Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mechanisms of release and renal tubular action of atrial natriuretic factor.

Inasmuch as atrial natriuretic factor (ANF) is apparently involved causally in the renal response to acute hypervolemia, it became of interest to study cellular mechanisms of release and renal tubular action. To study release mechanisms, freshly excised rat heart atria were incubated in vitro. Activation of the cellular adenylate cyclase system by either beta-adrenergic stimulation or the vasopressin analog deamino-8-D-arginine vasopressin did not result in ANF release. By contrast, activation of the polyphosphoinositide system by alpha-adrenergic stimulation or stimulation of the V1-type vasopressin receptors, and by a calcium ionophore or active phorbol ester, significantly increased natriuretic activity in the medium and reduced it in tissue. It is concluded, therefore, that activation of this latter system is the mechanism for ANF secretion from atrial myocytes. To test the effect of ANF on tubular transport in the medullary collecting duct, microcatheterization was used in rats before and during i.v. infusion of synthetic atrial peptide (23 amino acids). It was found that tubular delivery of salt to this part of the nephron was increased, and that reabsorption in the duct itself was reduced. In control experiments, increased delivery was associated with proportionately increased reabsorption, which demonstrated glomerulotubular balance in the nephron segment under normal conditions. The natriuretic effect of ANF, therefore, was not caused solely by enhanced tubular load, but included specific inhibition of duct sodium reabsorption as an essential feature of the renal response.
Critical velocity: A predictor of 2000-m rowing ergometer performance in NCAA D1 female collegiate rowers

Abstract The aims of this study were to examine the use of the critical velocity test as a means of predicting 2000-m rowing ergometer performance in female collegiate rowers, and to study the relationship of selected physiological variables on performance times. Thirty-five female collegiate rowers (mean ± s: age 19.3 ± 1.3 years; height 1.70 ± 0.06 m; weight 69.5 ± 7.2 kg) volunteered to participate in the study. Rowers were divided into two categories based on rowing experience: varsity (more than 1 year collegiate experience) and novice (less than 1 year collegiate experience). All rowers performed two continuous graded maximal oxygen consumption tests (familiarization and baseline) to establish maximal oxygen uptake ([Vdot]O2max), peak power output, and power output at ventilatory threshold. Rowers then completed a critical velocity test, consisting of four time-trials at various distances (400 m, 600 m, 800 m, and 1000 m) on two separate days, with 15 min rest between trials. Following the critical velocity test, rowers completed a 2000-m time-trial. Absolute [Vdot]O2max was the strongest predictor of 2000-m performance (r = 0.923) in varsity rowers, with significant correlations also observed for peak power output and critical velocity (r = 0.866 and r = 0.856, respectively). In contrast, critical velocity was the strongest predictor of 2000-m performance in novice rowers (r = 0.733), explaining 54% of the variability in performance. These findings suggest the critical velocity test may be more appropriate for evaluating performance in novice rowers.
Low- and high-voltage-activated calcium currents in rat spinal dorsal horn neurons.

