Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inactivation of inducible nitric oxide synthase protects intestinal pacemaker cells from postoperative damage

Abdominal surgery causes postoperative gastrointestinal dysmotility which can progress to paralytic ileus. Surgery causes inflammatory responses leading to loss of interstitial cells of Cajal (ICC), which generate intestinal pacemaker activity. Here, we demonstrate that a deficiency in or pharmacological inhibition of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) before surgery protects ICC from postoperative damage. Ileal segments from wild‐type, iNOS and cyclooxygenase‐2 (COX‐2) knockout mice were resected and reconstructions were performed by end‐to‐end anastomoses. Wild‐type animals were exposed to iNOS inhibitors before surgery, and electrical activity and ICC were examined 5 h after surgery. Intestinal surgery on wild‐type mice caused a significant reduction in ICC and pacemaking at distances up to 5 cm from the anastomosis site. ICC networks and pacemaking were protected in iNOS−/− mice. In animals treated preoperatively with iNOS inhibitors, pacemaker activity was depressed only at the anastomosis site. COX‐2 deficiency also muted postoperative disruption in pacemaker activity. Postoperative surgical damage consists of a local response and a more widespread response in which ICC and pacemaker activity are disrupted. Damage to ICC and pacemaking was greatly attenuated in the absence of NO derived from iNOS. Thus, management of iNOS expression or activity prior to intestinal surgery protects against postsurgical dysmotility and reduces the severity of postoperative ileus.
Oral bioavailability enhancement through supersaturation: an update and meta-analysis

ABSTRACT Introduction: With the increasing number of poorly water-soluble compounds in drug discovery pipelines, supersaturating drug delivery systems (SDDS) have attracted increased attention as an effective bioavailability enhancing approach. However, a systematic and quantitative synopsis of the knowledge about performance of SDDS is currently lacking. Such analysis of the recent achievements is to provide insights for formulation scientists dealing with poorly soluble compounds. Areas covered: A systematic search of two evidence-based International databases, Medline and Embase, from 2010 to Dec 2015, has been performed. By conducting meta-analysis, box-plots, and correlation plots of the relevant data retrieved from literature, the current review addresses three quantitative questions: (1) how promising are SDDS for bioavailability enhancement? (2) which types of SDDS perform best? and (3) what are the most promising drug candidates? Four widely reported types of SDDS were compared: amorphous solid dispersions, nano-drug systems, supersaturable lipid-based formulations, and silica-based systems. Expert opinion: While SDDS formulations appear to be a promising candidate-enabling technique for drug development, the prediction of their in vivo performance by in vitro testing remains challenging. A transition from a trial-and-error development approach towards an approach guided by mechanistic insight, as well as the development of more efficient predictive tools for performance ranking is urgently needed.
Prospective randomised study to compare empirical treatment versus targeted treatment on the basis of the urine antigen results in hospitalised patients with community-acquired pneumonia

Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is often misdiagnosed and improperly treated. Since it is not a reportable disease we do not have exact figures, but data from the USA suggest that there are approximately four million cases per year resulting in more than 600 000 hospitalisations, 64 million days of restricted activity and 45 000 deaths annually. The overall yearly cost associated with CAP is estimated at US$9–10 billion. The lack of rapid, sensitive and specific methods to diagnose the aetiological pathogen in a particular patient with CAP means that the physician must often institute antimicrobial treatment without knowing with any degree of certainty what the pathogen is. Given the large number of potential aetiological agents—such as bacteria ( Streptococcus pneumoniae , Haemophilus influenzae , Staphylococcus aureus ), atypical organisms ( Mycoplasma pneumoniae , Chlamydophila pneumoniae , Legionella species) and viruses—this represents a significant problem, particularly for patients ill enough to require admission to hospital. A careful history and physical examination plus laboratory tests and procedures such as sputum Gram stain and culture, blood cultures and chest radiography have been shown to be unreliable in identifying the pathogen responsible for pneumonia in most patients with CAP. Streptococcus pneumoniae , which is arguably the most important cause of CAP, can be particularly difficult to diagnose. Its identification in sputum may simply represent colonisation and its isolation from blood is woefully insensitive.1 The diagnosis of Legionnaire's disease in patients with CAP is dependent upon culture and serological testing, both of which have their problems.2 The development of urinary antigen tests for both pneumococcal and Legionella antigens has helped to expedite and improve the diagnostic process. The overall sensitivity …
Orbital sporadic Burkitt lymphoma in an adult diabetic African American female and a review of adult orbital cases

