Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of moderate exercise training on thallium uptake and contractile response to low-dose dobutamine of dysfunctional myocardium in patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy.

BACKGROUND There is evidence that exercise training can induce myocardial and coronary adaptations in both animals and humans. However, the significance of these potentially important changes remains to be determined in patients with ischemic heart disease and left ventricular (LV) systolic dysfunction. METHODS AND RESULTS To investigate whether exercise training can improve thallium uptake and the contractile response to low-dose dobutamine of dysfunctional myocardium, 46 patients (42 men, 4 women; mean age, 57+/-9 years) with chronic coronary artery disease and impaired LV systolic function (ejection fraction < 40%) were randomly assigned to two groups. The exercise group (n = 26) underwent exercise training at 60% of peak oxygen uptake for 8 weeks. The control group (n = 20) was not exercised. At baseline and after 8 weeks all patients underwent an exercise test with gas exchange analysis and stress echocardiography using low-dose dobutamine (5 to 10 microg/kg per minute) followed by thallium myocardial scintigraphy. Coronary angiography was performed in 23 patients at baseline and after 8 weeks. After 8 weeks, peak oxygen uptake increased significantly only in trained patients (24%). Significant improvements in the contractile response to dobutamine and thallium activity were observed in trained patients (28% and 31%, respectively; trained versus control: P<.001 for both). In a subgroup of trained patients, both improvements were correlated with an increase in the coronary collateral score (P<.005 and P<.001, respectively). CONCLUSIONS Moderate exercise training improves both thallium activity and the contractile response of dysfunctional myocardium to low doses of dobutamine in patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy. The implication of this study is that even a short-term exercise training may improve quality of life by improvement of LV systolic function during mild-to-moderate physical activity in patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy.
Helping to promote psychological well-being at work: The role of work engagement, work stress and psychological detachment using the job demands-resources model

The job demands-resources model (JD-R model) underpinned the three main aims of this study: to provide support for the JD-R model‟s account of work engagement and work stress in relation to psychological well-being; to suggest the inclusion of the recovery process, psychological detachment as a theoretical refinement; and to produce comparative, predictive models of psychological well-being at work. 48 employees from an organisation that delivers: education; support and care services participated. The results provide strong support for the JD-R model; provide evidence for the inclusion of psychological detachment as a theoretical refinement; and show psychological detachment and work stress to be the most predictive of psychological well-being in the work place. Study limitations and suggestions for future research are discussed.
Age Differences Between Spouses: Sociodemographic Variation and Selection

Throughout the world, marriages in which the husband is older than his wife are more common than same-age and women-older marriages. Yet there is surprisingly little systematic knowledge about within-country variation in spousal age differences. This study used comprehensive Swedish register data to investigate how age differences in newly married couples were associated with spouses' age, gender, education, income, and birthplace. Among both women and men, small age differences were most common among the highly educated, high-income earners, and native Swedes, whereas persons with low education, low income, and non-Swedish origin more often entered marriages with large age differences, particularly men-older marriages. Findings are discussed in relation to theoretical attempts to explain spousal age differences and sociodemographic selection into couples with different age relationships.
Towards a short questionnaire for stepwise assessment of upper limb function, pain and stiffness in Duchenne muscular dystrophy

Abstract Purpose: Duchenne muscular dystrophy can lead to upper extremity limitations, pain and stiffness. In a previous study, these domains have been investigated using extensive questionnaires, which are too time-consuming for clinical practice. This study aimed at gaining insight into the underlying dimensions of these questionnaires, and to construct a short questionnaire that can be used for clinical assessment. Methods: Exploratory factor analysis was performed on the responses of 213 participants to a web-based survey to find the underlying dimensions in the Capabilities of Upper Extremity questionnaire, the ABILHAND questionnaire, and questionnaires regarding pain and stiffness. Based on these underlying dimensions, a stepwise approach was formulated. In addition, construct validity of the factors was investigated. Results: In total, 14 factors were identified. All had high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha >0.89) and explained 80–88% of the variance of the original questionnaires. Construct validity was supported, because participants in the early ambulatory stage performed significantly better (p< 0.001) than participants in the late non-ambulatory stage. Conclusion: The factors identified from the set of questionnaires provide a valid representation of upper extremity function, pain and stiffness in Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Based on the factor commonalities, the Upper Limb Short Questionnaire was formulated. Implications for Rehabilitation New insights into the underlying dimensions of upper extremity function, pain and stiffness in Duchenne muscular dystrophy are gained. Fourteen factors, with good internal consistency and construct validity, are identified regarding upper extremity function, pain and stiffness in Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Based on these factors, the Upper Limb Short Questionnaire is presented. The Upper Limb Short Questionnaire can be used as an identifier of arm-hand limitations and the start of more thorough clinical investigation.
A novel method for isolation of Chlamydia pneumoniae by treatment with trypsin or EDTA