1. Calcium currents in immature rat spinal dorsal horn neurons in transverse slices were studied with the single-electrode voltage-clamp technique. Using experimental conditions that minimized voltage-dependent Na+ and K+ currents, we distinguished low- and high-voltage-activated calcium currents on the basis of their voltage dependence and sensitivity to the Ca2(+)-channel agonist and antagonist drugs. 2. The low-voltage-activated transient calcium current is evoked with weak depolarizing voltage commands. It begins to activate at potentials positive to -70 mV and increases in amplitude and rate of decay with depolarization, the peak values being reached between -40 and -30 mV. The current is fully activated at a holding potential of about -110 mV. Steady-state inactivation is complete at potentials in the range of -60 to -50 mV. 3. The transient component of the high-threshold calcium current appears at membrane potentials close to -40 mV and slowly decays within several hundreds of milliseconds. The amplitude of the current increases with more negative holding potentials (-100 to -40 mV). 4. The sustained component of the high-threshold calcium current seems to activate at potentials positive to -40 mV and exhibits little inactivation during 0.3- to 0.5-s depolarizing commands. This component is better isolated at more depolarized holding potentials (between -40 and -30 mV) that inactivate the transient components of the low- and high-threshold calcium currents. 5. A rundown of calcium currents was seen in dorsal horn cells. The time stability of the transient and sustained components of the high-threshold calcium current was lower than that of the low-threshold transient current. The latter current seemed to be insensitive up to 1 h. 6. (-)-Bay K 8644 (1-10 microM), a dihydropyridine agonist, enhanced the high-threshold calcium current, in particular the sustained component, but not the transient low-threshold calcium current. The dihydropyridine antagonist nifedipine (5-50 microM) selectively reduced the sustained component of the high-threshold calcium current while having little or no effect on the transient components of the low- and high-threshold calcium currents. 7. Cadmium ions (60-100 microM) and cobalt ions (2 mM) markedly reduced both components of the high-threshold calcium current, and Cd2+ only slightly decreased the low-threshold transient current. However, all three components are indiscriminately blocked by higher concentrations of Cd2+ and Co2+. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Transformational and transactional leadership and employee’s entrepreneurial behavior in knowledge–intensive industries

Abstract Leaders play a vital role in encouraging and supporting the initiatives of individual employees to explore new opportunities, to develop new products or to improve work procedures for the benefit of the organization. Entrepreneurial behavior is imperative for innovation, growth, and organizational success. Transformational leadership, in contrast to transactional leadership, has been argued to be particularly effective in engendering entrepreneurial behavior. However, empirical evidence for this relationship is scarce and inconsistent. Addressing this issue, the current study examines the moderating role of psychological empowerment on the relationship among transformational leadership, transactional leadership, and entrepreneurial behavior. Data were gathered from a cross-industry sample of 557 employees and 64 leaders from eight different knowledge-intensive organizations. The results show that transformational leadership is positively related to entrepreneurial behavior, whereas transactional leadership negatively influences it. We found that transformational leadership is positively related to entrepreneurial behavior only when psychological empowerment is high, whereas transactional leadership has a negative relationship with entrepreneurial behavior only under these conditions.
Effects of pollution control measures on carbon emission reduction in China: evidence from the 11th and 12th Five-Year Plans

ABSTRACT SO2 emissions have been declining in China recently. The emission reduction has mainly been achieved engineering reduction, structural reduction, and administrative reduction. In this paper, three key industries (electricity generation, steel, and cement) are selected to measure the effects of SO2 emission reductions, the synergy effects of energy saving, and CO2 emission reduction. The main results show that, during the period of the ‘11th Five-Year Plan’, engineering reduction of coal-fired power plant desulfurization played the most crucial role in the emission reduction; both engineering reduction and structural reduction can achieve low-pollution emission, but the contributions are not the same due to the divergence of relevant industries. Generally speaking, structural reduction can relatively easily achieve the synergy effect of the main pollutants and GHGs; in comparison, however, engineering reduction does not easily achieve the synergy effect. During the ‘13th Five-Year Plan’ period, the following plans are proposed: strengthening the front pollution control, increasing the engineering reduction, narrowing the difference between the pollution reduction engineering ability and the actual pollution reduction effect, and strengthening the supervisory and administrative effect of both the approval of the front end and the running of the middle end. POLICY RELEVANCE China is on the way to realize industrialization and urbanization. The climate-friendly environmental protection strategy is particularly important for rapidly developing countries such as China, because it can address air pollution and climate change issues at the same time in a more economically efficient manner. This paper selects three key industries to evaluate current pollutant control policy synergy effect from the ‘11th Five-Year Plan’ to the ‘12th Five-Year Plan’ period in order to give more sense to policy makers during 13th Five-Year Plan. The estimate of this study shows that the control of pollutants can generally have synergic control effects on GHG emissions and give detailed measures for 13th Five-Year Plan.
Telomerase in T Lymphocytes: Use It and Lose It?1