A case of sporadic Burkitt lymphoma (sBL) presenting with jaw and lid involvement in a diabetic adult African American female and a review of adult orbital Burkitt lymphoma cases are presented. Lid edema, visual loss, ophthalmoparesis, proptosis, and sinusitis progressed over 4 weeks despite antibiotic and steroid treatment. Upper lid biopsy histopathological evaluation and immunophenotyping revealed a homogenous mass of atypical CD10 and CD20-negative B-cells and tingible body macrophages yielding a “starry sky” appearance. Cytogenetic analysis detected a minor variant c-MYC translocation, but no Epstein–Barr virus RNA. Detection of multiple lesions prompted a diagnosis of stage IV disease that totally regressed following radiation and chemotherapy. Review results of the six adult orbital sBL cases support a poor prognosis and a heightened suspicion of variant CD10, CD20 and BCL6 positive sBL in adults presenting with jaw pain and rapidly progressive orbital symptoms, particularly in female, African American, and diabetic patients.
Putamen Activation Represents an Intrinsic Positive Prediction Error Signal for Visual Search in Repeated Configurations

We investigated fMRI responses to visual search targets appearing at locations that were predicted by the search context. Based on previous work in visual category learning we expected an intrinsic reward prediction error signal in the putamen whenever the target appeared at a location that was predicted with some degree of uncertainty. Comparing target appearance at locations predicted with 50% probability to either locations predicted with 100% probability or unpredicted locations, increased activation was observed in left posterior putamen and adjacent left posterior insula. Thus, our hypothesis of an intrinsic prediction error-like signal was confirmed. This extends the observation of intrinsic prediction error-like signals, driven by intrinsic rather than extrinsic reward, to memory-driven visual search.
Induction and Functional Analysis of Two Reduced Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide Phosphate-Dependent Glutathione Peroxidase-Like Proteins in Synechocystis PCC 6803 during the Progression of Oxidative Stress1

Synechocystis PCC 6803 contains two types of glutathione peroxidase-like proteins (GPX-1 and GPX-2) that utilize NADPH but not reduced glutathione and unsaturated fatty acid hydroperoxides or alkyl hydroperoxides. The steady-state transcript level of gpx-1 gradually increased under oxidative stress conditions imposed by high light intensity, high salinity, or application of methylviologen or t-butyl hydroperoxide in the wild-type and GPX-2 knock-out mutant (gpx-2Δ) cells. To examine the ability of GPX-1, GPX-2, and thioredoxin peroxidase to scavenge lipid hydroperoxide in vivo, we measured the photosynthetic evolution of O2 and the level of lipid peroxidation in the wild-type and each type of mutant cell after the application of t-butyl hydroperoxide or H2O2. The data reported here indicate that GPX-1 and GPX-2 are essential for the removal of lipid hydroperoxides under normal and stress conditions, leading to the protection of membrane integrity.
Reasonable Accommodation for Faculty with Psychosocial Impairment: A Legal Analysis of the University's Duty in the US, the UK and Sweden

This paper explores the university's duty to provide reasonable accommodation for faculty with psychosocial impairment in the US, the UK and Sweden. It argues that lawmakers and judges or decision-makers have not paid enough attention to particular needs of the psychosocially impaired. The problem is that when these psychosocially impaired are requesting a certain accommodation measure, this measure is often regarded as an unfair advantage (positive action), causes a disproportionate burden or is not in compliance with the university's academic standard. Despite the domestic anti-discrimination laws that prohibit the university from discriminating against the psychosocially impaired, they still encounter various barriers to pursue academic careers. Therefore, this article provides some suggestions on how to solve this problem.
Molecular diagnosis of invasive aspergillosis in patients with hematologic malignancies - new answers to a diagnostic challenge?

