Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
α‐tocopherol improves impaired physiology of rat type II pneumocytes isolated from experimentally injured lungs

Oxidant stress delivered by nitrogen dioxide (NO2) inhalation impairs the function of extracellular surfactant as well as surfactant phospholipid metabolism in type II pneumocytes. Because protection against oxidant stress is important to normal lung function, the lung contains a variety of antioxidants, including vitamin E. Whether administration of this antioxidant during NO2 inhalation attenuates NO2‐induced alterations in phospholipid metabolism in type II pneumocytes has not been studied.
Sodium and Potassium as Constituents of Human Salivary Buffers

THE saliva of human beings is so well buffered that it maintains a rather constant pH despite the introduction into the mouth of substances containing high concentrations of acids or alkalies. Even when the pH of saliva is altered by such means, the changes are of comparatively short duration. The stimulation of the salivary glands arising from mastication results in an increased flow which acts as a diluent. The maintenance of the homeostatic character of the salivary pH in the presence of acidic or basic foods and liquids is further facilitated by an increase in the buffer capacity of the saliva secreted in response to stimulation. This effect was first observed by Marshall,1 who found that the use of paraffin as a salivary stimulant yielded a saliva whose neutralizing power was considerably greater than that collected from the same patients in the basal state. Marshall's observations have since been confirmed by numerous investigators.2' 3 In recent years, considerable attention has been devoted to the elucidation of the anionic components of the buffer pairs of human saliva. Wah Leung' showed that stimulated saliva at or near the pH of that freshly collected from the mouth owes its buffering power primarily to bicarbonates with minor contributions from the contained phosphates and proteins. Sellman5 observed that at physiologic pH levels, the bicarbonates and phosphates are the principal buffers of saliva, with the bicarbonates assuming a preponderant role in paraffinactivated saliva. The cationic concentrations of the salivary buffer systems remain, however, a problem for investigation. Quantitatively, sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium are the most important basic constituents of tissues and body fluids. While each of these nations is present in human saliva, the insolubility of the calcium and magnesium salts of carbonate, phosphate, and protein under physiologic conditions precludes their contributing to the buffering power of saliva. Because of the high solubility of the salts of sodium and potassium, it was postulated that the level of these elements may be a factor limiting the buffering capacity of saliva. Accordingly, the present study was undertaken to ascertain (1) whether the sodium and potassium concentrations of saliva are related to its buffer capacity, and (2) the degree to which any relationship between the buffer capacity and sodium and potassium content of saliva is influenced by its rate of flow.
A Preconditioner for Linear Systems Arising From Interior Point Optimization Methods

We explore a preconditioning technique applied to the problem of solving linear systems arising from primal-dual interior point algorithms in linear and quadratic programming. The preconditioner has the attractive property of improved eigenvalue clustering with increased ill-conditioning of the (1,1) block of the saddle point matrix. It fits well into the optimization framework since the interior point iterates yield increasingly ill-conditioned linear systems as the solution is approached. We analyze the spectral characteristics of the preconditioner, utilizing projections onto the null space of the constraint matrix, and demonstrate performance on problems from the NETLIB and CUTEr test suites. The numerical experiments include results based on inexact inner iterations.
Sex-based differences in the genomic response, innate immunity, organ dysfunction, and clinical outcomes after severe blunt traumatic injury and hemorrhagic shock

INTRODUCTION The effect of sex on posttraumatic pathophysiology and outcomes after severe traumatic injury remains debated. We sought to determine the relationship of sex to the genomic and inflammatory responses, and clinical outcomes after hemorrhagic shock. METHODS We analyzed blunt trauma patients in hemorrhagic shock from a prospective multi-institutional cohort study to assess for sex-based differences in the genomic response and clinical outcomes. Serially drawn blood samples were analyzed to evaluate peripheral leukocyte genomewide expression and circulating inflammatory mediators at intervals between 0.5 and 28 days after injury. Multivariate logistic regression models were developed to assess the effect of sex on outcomes after controlling for age, injury and shock severity, blood transfusion, and comorbidities. RESULTS The cohort consisted of 1,285 (67%) male and 643 (33%) female blunt trauma patients. Injury and shock severity were similar between the two groups. There were small but statistically significant differences between males and females regarding their age, body mass index, and 12-hour blood and crystalloid administration. Organ failure was more severe in males, with slower recovery (9.0 vs. 6.5 days) in males compared to females (p < 0.01). However, there were no differences between males and females in plasma levels of IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, IL-1&bgr;, tumor necrosis factor alpha, and monocyte chemoattractant protein 1. Multivariate analysis revealed that sex was not a significant independent risk factor for complicated recovery or 28-day mortality. Transcriptomic analysis revealed 333 genes with significant differential expression patterns between males and females (FDR, <0.001), including genes associated with general inflammation, innate immunity, cell adhesion, and cell signaling. None of the former genes were directly associated with sex hormones or X/Y chromosomes. CONCLUSION There are sex-specific differences in the leukocyte genomic response to severe injury that are associated with more robust and longer-duration organ dysfunction. However, these expression patterns do not seem to be associated with sex-linked genes or circulating cytokine level differences, and do not translate to worsened sex-specific organ failure outcomes or inpatient mortality. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE Prognostic/epidemiologic study, level III.
Impaired serum cholesterol efflux capacity in rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus

Objectives The marked cardiovascular risk in autoimmune diseases is only partly explained. The capacity of high-density lipoproteins (HDL) to promote cell cholesterol efflux is a property with a well-known anti-atherogenic significance, but is also involved in functional modulation of endothelial and immune cells. The aim of this work was to evaluate HDL functionality with respect to cell cholesterol efflux in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and systemic lupus erythemathosus (SLE) patients. Methods We evaluated serum cholesterol efflux capacity (CEC) of apoB-depleted serum, which mainly reflects HDL activity, from 30 RA and 30 SLE patients, and from 30 healthy controls by radioisotopic ex-vivo systems discriminating between the specific pathways of cholesterol efflux. Results RA patients presented impairment of ATP-binding cassette G1-mediated CEC that correlated with disease activity. SLE patients showed a more complex pattern of modifications unrelated to disease activity, with marked reduction of ATP-binding cassette G1-mediated CEC and impairment of ATP-binding cassette A1-mediated CEC. The relationship between specific pathways of CEC values and serum total HDL differed between groups and there was no relationship with autoantibody profile or current therapy. Conclusions CEC is impaired in RA and SLE, with a specific mechanism pattern in each disease not depending on serum HDL levels. These findings provide a new mechanism for the increased atherosclerotic risk in RA and SLE patients.
Quality of life in early Parkinson's disease: Impact of dyskinesias and motor fluctuations

The impact of dyskinesias and motor fluctuations on quality of life (QOL) at various stages in the course of Parkinson's disease (PD) is not well understood. In 301 subjects with early PD enrolled in a clinical trial (CALM‐PD), we quantified the impact of motor complications on QOL and investigated how this changes over time. We also compared QOL related to demographic and treatment characteristics. The presence of dyskinesias was associated with visual analogue scale (VAS) scores 3.0 of 100 points higher (better) than those without dyskinesias in years 1 to 2, even when adjusting for Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) motor scores. The positive association between dyskinesias and QOL scores was more marked in older patients. In years 3 to 4, dyskinesias no longer had a significant relationship with QOL. Younger subjects had higher VAS scores. Gender, motor fluctuations, and treatment regimen had no significant association with QOL, although a trend was found toward a small negative effect of motor fluctuations on QOL. We conclude that motor complications that occur within the first 4 years of treatment of PD do not have a significant negative effect on quality of life as measured by a visual analogue scale for most patients. © 2003 Movement Disorder Society
Non-linear adaptive robust control of electro-hydraulic systems driven by double-rod actuators

This paper studies the high performance robust motion control of electro-hydraulic servo-systems driven by double-rod hydraulic actuators. The dynamics of hydraulic systems are highly non-linear and the system may be subjected to non-smooth and discontinuous non-linearities due to directional change of valve opening, friction and valve overlap. Aside from the non-linear nature of hydraulic dynamics, hydraulic servosystems also have large extent of model uncertainties. To address these challenging issues, the recently proposed adaptive robust control (ARC) is applied and a discontinuous projection based ARC controller is constructed. The resulting controller is able to take into account the effect of the parameter variations of the inertia load and the cylinder hydraulic parameters as well as the uncertain non-linearities such as the uncompensated friction forces and external disturbances. Non-differentiability of the inherent non-linearities associated with hydraulic dynamics is carefully examined and addressing strategies are provided. Compared with previously proposed ARC controller, the controller in the paper has a more robust parameter adaptation process and may be more suitable for implementation. Finally, the controller guarantees a prescribed transient performance and final tracking accuracy in the presence of both parametric uncertainties and uncertain non-linearities while achieving asymptotic tracking in the presence of parametric uncertainties.
Sensing throughput tradeoff for cognitive radio networks with noise variance uncertainty