The enzyme telomerase counteracts telomere loss in proliferating cells and extends their capacity for replication. The importance of telomerase is highlighted by the award of the 2006 Albert Lasker Prize for Basic Medical Research for its discovery. Malignant cells subvert telomerase induction to their advantage, and up-regulation of this enzyme confers these populations with unlimited proliferative potential with obvious detrimental consequences. However this enzyme is also essential for the lifelong maintenance of normal cell populations that have a high rate of turnover. Thymic involution in early adulthood dictates that memory T cell populations have to be maintained by continuous proliferation. This highlights the inherent paradox that telomerase down-regulation in T cells may protect against malignancy yet also lead to replicative exhaustion of repeatedly activated memory T cells. In this article, we review the data on telomerase regulation in T lymphocytes and the implications this has for the maintenance of T cell memory.
Effect of enalaprilat on postoperative hypertension after surgical repair of coarctation of the aorta

Objective Hypertension in pediatric patients after surgical repair of coarctation of the aorta can be difficult to control and may lead to morbidity. The renin-angiotensin system mediates at least part of this hypertension. Enalaprilat, the only intravenous angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor, is used to treat hypertension in pediatric patients in other settings. However, its effect on postoperative hypertension during the early postoperative period in patients undergoing surgical repair of coarctation of the aorta is unknown. Design Prospective, randomized, double-blind study. Setting Operating room and the pediatric intensive care unit. Patients Fourteen consecutive pediatric patients between the ages of 1 and 18 yrs scheduled to undergo surgical repair of coarctation of the aorta. Interventions Patients were randomized to receive enalaprilat or saline placebo. Infusions were begun intraoperatively within 15 mins of aortic repair and repeated every 6 hrs. Measurements and Main Results Plasma renin activity was measured at baseline and on postoperative day 1. Blood pressure was determined at 30 mins and at 2, 4, and 6 hrs after infusion and scored relative to the preoperative blood pressure. The blood pressure in the enalaprilat group was consistently lower at 30 mins, 2 hrs, and 4 hrs after infusion (p < .05), but not at 6 hrs. Plasma renin activity was significantly lower in the placebo group on postoperative day 1. Length of stay in the pediatric intensive care unit trended shorter in the treated group. Conclusions Conclusions are limited by a small cohort. Angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor therapy resulted in improved blood pressure control after coarctation repair. Further improvement of blood pressure control may be achievable by use of a larger dose of enalaprilat or a 4-hr enalaprilat-dosing interval.
Adoption of Speech Recognition Technology in Community Healthcare Nursing

Adoption of new health information technology is shown to be challenging. However, the degree to which new technology will be adopted can be predicted by measures of usefulness and ease of use. In this work these key determining factors are focused on for design of a wound documentation tool. In the context of wound care at home, consistent with evidence in the literature from similar settings, use of Speech Recognition Technology (SRT) for patient documentation has shown promise. To achieve a user-centred design, the results from a conducted ethnographic fieldwork are used to inform SRT features; furthermore, exploratory prototyping is used to collect feedback about the wound documentation tool from home care nurses. During this study, measures developed for healthcare applications of the Technology Acceptance Model will be used, to identify SRT features that improve usefulness (e.g. increased accuracy, saving time) or ease of use (e.g. lowering mental/physical effort, easy to remember tasks). The identified features will be used to create a low fidelity prototype that will be evaluated in future experiments.
Multi‐foci CSR perceptions, procedural justice and in‐role employee performance: the mediating role of commitment and pride