BACKGROUND Within recent years, new molecular methods have been developed to improve the diagnosis of life-threatening invasive aspergillosis in patients at high risk, especially patients with malignant hematological diseases undergoing intensive chemotherapy. Both early diagnosis and treatment are crucial for adequate therapeutic management, which, however, often remains difficult and unclear, because most of the conventional diagnostic tools used clinically at present lack either specificity or acceptable sensitivity at the critical, early phase of the infection. OBJECTIVE To review the clinical value, advantages and problems and drawbacks of molecular approaches, especially polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based assays, to detect genomic DNA of Aspergillus species, still the most emerging fungal pathogens, in blood, BAL and tissue samples. METHODS A review of the literature was carried out and expert opinions expressed. CONCLUSION Summarizing the results of numerous attempts to diagnose invasive aspergillosis by PCR-based detection of fungal genome in clinical samples, at least four clinically well-evaluated assays highlight the potential of the PCR technique to improve early diagnosis of invasive aspergillosis in patients with hematological malignancies under intensive antineoplastic treatment, especially in combination with imaging surveillance and serologic diagnostic tools, other important parts of the diagnostic mosaic. Further clinical comparative validation of reliable assays in prospective multi-center studies is mandatory and needed urgently, leading finally to a standardization, so that one or more 'gold standard assays' may be incorporated into diagnostic and therapeutic algorithms, to improve the prognosis of patients with life-threatening infections caused by Aspergillus species.
“Elective Affinities”: On the Psychological Bases of Left–Right Differences

Drawing on the concept of “elective affinities” from the writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Max Weber, I seek to articulate a scientific framework for understanding psychological receptiveness to ideological messages. More specifically, I summarize converging lines of research that link basic personality, cognitive, motivational, and even physiological processes to ideological differences between left and right. I also discuss situational factors such as the presence of threat that increase the affinity for political conservatism through its effect on “cognitive narrowing. ” These findings and many others suggest that, contrary to Wildavsky (1989) and other skeptics, ideology is a meaningful force in people's lives and that it may be rooted in fundamental psychological antinomies, including preferences for stability versus change, order versus complexity, familiarity versus novelty, conformity versus creativity, and loyalty versus rebellion. Directions for further research are also discussed.
Exploring the Use of Non-Digital Situated Displays in a Rural Community

situated displays of information are truly ubiquitous, found in all walks of life providing a wide range of information—but not necessarily in digital form. In this paper we present a survey of non-digital situated display usage in a small, rural community in North West England, with the intention of exploring how community display practices might be improved by digital technology.
The Rehabilitation of an Uncomfortable Past: Everyday Life in Vietnam during the Subsidy Period (1975–1986)

In 2006, the Museum of Ethnology organized a special exhibit on everyday life in Hanoi during the “subsidy period”, the term increasingly used to describe the decade of high socialism that began in 1975 with the reunification of a divided Vietnam and ended in 1986 with the official introduction of market reforms known as Đổi mới (Renovation). The representational strategies, which linked the collectivism of the past with the individualism of the present, prompted a nationwide discussion regarding the significance of a moment that previously had no clear name or place in official accounts due to the severe hardships it produced. The details presented demonstrate how the rehabilitation of this decade has expanded the political boundaries of what state institutions can present as having historical and ethnographic value in Vietnam as well as opened new avenues for comparative studies with (former) socialist states elsewhere.
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics the Time Evolution of Aerosol Composition over the Mexico City Plateau