To establish a novel method for the efficient isolation of Chlamydia pneumoniae, experiments were performed to determine the effects of EDTA or trypsin treatment of C. pneumoniae on its adsorption and inclusion body formation. Treatment of C. pneumoniae with 0.1% trypsin or 1 mM EDTA significantly increased inclusion body-forming activity from 8,000- to 10,000-fold higher than that of the control. C. pneumoniae was successfully isolated in cultured cells which were inoculated with clinical specimens after treatment with 0.1% trypsin.
Pharmacodynamic Evaluation of the Cardiovascular Effects following the Coadministration of Cocaine and Ethanol

Abbreviations Emax The maximum possible response EC 50 The plasma concentration that produces 50% of the maximum possible response Eo The effect at baseline prior to agonist administration Cmax The peak plasma drug concentration Cl The clearance of drug from the body k The terminal elimination rate constant for a drug Vss The volume of distribution at steady state for a drug This article has not been copyedited and formatted. The final version may differ from this version. ABSTRACT One of the most common drug dependencies occurring with alcoholism is cocaine dependence. This combination is particularly worrisome because of the increased risk of cardiovascular events associated with their co-abuse. Though it's well known that ethanol increases the cardiovascular effects of cocaine by inhibiting cocaine clearance and the formation of cocaethylene, it has also been postulated that ethanol enhances cocaine's cardiovascular effects independent of the two latter mechanisms. This study investigated the cardiovascular pharmacodynamics of the cocaine-ethanol interaction to determine if ethanol directly enhanced the cardiovascular effects of cocaine. Dogs (n=6) were administered 3mg/kg of IV cocaine alone and in combination with 1g/kg of IV ethanol on separate study days. Blood pressure, heart rate, and ECG were monitored continuously and blood samples collected periodically after drug administration. Concentration-time data were fitted to a two-compartment model, and concentration-effect data fitted to a simple Emax model using WinNonlin. Pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic parameters were compared between the two treatment phases by a paired t-test. The administration of ethanol before cocaine resulted in a decrease in cocaine clearance, but there were no differences in any of the other pharmacokinetic or pharmacodynamic parameter values between the cocaine alone and cocaine+ethanol phases. As has been demonstrated in previous animal and human studies, the clearance of cocaine was decreased by prior administration of ethanol. However, ethanol did not change the concentration-effect relationship of the cardiovascular response to This article has not been copyedited and formatted. The final version may differ from this version. DMD #23531 4 cocaine administration. It is concluded from this study that ethanol does not directly enhance the cardiovascular effects of cocaine.
A meta-analysis approach for assessing the diversity and specificity of belowground root and microbial volatiles

Volatile organic compounds are secondary metabolites emitted by all organisms, especially by plants and microbes. Their role as aboveground signals has been established for decades. Recent evidence suggests that they might have a non-negligible role belowground and might be involved in root–root and root–microbial/pest interactions. Our aim here was to make a comprehensive review of belowground volatile diversity using a meta-analysis approach. At first we synthesized current literature knowledge on plant root volatiles and classified them in terms of chemical diversity. In a second step, relying on the mVOC database of microbial volatiles, we classified volatiles based on their emitters (bacteria vs. fungi) and their specific ecological niche (i.e., rhizosphere, soil). Our results highlight similarities and differences among root and microbial volatiles and also suggest that some might be niche specific. We further explored the possibility that volatiles might be involved in intra- and inter-specific root–root communication and discuss the ecological implications of such scenario. Overall this work synthesizes current knowledge on the belowground volatilome and the potential signaling role of its constituents. It also highlights that the total diversity of belowground volatiles might be orders of magnitude larger that the few hundreds of compounds described to date.
Trade Imbalances within the Euro Area and with Respect to the Rest of the World

Many studies have explored the determinants of current account balances in Europe. However, only in a few studies has trade balance been decomposed into intra balance, trade balance vis-a-vis the euro area, and extra balance, trade balance vis-a-vis the rest of the world. This decomposition is necessary for us to understand why some core euro area countries are acting as financial intermediaries for the periphery countries. Furthermore, the determinants of intra and extra balances might be different because nominal exchange rate cannot adjust between the EMU countries while their financial markets are highly integrated. Thus, we apply this decomposition and supplement the previous studies by including a larger set of theoretically plausible explanatory variables, which is derived from the current account literature. Our contribution is twofold: We observe that, contrary to Schmitz and von Hagen (2011), the introduction of a common currency has not increased the elasticity of net capital flows to per capita incomes within the euro area for the member countries. On the other hand, there is a great heterogeneity among the usual determinants of trade balances whether those contribute to intra balances or extra balances. These results increase our understanding of the imbalances in the euro area.
Where's the beef? the trivial dynamics of real business cycle models