This study explores differential employee responses to perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) treatment of social and non-social stakeholder foci of the community, customers, shareholders and environment along with first-party employee justice perceptions. At a finance-sector multinational, we test the mediating role of commitment and pride in accounting for the relationship between perceptions of stakeholder treatment and in-role performance. We propose and pilot a new multi-foci CSR measure and include this in a mediated model within a separate study. Socially responsible treatment of customers and the environment play a role in predicting performance; these foci are related to either pride or commitment. Community CSR, first-party justice perceptions and commitment predict performance either directly or indirectly. Our research shows an absence of any positive employee response associated with CSR towards shareholders. The study uncovers new insights into our understanding of complexities in employee responses to CSR activities.
Exacerbation of alcoholic liver injury by enteral endotoxin in rats

Increased gut permeability (leaky gut) and endotoxin‐mediated Kupffer cell activation are proposed as the mechanisms of alcoholic liver injury. Although ethanol feeding is shown to sensitize the liver for injury induced by parental administration of lipopolysaccharide (LPS), how enteral LPS loading affects alcoholic liver injury is yet to be tested. The present study provides direct evidence for enhanced entrance to portal circulation of LPS enterally administered to the intragastric ethanol infusion model. Portal and systemic blood endotoxin levels increased to 43.0 ± 4.1 and 6.2 ± 4.3 pg/mL at 2 hours following enteral LPS administration (5 mg/kg) in alcohol‐fed animals, while no such increases were observed in pair‐fed controls. However, endotoxin levels in systemic blood of alcohol‐fed rats were reduced to 0 to 1.5 pg/mL 16 hours after LPS administration. Weekly enteral administration of LPS to the model for 9 weeks exacerbated an increase in plasma alanine transaminase (ALT) levels (227 ± 75 vs. 140 ± 70; P < .01), mononuclear infiltration (25 ± 22 vs. 6.4 ± 4.4/10 mm2; P = .02), sinusoidal congestion, and spotty necrosis, and induced diffuse coagulative necrosis and centrilobular fibrosis in some animals. Reverse‐transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT‐PCR) analysis confirmed the LPS effect at the tissue level by demonstrating accentuated induction of tumor necrosis factor α (TNF‐α) and Cox‐2 mRNA. In conclusion, enteral LPS administration potentiates alcoholic liver necrosis, inflammation, and fibrosis despite efficient endotoxin clearance by the liver and mild systemic endotoxemia that occurs episodically following enteral LPS challenge.
The use of Silver‐stained “Comets” to Visualize DNA Damage and Repair in Normal and Xeroderma pigmentosum Fibroblasts After Exposure to Simulated Solar Radiation

The alkaline and neutral comet assays have been widely used to assess DNA damage and repair in individual cells after in vivo or in vitro exposure to chemical or physical genotoxins. Cells processed under neutral conditions generate comets primarily from DNA double strand breaks, whereas under alkaline conditions, comets arise from DNA single and double strand breaks and alkali‐labile lesions. A modified version of the alkaline comet assay, as described here, used silver stain to visualize the comets and a ™Gelbond base to facilitate the manipulation and processing of samples. To demonstrate how these modifications improve the assay, fibroblasts derived from both normal and Xeroderma pigmentosum (Xp) individuals were exposed to simulated solar radiation and the resulting DNA damage and repair evaluated and compared with results from the relevant literature. Comets from normal fibroblasts reached their maximum length at about an hour after irradiation. Dose‐dependent increases in comet length were observed up to at least 360 mJ/cm2. In contrast, comet lengths from repair deficient Xp fibroblasts were shorter than normal cells reflecting their reduced capacity to generate single strand breaks by the excision of DNA dimers. For incubation times of more than 1 h, comet lengths from normal fibroblasts underwent a time‐dependent decrease, supporting the contention that this change was related to the ligation step in the DNA repair process. These changes were compatible with the model of DNA damage and repair established by others for ultraviolet radiation.
Risk Aversion in Regulatory Capital Principles