The time evolution of aerosol concentration and chemical composition in a megacity urban plume was determined based on 8 flights of the DOE G-1 aircraft in and downwind of Mexico City during the March 2006 MILA-GRO field campaign. A series of selection criteria are imposed to eliminate data points with non-urban emission influences. Biomass burning has urban and non-urban sources that are distinguished on the basis of CH 3 CN and CO. In order to account for dilution in the urban plume, aerosol concentrations are normalized to CO which is taken as an inert tracer of urban emission, proportional to the emissions of aerosol precursors. Time evolution is determined with respect to photochemical age defined as −Log 10 (NO x /NO y). The geographic distribution of photochemical age and CO is examined, confirming the picture that Mexico City is a source region and that pollutants become more dilute and aged as they are advected towards T1 and T2, surface sites that are located at the fringe of the City and 35 km to the NE, respectively. Organic aerosol (OA) per ppm CO is found to increase 7 fold over the range of photochemical ages studied, corresponding to a change in NO x /NO y from nearly 100% to 10%. In the older samples the nitrate/CO ratio has leveled off suggesting that evaporation and formation of aerosol nitrate are in balance. In contrast, OA/CO increases with age in older samples, indicating that OA is still being formed. The amount of carbon equivalent to the deduced change in OA/CO with age is 56 ppbC per ppm CO. At an aerosol yield of 5% and 8% for low and high yield aromatic compounds, it is estimated from surface hydrocarbon observations that only ∼9% of the OA formation can be accounted for. A comparison of OA/CO in Mexico City and the eastern U.S. gives no evidence that aerosol yields are higher in a more polluted environment .
Reliability and content validity of a new instrument for assessment of communicative skills and language abilities in young Swedish children

The Swedish Early Communicative Development Inventories (SECDI) - w&g (words and gestures; 8-16 months) and w&s (words and sentences; 16-28 months) - is a new instrument to assess communicative and language abilities in Swedish speaking children. Test-retest reliability and content validity of SECDI were examined. The results show that the SECDI covers common words in Swedish children's vocabulary and that its grammar scale (w&s) incorporates items that develop early among many children. Test-retest was analysed over 2 or 3 months, first for 57 and then for 60 children. Test-retest reliability scores are as follows: SECDI-w&g between 0.70 and 0.90 in most age ranges; and SECDI-w&s close to or above 0.90 on most measures.
A Meta-Analysis on Unconscious Thought Effects

A meta-analysis was performed on the unconscious thought effect (UTE). All available published and unpublished data on unconscious thought were included. Our aims were to provide a statistically robust estimate of the effect size of the UTE, to identify significant moderators, and to discuss possible underlying processes of the UTE. To assess the UTE, performance of participants thinking unconsciously was compared to participants thinking consciously, and to immediate decision makers. Across a total of 92 studies, the overall aggregated effect size was g = . 224, with a 95% confidence interval from . 145 to . 303. This result provides strong support for the existence of the UTE. However, as estimated from a random-effects model, about 66% of the variance in effect sizes was attributable to systematic differences between studies. This result indicates that although the UTE is a real effect, it does not always occur. Several moderators were identified that help to explain the mixed results across various studi.
Balanced Fiber Bundles and GKM Theory

Let T be a torus and B a compact T-manifold. Goresky et al. show in [3] that if B is (what was subsequently called) a GKM manifold, then there exists a simple combinatorial description of the equivariant cohomology ring H-T*(B) as a subring of H-T*(B-T). In this paper, we prove an analog of this result for T-equivariant fiber bundles: we show that if M is a T-manifold and pi:M -> B a fiber bundle for which pi intertwines the two T-actions, there is a simple combinatorial description of H-T*(M) as a subring of H-T*(pi(-1)(B-T)). Using this result, we obtain fiber bundle analogs of results of Guillemin et al. [4] on GKM theory for homogeneous spaces.
An Examination of School Counselor Involvement in School-Family-Community Partnerships.

