incongruent stimuli), and participants were required to match both positive and negative alcohol-related outcome expectancies to these stimuli. Corresponding to a 4 × 2 design, IRAP trial types were included in the analysis as repeated-measure variables, whereas testing environment was input as a between-participants variable. RESULTS Participants more readily endorsed that drinking alcohol was related to positive expectancies when responding to alcohol-congruent stimuli, and this was strengthened when participants completed the task in a pub. Moreover, they more readily confirmed that alcohol was related to negative expectancies when responding to alcohol-incongruent stimuli. CONCLUSIONS These findings suggest that alcohol-related cues and environmental contexts may be a significant driver of positive alcohol-related cognitions, which may have implications for the design of interventions. They emphasize further the importance of examining implicit cognitions in ecologically valid testing contexts.
Measurement-Based Analysis of Spatial Degrees of Freedom in Multipath Propagation Channels

A method of estimating spatial degrees of freedom (DoF) from measured multipath propagation channels in the multiple-input single-output regime is presented. The DoF of the multipath channels on the transmit (Tx) side is derived by means of the spherical-wave expansion of electromagnetic fields radiated from a Tx antenna array having a certain aperture size. The DoF estimates are independent of particular realization of antenna elements on the Tx aperture. For a given aperture size, the DoF provides the number of the Tx antenna elements for efficient improvement of the system performance by utilizing the spatial diversity. Having confirmed the soundness of our DoF estimation method by channel measurements in an anechoic chamber, the DoF of indoor multipath channels is analyzed. The DoF on the Tx side of the considered multipath channels reveals larger values when the antenna aperture size is increased at a fixed frequency, and when the frequency increases for a fixed antenna aperture size. For a fixed frequency, increasing the antenna aperture size is more effective in observing extra DoF in the obstructed and non-line-of-sight channels than in the line-of-sight channels. Furthermore, for a fixed antenna aperture size, the use of the higher frequency brings larger DoFs in many propagation scenarios. The results also show that electrically smaller antennas are more efficient in observing the DoF. Finally, the solid angle of multipath is derived as a Tx antenna-independent metric of the multipath richness. It is defined as an angular range of dominant multipath clusters subtended on a unit sphere. Our analysis method is extendable to the multiple-input multiple-output regime in a straightforward manner.
DIFFUSIVE SHOCK ACCELERATION AND RECONNECTION ACCELERATION PROCESSES

Shock waves, as shown by simulations and observations, can generate high levels of downstream vortical turbulence, including magnetic islands. We consider a combination of diffusive shock acceleration (DSA) and downstream magnetic-island-reconnection-related processes as an energization mechanism for charged particles. Observations of electron and ion distributions downstream of interplanetary shocks and the heliospheric termination shock (HTS) are frequently inconsistent with the predictions of classical DSA. We utilize a recently developed transport theory for charged particles propagating diffusively in a turbulent region filled with contracting and reconnecting plasmoids and small-scale current sheets. Particle energization associated with the anti-reconnection electric field, a consequence of magnetic island merging, and magnetic island contraction, are considered. For the former only, we find that (i) the spectrum is a hard power law in particle speed, and (ii) the downstream solution is constant. For downstream plasmoid contraction only, (i) the accelerated spectrum is a hard power law in particle speed; (ii) the particle intensity for a given energy peaks downstream of the shock, and the distance to the peak location increases with increasing particle energy, and (iii) the particle intensity amplification for a particular particle energy, f ( x , c / c 0 ) / f ( 0 , c / c 0 ) , ? > is not 1, as predicted by DSA, but increases with increasing particle energy. The general solution combines both the reconnection-induced electric field and plasmoid contraction. The observed energetic particle intensity profile observed by Voyager 2 downstream of the HTS appears to support a particle acceleration mechanism that combines both DSA and magnetic-island-reconnection-related processes.
Stochastic sensor scheduling for centralized state estimation

A stochastic sensor scheduling problem is studied 1 in this paper. A group of sensors take measurements of the states of a process and send the data to a remote estimator. Each sensor communicates with the estimator randomly and the communication is determined by a Bernoulli random variable. Meanwhile, the sensors have limited power resources for communication. The design of the communication rates which optimizes the estimation performance under the limited communication resources is studied in this paper. This optimization problem is relaxed and solved by tractable numerical algorithms. Examples show that satisfactory performance is obtained.
Study Of Non-Linear Frequency Warping Functions For Speaker Normalization