We incorporate a notion of risk aversion favoring prudent decisions from financial institutions into regulatory capital calculation principles. In the context of Basel II, III as well as Solvency II, regulatory capital calculation is carried out through the tools of monetary risk measures. The notion of risk aversion that we focus on has four equivalent formulations: through consistency with second-order stochastic dominance, or with conditional expectations, or with portfolio diversification, and finally through expected social impact. The class of monetary risk measures representing this notion of risk aversion is referred to as consistent risk measures. We characterize the class of consistent risk measures by establishing an Expected Shortfall-based representation. The results obtained suggest that for the determination of regulatory capital, every regulator in favor of risk-averse financial decisions is essentially using a combination of Expected Shortfalls up to some adjustments. This reveals important advantages of the Expected Shortfall for prudent regulation as compared to the Value-at-Risk, a topic very much under discussion in Basel III.
What Drives the Heterogeneity in Portfolio Choice? The Role of Institutional, Traditional, and Behavioral Factors

We analyze stock market participation in 19 European countries over 2004-2013, jointly controlling for all relevant variables from prior literature. Previous work relies on a subset of these factors, and often lacks good risk aversion proxies. Our full model explains 30% of the variation in the participation decision. Institutional factors captured by country fixed effects contribute 9.5 percentage points; traditional individual-level factors, such as risk aversion and income, contribute 15 pp; recently identified factors, such as trust and health, contribute 5.5 pp. Most new factors offer little help explaining non-participation at the high end – among the wealthy and well-educated. We present evidence challenging and complementing existing interpretations of factors such as IQ, sociability, and trust. We suggest a hierarchical framework for thinking about effects in the high versus low end.
Interpreting method comparison studies by use of the bland-altman plot: reflecting the importance of sample size by incorporating confidence limits and predefined error limits in the graphic.

The difference, or Bland–Altman plot (1)(2)(3)(4) has become a popular tool for the presentation of method-comparison studies (5)(6), but the plot has rarely been used for making decisions about the quality of a method (5)(6). Bland and Altman expressed this in the terms “we want to know by how much the new method is likely to differ from the old; if this is not enough to cause problems in clinical interpretation we can replace the old method by the new or use the two interchangeably. How far apart measurements can be without causing difficulties will be a question of judgment. Ideally, it should be defined in advance to help in the interpretation of the method comparison and to choose the sample size” (2). The tool for doing so was to investigate whether the upper (UCL) or lower (LCL) 95% confidence limit of 1.96 SD of the differences between the methods (UCL1.96 SD,diff, LCL1.96 SD,diff) was equal to or smaller than a predefined limit for total error (TE; acceptance, UCL1.96 …
Variable Structure Control in Natural Frame for Three-Phase Grid-Connected Inverters With LCL Filter

This paper presents a variable structure control in natural frame for a three-phase gird-connected voltage-source inverter with LCL filter. The proposed control method is based on modifying the converter model in natural reference frame, preserving the low-frequency state-space variables dynamics. Using this model in a Kalman filter (KF), the system state-space variables are estimated allowing us to design three independent current sliding-mode controllers. The main closed-loop features of the proposed method are: first, robustness against grid inductance variations because the proposed model is independent of the grid inductance; second, the power losses are reduced since physical damping resistors are avoided; third, the control bandwidth can be increased due to the combination of a variable hysteresis comparator with the KF; and fourth, the grid-side current is directly controlled providing high robustness against harmonics in the grid. To complete the control scheme, a theoretical stability analysis is developed. Finally, selected experimental results validate the proposed control strategy and permit illustrating all its appealing features.
Austerity Stabilised Through European Funds: The Impact on Slovenian Welfare Administration and Provision

The article explores how austerity stabilised through European funds affects institutional change, work organisation and employment relations within Slovenian welfare administration and provision. It shows that increasing dependence upon European funds turns the state into an intermediary characterised by project modes of work organisation that weaken human resource and financial capacities for domestic policy development and provision. It uncovers that project modes of organising, traditionally present within non-governmental sector, are also entering the public sector. This shift increases the vulnerability of third and public sector workforce and frustrates young and excluded workers’ transition into permanent jobs.