This paper proposes novel spectrum sensing algorithm, and examines the sensing throughput tradeoff for cognitive radio (CR) networks under noise variance uncertainty. It is assumed that there are one white sub-band, and one target sub-band which is either white or non-white. Under this assumption, first we propose a novel generalized energy detector (GED) for examining the target sub-band by exploiting the noise information of the white sub-band, then, we study the tradeoff between the sensing time and achievable throughput of the CR network. To study this tradeoff, we consider the sensing time optimization for maximizing the throughput of the CR network while appropriately protecting the primary network. The sensing time is optimized by utilizing the derived detection and false alarm probabilities of the GED. The proposed GED does not suffer from signal to noise ratio (SNR) wall (i.e., robust against noise variance uncertainty) and outperforms the existing signal detectors. Moreover, the relationship between the proposed GED and conventional energy detector (CED) is quantified analytically. We show that the optimal sensing times with perfect and imperfect noise variances are not the same. In particular, when the frame duration is 2s, SNR= -20dB, -20dB and each of the bandwidths of the white and target sub-bands is 6MHz, the optimal sensing times are 28.5ms and 50.6ms with perfect and imperfect noise variances, respectively.
Transitive Inference: Distinct Contributions of Rostrolateral Prefrontal Cortex and the Hippocampus

The capacity to reason about complex information is a central characteristic of human cognition. An important component of many reasoning tasks is the need to integrate multiple mental relations. Several researchers have argued that rostrolateral prefrontal cortex (RLPFC) plays a key role in relational integration. If this hypothesis is correct, then RLPFC should play a key role in transitive inference, which requires the integration of multiple relations to reach a conclusion. Thus far, however, neuroscientific research on transitive inference has focused primarily on the hippocampus. In this fMRI study, we sought to compare the roles of RLPFC and the hippocampus on a novel transitive inference paradigm. Four relations between colored balls were presented on the screen together with a target relation. Participants were asked to decide whether the target relation was correct, given the other indicated relations between balls. RLPFC, but not the hippocampus, exhibited stronger activation on trials that required relational integration as compared with trials that involved relational encoding without integration. In contrast, the hippocampus exhibited a pattern consistent with a role in relational encoding, with stronger activation on trials requiring encoding of relational predicate–argument structure as compared with trials requiring encoding of item–item associations. Functional connectivity analyses give rise to the hypothesis that RLPFC draws on hippocampal representations of mental relations during the process of relational integration.
Fast Segmentation of Left Ventricle in CT Images by Explicit Shape Regression using Random Pixel Difference Features

Recently, machine learning has been successfully applied to model-based left ventricle (LV) segmentation. The general framework involves two stages, which starts with LV localization and is followed by boundary delineation. Both are driven by supervised learning techniques. When compared to previous non-learning-based methods, several advantages have been shown, including full automation and improved accuracy. However, the speed is still slow, in the order of several seconds, for applications involving a large number of cases or case loads requiring real-time performance. In this paper, we propose a fast LV segmentation algorithm by joint localization and boundary delineation via training explicit shape regressor with random pixel difference features. Tested on 3D cardiac computed tomography (CT) image volumes, the average running time of the proposed algorithm is 1.2 milliseconds per case. On a dataset consisting of 139 CT volumes, a 5-fold cross validation shows the segmentation error is $1.21 \pm 0.11$ for LV endocardium and $1.23 \pm 0.11$ millimeters for epicardium. Compared with previous work, the proposed method is more stable (lower standard deviation) without significant compromise to the accuracy.
The Implications of Customer Purchasing Behavior and In-store Display Formats

Consider a retailer announces both the regular price and the post-season clearance price at the beginning of the selling season. Throughout the season, customers arrive in accord with a Poisson process. In this paper we analyze the impact of two types of customer purchasing behavior and two common in-store display formats on the retailer’s optimal expected profit and optimal order quantity. We consider the case when all customers are either myopic (purchase immediately upon arrival) or strategic (either purchase at the regular price upon arrival or attempt to purchase at the clearance price after the season ends). In addition, we consider the case when the retailer would display either all available units or one unit at a time on the sales floor. When all customers have identical valuation, we show that, in equilibrium, each strategic customer’s purchasing decision is based on a threshold policy that depends on the inventory level at the time of arrival. We prove analytically that the retailer would obtain a higher expected profit and would order more when the customers are myopic. Also, we show analytically that the retailer would earn a higher expected profit and would order more under the display one unit format when the customers are strategic. We illustrate numerically the penalty when the retailer mistakenly assumes that the strategic customers are myopic. We extend our analysis to the case in which customers belong to multiple classes, each of which has a class-specific valuation, and also to the case in which the post-season clearance price depends on the actual end-of-season inventory level. Keyword: Retailing, Purchasing Behavior, In-Store Display Formats, Ordering Decision. Direct correspondence to any of the authors. Yin and Tang: UCLA Anderson School, UCLA, 110 Westwood Plaza, CA 90095, email addresses: ryin@anderson.ucla. edu, ctang@anderson.ucla. edu. The authors are grateful to Professor Sushil Bikhchandani for sharing his ideas throughout this research project.
The primate semicircular canal system and locomotion