The extremely weak propagation mechanisms of real business cycle (RBC) models are well acknowledged, and some effort has been devoted to improving the models on this dimension. This paper builds on these efforts to provide an explicit explanation of why various existing RBC models do not replicate real world business cycles, and discusses modifications necessary to bring real business cycle theory into closer conformity with the data.
Uniform Inhibition of Dopamine Neurons in the Ventral Tegmental Area by Aversive Stimuli

Dopamine neurons play a key role in reward-related behaviors. Reward coding theories predict that dopamine neurons will be inhibited by or will not respond to aversive stimuli. Paradoxically, between 3 and 49% of presumed dopamine neurons are excited by aversive stimuli. We found that, in the ventral tegmental area of anesthetized rats, the population of presumed dopamine neurons that are excited by aversive stimuli is actually not dopaminergic. The identified dopamine neurons were inhibited by the aversive stimulus. These findings suggest that dopamine neurons are specifically excited by reward and that a population of nondopamine neurons is excited by aversive stimuli.
Neural correlates of feature selective memory and pop-out in extrastriate area V4

Neural activity in area V4 was examined to assess (1) whether the effects of attentive selection for stimulus features could be based on the memory of the feature, (2) whether dynamically changing the feature selection would cause activity associated with the newly selected stimuli to pop out, and (3) whether intrusion of more than one stimulus into the receptive field would disrupt the feature-selective activity. Rhesus monkeys were trained on several variations of a conditional orientation discrimination task. A differential activation of area V4 neurons was observed in the conditional discrimination task based on the presence of a match or a nonmatch between the conditional cue (a particular color or luminance) and the color or luminance of the receptive field stimulus. The differential activation was unchanged when the cue was removed and the animal had to remember its color (or luminance) to perform the task. When the cued feature was switched from one alternative to another in the middle of a trial the differential activation of neurons reversed over the course of 150–300 msec. If the stimulus in the receptive field contained the newly selected feature, V4 neurons became activated without a concomitant change in the stimulus in classical receptive field. Across the topographic map of V4 the activity associated with the newly selected stimuli popped out, whereas the activity of deselected stimuli faded to the background levels of other background objects. Evidence of a suppressive input from stimuli outside the classical receptive field was clear in only 3 of 24 neurons examined. Intrusion into the classical receptive field by a second stimulus resulted in a diminished difference between matching and nonmatching conditions. These physiological data suggest a major role for attentional control in the parallel processing of simple feature-selective differences.
Measuring Opportunity to Learn and Academic Language Exposure for English Language Learners in Elementary Science Classrooms. CRESST Report 767.

The present study piloted a survey-based measure of Opportunity to Learn (OTL) and Academic Language Exposure (ALE) in fourth grade science classrooms that sought to distinguish teacher practices with ELL (English language learner) and non-ELL students. In the survey, participant teachers reported on their instructional practices and the context in their science classrooms. A small sub-sample was also observed teaching a lesson in their classroom on two occasions. The pilot data were used to investigate basic psychometric properties of the survey: specifically (a) the dimensions underlying the survey items, in particular whether OTL and ALE are distinct or overlapping features or dimensions of science instruction and (b) the match between information reported by teachers in the survey, and that collected by classroom observers. Qualitative analyses of observation and teacher open ended responses in the survey informed the interpretation of the quantitative analysis results and provided useful insights for refining the survey instrument to better capture the classroom experiences of ELL students.
On Improving the Security of Logic Locking

Due to globalization of integrated circuit (IC) design flow, rogue elements in the supply chain can pirate ICs, overbuild ICs, and insert hardware Trojans. EPIC locks the design by randomly inserting additional gates; only a correct key makes the design to produce correct outputs. We demonstrate that an attacker can decipher the locked netlist, in a time linear to the number of keys, by sensitizing the key-bits to the output. We then develop techniques to fix this vulnerability and make an attacker's effort truly exponential in the number of inserted keys. We introduce a new security metric and a method to deliver strong logic locking.
GROWTH RESPONSE OF THE DUCKWEED LEMNA MINOR TO HEAVY METAL POLLUTION