In this paper, we study non-linear frequency-warping functions that are commonly used in speaker normalization. This study is motivated by our recently proposed affine transformation model for speaker normalization which has provided improved recognition performance when compared to uniform scaling model. In this work, using formant data from Peterson & Barney and Hillenbrand vowel databases, we analyze the behavior of scale factor as a function of frequency. The empirical observation shows that while uniform scaling assumption may be valid at higher frequencies, there are significant deviations at low frequencies. We show that while our recently proposed model has behavior similar to the empirical result, the behavior of many of the commonly used non-linear models (including that of Eide-Gish, power law and bilinear transformation) differ significantly from the empirical result. This difference in behavior from the empirical observation may explain the limited improvement in recognition performance provided by these non-linear models when compared to conventional uniform-scaling model. We also show that our proposed model does better fitting to the formant data than these non-linear models. We, therefore, conclude that the affine-transformation model may be a more appropriate non-linear model for speaker normalization
Arthroscopic meniscectomy in patients over the age of 40

One hundred eighteen patients, aged 40 or older, underwent partial meniscectomy and limited debride ment of coexisting grade III or grade IV degenerative articular cartilage lesions. No curettage, abrasion ar throplasty, or subchondral drilling was performed. The average age of the patients was 57 years (range, 40 to 78). The mean followup was 3.3 years (range, 1 to 7). Sixty-three similar patients who also underwent partial meniscectomy but did not have the finding of significant coexisting articular surface erosion were studied for comparison. Of the 118 patients in the group with articular lesions (78 men and 40 women), 71 (60%) rated their improve ment as significant, 22 (19%) as moderate, and 15 (13%) as mild; 10 (8%) noted no improvement. Although 98 (83%) were generally satisfied with their result, only 57 (48%) reported satisfaction for sports. However, 89 (75%) had resumed and continued recreational athletic activities. Results tended to be worse in women, in patients older than 60, in those with moderate or severe tibiofemoral radiographic changes, those who had a grade IV articular lesion, and those with longer follow up time. Although results were poorer in patients with coex isting grade III or grade IV degenerative arthritis, ar throscopic partial meniscectomy and limited debride ment was an acceptably effective procedure in patients over the age of 40.
Design of two-way reversible bending actuator based on a shape memory alloy/shape memory polymer composite

The design of a reversible bending actuator based on a SMA/SMP composite is presented. The SMA/SMP composite is made of SMA NiTi wires with a bent ‘U’-shape in the austenite phase embedded in an epoxy SMP matrix which has a memorized flat shape. The bending motion is caused by heating the composite above TAf to activate the NiTi recovery. Upon cooling, the softening from the austenite to R-phase transformation results in a relaxation of the composite towards its original flat shape. In the three-point bending measurement the composite was able to exhibit a reversible deflection of 1.3 mm on a support with a 10 mm span. In addition, a material model for predicting the composite’s deflection is presented and predicts the experimental results reasonably well. The model also estimates the in-plane internal force and the degree of the SMA phase transformation.
Systems Analysis of a RIG-I Agonist Inducing Broad Spectrum Inhibition of Virus Infectivity

The RIG-I like receptor pathway is stimulated during RNA virus infection by interaction between cytosolic RIG-I and viral RNA structures that contain short hairpin dsRNA and 5′ triphosphate (5′ppp) terminal structure. In the present study, an RNA agonist of RIG-I was synthesized in vitro and shown to stimulate RIG-I-dependent antiviral responses at concentrations in the picomolar range. In human lung epithelial A549 cells, 5′pppRNA specifically stimulated multiple parameters of the innate antiviral response, including IRF3, IRF7 and STAT1 activation, and induction of inflammatory and interferon stimulated genes - hallmarks of a fully functional antiviral response. Evaluation of the magnitude and duration of gene expression by transcriptional profiling identified a robust, sustained and diversified antiviral and inflammatory response characterized by enhanced pathogen recognition and interferon (IFN) signaling. Bioinformatics analysis further identified a transcriptional signature uniquely induced by 5′pppRNA, and not by IFNα-2b, that included a constellation of IRF7 and NF-kB target genes capable of mobilizing multiple arms of the innate and adaptive immune response. Treatment of primary PBMCs or lung epithelial A549 cells with 5′pppRNA provided significant protection against a spectrum of RNA and DNA viruses. In C57Bl/6 mice, intravenous administration of 5′pppRNA protected animals from a lethal challenge with H1N1 Influenza, reduced virus titers in mouse lungs and protected animals from virus-induced pneumonia. Strikingly, the RIG-I-specific transcriptional response afforded partial protection from influenza challenge, even in the absence of type I interferon signaling. This systems approach provides transcriptional, biochemical, and in vivo analysis of the antiviral efficacy of 5′pppRNA and highlights the therapeutic potential associated with the use of RIG-I agonists as broad spectrum antiviral agents.