The study in this article investigated school counselor involvement in school-family-community partnerships and factors that influence such involvement. Participants were 235 members of the American School Counselor Association. Factor analyses of responses to the survey designed specifically for this study defined a set of factors that were used to examine variations in school counselor involvement in partnerships. Regression analyses revealed that (a) collaborative school climate, (b) school counselor role perceptions, (c) school counselor confidence in ability to build partnerships, and (d) school counselor attitudes about partnerships were significantly related to the counselors' involvement in school-family-community partnerships. Implications for school counselor training, practice, and research are discussed.
Fronto-striatal mechanisms of attentional control

Current models of flexible cognitive control emphasize the role of the prefrontal cortex. This region has been shown to control attention by biasing information processing in favour of task-relevant representations. However, the prefrontal cortex does not act in isolation. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging combined with nonlinear dynamic causal modelling to demonstrate that the basal ganglia play a role in modulating the top-down influence of the prefrontal cortex on visual processing in humans. Specifically, our results reveal that connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and stimulus-specific visual association areas depends on activity in the basal ganglia, elicited by salient events leading to shifts in attention. These data integrate disparate literatures on top-down control by the prefrontal cortex and selective gating by the basal ganglia and highlight the importance of the basal ganglia for high-level cognitive control. Based on: van Schouwenburg, M.R. , den Ouden, H.E. M. , Cools, R. (2010). The human basal ganglia modulate frontal-posterior connectivity during attention shifting. Journal of Neuroscience 30(29): 9910-9918
Travel Anxiety and Intentions to Travel Internationally: Implications of Travel Risk Perception

This article investigates the impact of cultural and psychographic factors on perceptions of travel risk, anxiety, and intentions to travel internationally. The study involved 246 Australian and 336 foreign respondents who were surveyed as to their cultural orientation, personality, lifestyle, travel motivation, risk and safety perception, anxiety, and intentions to travel. The results of a path analysis showed that the travel risk perception was a function of cultural orientation and psychographic factors in both samples, and anxiety was a function of type of perceived risk. The terrorism and sociocultural risk emerged as the most significant predictors of travel anxiety. Intentions to travel internationally were determined by travel anxiety levels and level of perceived safety. Implications for future research and marketing practices are discussed.
Small spans in scaled dimension

Juedes and Lutz (1995) proved a small span theorem for polynomial-time many-one reductions in exponential time. This result says that for language A decidable in exponential time, either the class of languages reducible to A (the lower span) or the class of problems to which A can be reduced (the upper span) is small in the sense of resource-bounded measure and, in particular, that the degree of A is small. Small span theorems have been proven for increasingly stronger polynomial-time reductions, and a small span theorem for polynomial-time Turing reductions would imply BPP /spl ne/ EXP. In contrast to the progress in resource-bounded measure, Ambos-Spies, Merkle, Reimann, and Stephan (2001) showed that there is no small span theorem for the resource-bounded dimension of Lutz (2000), even for polynomial-time many-one reductions. Resource-bounded scaled dimension, recently introduced by Hitchcock, Lutz, and Mayordomo (2003), provides rescalings of resource-bounded dimension. We use scaled dimension to further understand the contrast between measure and dimension regarding polynomial-time spans and degrees. We strengthen prior results by showing that the small span theorem holds for polynomial-time many-one reductions in the -3/sup rd/-order scaled dimension, but fails to hold in the -2/sup nd/-order scaled dimension. Our results also hold in exponential space. As an application, we show that determining the -2/sup nd/- or -l/sup st/-order scaled dimension in ESPACE of the many-one complete languages for E would yield a proof of P = BPP or P /spl ne/ PSPACE. On the other hand, it is shown unconditionally that the complete languages for E have -3/sup rd/-order scaled dimension 0 in ESPACE and -2/sup nd/- and -1/sup st/-order scaled dimension 1 in E.