To assess the tolerance and effect of heavy metals pollution on the duckweed Lemna minor, the aquatic plants were exposed to different concentrations of copper (Cu), nickel (Ni), cadmium (Cd) and zinc (Zn) in a quarter Coic and Lessaint solution at pH = 6.1 (± 0.1) and under a daily regime of 16 h light (101 µmol/m 2 .s 1 ). Copper at 0.2 mg/L and nickel at 0.5 mg/L promoted the growth of Lemna fronds. At higher concentrations, Cu and Ni inhibited the growth of duckweed; the EC 50 (concentration causing 50% inhibition) were 0.47 mg/L for Cu and 1.29 mg/L for Ni. Cadmium and zinc decreased by 50% the growth of fronds when the medium contained respectively 0.64 and 5.64 mg/L (EC 50 ). Duckweed tolerated Cu, Ni, Cd and Zn at concentrations of 0.4, 3.0, 0.4 and 15.0 mg/L respectively without showing any visible signs of toxicity (chlorosis, frond disconnection and necrosis). On the basis of visible symptoms and the EC 50 values, the toxicity of the metals on Lemna. minor was in decreasing order of damage: Cu > Cd > Ni > Zn. It was concluded that the duckweed Lemna. minor is very sensitive to copper and cadmium pollution.
Quaternion-based stabilization of attitude dynamics subject to pointwise delay in the input

The problem of stabilizing rigid-body attitude dynamics in the presence of pointwise time-delay for the input torque is considered. A quaternion-based linear state feedback controller is shown to achieve local stability in addition to the characterization of sufficient condition that depends only on the magnitude of the initial angular rates. More specifically, no restrictions are imposed on the body initial orientation which is a significant contrast with other results from recent literature that adopt three-dimensional representations for the attitude kinematics. Using the quaternion-based linear feedback structure, the closed-loop system is shown to never admit the possibility for finite-time escapes. While the actual magnitude of the time-delay can be unknown, an upper bound on the delay is assumed to be known. The proof relies on the construction of a functional which does not belong to the family of the strict Lyapunov-Krasovskii functionals, but shares important features with the functionals of this family. The stability conditions and results are illustrated through numerical simulations.
Adolescent Runaway Behavior from an Inpatient Setting

This retrospective study has attempted to identify those factors which place an adolescent at risk for running away from an inpatient treatment program. Significant findings associated with adolescent runaway behavior from an inpatient setting include a history of adoption, abuse (sexual and/or physical), a history of running away, especially frequent runaway episodes, and runs outside of the city of residence. In addition, a DSM-111 diagnosis of conduct disorder with associated symptoms of truancy, theft, vandalism and drug and alcohol abuse appear to be positively correlated with runaway risk from inpatient treatment. Acute precipitants to the runaway behavior included frequent escalations in tension between patients and parents as well as between patients and treatment staff.
Interleukin (IL)-23 Stimulates IFN-γ Secretion by CD56bright Natural Killer Cells and Enhances IL-18-Driven Dendritic Cells Activation

Interleukin (IL)-23 is a member of the IL-12 family of cytokines that, as the other members of this family, is secreted by monocytes, macrophages, and dendritic cells (DC) upon recognition of bacterial, viral, and fungal components. IL-23 is critical during immunity against acute infections, and it is also involved in the development of autoimmune diseases. Although immunoregulatory effects of IL-23 on mouse natural killer (NK) cells have been described, the effect of IL-23 on human NK cells remains ill-defined. In this study, we observed that monocytes stimulated with LPS secreted IL-23 and that blockade of this cytokine during monocyte and NK cell coculture led to a diminished production of IFN-γ by NK cells. Accordingly, rIL-23-induced NK cell activation and stimulated IFN-γ production by CD56bright NK cells. This effect involved MEK1/MEK2, JNK, PI3K, mammalian target of rapamycin, and NF-κB, but not STAT-1, STAT-3, nor p38 MAPK pathways. Moreover, while NK cell-mediated cytotoxicity remained unaltered, antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC) was enhanced after IL-23 stimulation. In addition, IL-23 displayed a synergistic effect with IL-18 for IFN-γ production by both CD56bright and CD56dim NK cells, and this effect was due to a priming effect of IL-23 for IL-18 responsiveness. Furthermore, NK cells pre-stimulated with IL-18 promoted an increase in CD86 expression and IL-12 secretion by DC treated with LPS, and IL-23 potentiated these effects. Moreover, IL-23-driven enhancement of NK cell “helper” function was dependent on NK cell-derived IFN-γ. Therefore, our results suggest that IL-23 may trigger NK cell-mediated “helper” effects on adaptive immunity, shaping T cell responses during different pathological situations through the regulation of DC maturation.