The semicircular canal system of vertebrates helps coordinate body movements, including stabilization of gaze during locomotion. Quantitative phylogenetically informed analysis of the radius of curvature of the three semicircular canals in 91 extant and recently extinct primate species and 119 other mammalian taxa provide support for the hypothesis that canal size varies in relation to the jerkiness of head motion during locomotion. Primate and other mammalian species studied here that are agile and have fast, jerky locomotion have significantly larger canals relative to body mass than those that move more cautiously.
Chemical modification of beech wood: Effect on thermal stability

Beech sawdust was reacted with phthalic (PA) and maleic (MA) anhydrides for chemical modification. The influence of reaction time and anhydride amount was investigated. IR spectra gave evidence of wood esterification. Thermogravimetric investigation of chemically modified wood indicated a better thermal stability (mainly for wood treated with phthalic anhydride) in comparison with the untreated wood.
Deep Regression for Face Alignment

In this paper, we present a deep regression approach for face alignment. The deep architecture consists of a global layer and multi-stage local layers. We apply the back-propagation algorithm with the dropout strategy to jointly optimize the regression parameters. We show that the resulting deep regressor gradually and evenly approaches the true facial landmarks stage by stage, avoiding the tendency to yield over-strong early stage regressors while over-weak later stage regressors. Experimental results show that our approach achieves the state-of-the-art
Locality-Sensitive Hashing of Curves

We study data structures for storing a set of polygonal curves in R^d such that, given a query curve, we can efficiently retrieve similar curves from the set, where similarity is measured using the discrete Frechet distance or the dynamic time warping distance. To this end we devise the first locality-sensitive hashing schemes for these distance measures. A major challenge is posed by the fact that these distance measures internally optimize the alignment between the curves. We give solutions for different types of alignments including constrained and unconstrained versions. For unconstrained alignments, we improve over a result by Indyk [SoCG 2002] for short curves. Let n be the number of input curves and let m be the maximum complexity of a curve in the input. In the particular case where m 0, our solutions imply an approximate near-neighbor data structure for the discrete Frechet distance that uses space in O(n^(1+a) log n) and achieves query time in O(n^a log^2 n) and constant approximation factor. Furthermore, our solutions provide a trade-off between approximation quality and computational performance: for any parameter k in [m], we can give a data structure that uses space in O(2^(2k) m^(k-1) n log n + nm), answers queries in O( 2^(2k) m^(k) log n) time and achieves approximation factor in O(m/k).
Systematic review of early cardiometabolic outcomes of the first treated episode of psychosis.

CONTEXT The increased mortality associated with schizophrenia is largely due to cardiovascular disease. Treatment with antipsychotics is associated with weight gain and changes in other cardiovascular risk factors. Early identification of modifiable cardiovascular risk factors is a clinical imperative but prospective longitudinal studies of the early cardiometabolic adverse effects of antipsychotic drug treatment other than weight gain have not been previously reviewed. OBJECTIVES To assess the methods and reporting of cardiometabolic outcome studies of the first treated episode of psychosis, review key findings, and suggest directions for future research. DATA SOURCES PsycINFO, MEDLINE, and Scopus from January 1990 to June 2010. STUDY SELECTION Subjects were experiencing their first treated episode of psychosis. Subjects were antipsychotic naive or had been exposed to antipsychotics for a short known period at the beginning of the study. Cardiometabolic indices were assessed. Studies used a longitudinal design. DATA EXTRACTION Sixty-four articles were identified describing 53 independent studies; 25 studies met inclusion criteria and were retained for detailed review. DATA SYNTHESIS Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials and Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology checklists were used to assess the methods and reporting of studies. A qualitative review of findings was conducted. CONCLUSIONS Two key hypotheses were identified based on this review: (1) in general, there is no difference in cardiovascular risk assessed by weight or metabolic indices between individuals with an untreated first episode of psychosis and healthy controls and (2) cardiovascular risk increases after first exposure to any antipsychotic drug. A rank order of drugs can be derived but there is no evidence of significant class differences. Recommended directions for future research include assessing the effect on cardiometabolic outcomes of medication adherence and dosage effects, determining the therapeutic window for antipsychotic use in adults and youth, and testing for moderation of outcomes by demographic factors, including sex and age, and clinical and genetic factors.