Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hippocampal long‐term depression in freely behaving mice requires the activation of beta‐adrenergic receptors

In the intact mouse hippocampus patterned afferent stimulation does not lead to long‐term depression (LTD) at Schaffer collateral (Sc)‐CA1 synapses, but the same synapses express robust LTD (<24 h) if test‐pulse or patterned afferent experience is coupled with novel spatial learning. This suggests that the failure of sole afferent stimulation to elicit LTD relates to the absence of neuromodulatory input related to increased arousal or novelty during learning. Locus coeruleus (LC) firing increases during novel experience, and in rats patterned stimulation of the LC together with test‐pulse stimulation of Sc‐CA1 synapses leads to robust LTD in vivo. This effect is mediated by beta‐adrenergic receptors. Here, we explored if activation of beta‐adrenergic receptors supports the expression of LTD in freely behaving mice. We also explored if beta‐adrenergic receptors contribute to endogenous LTD that is expressed following spatial learning. Patterned stimulation of Sc‐CA1 synapses at 3 Hz (200 pulses) resulted in short‐term depression (STD). Pretreatment with isoproterenol, an agonist of beta‐adrenergic receptors, resulted in robust LTD (<24 h). Test‐pulse stimulation under control conditions elicited field potentials that were stable for the 24‐h monitoring period. Coupling of test‐pulses with a novel spatial object recognition task resulted in robust endogenous LTD (<24 h). Pretreatment with propranolol, a beta‐adrenergic receptor antagonist, completely prevented endogenous LTD that was enabled by learning and prevented object recognition learning itself. These data indicate that the absence of LTD in freely behaving mice, under standard recording conditions, does not reflect an inability of mice to express LTD, rather it is due to the absence of a noradrenalin tonus. Our data also support that spatial object recognition requires beta‐adrenergic receptor activation. Furthermore, LTD that is enabled by novel spatial learning critically depends on activation of beta‐adrenergic receptors that are presumably activated by noradrenalin released by the LC in response to the novel experience. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Hyperbilirubinemia of fasting.

The effect of a 44- to 48-hour fast on the serum bilirubin concentration was studied in five normal subjects and in five patients with hepatic dysfunction. The total serum bilirubin (TSB) concentration increased progressively during the fasting period in all patients; expressed as a percent of the control value, it averaged 240% for the normal subjects and 194% for the patients with hepatic dysfunction at the completion of the fast (P>0.05). One normal subject fasted for 110 hours; the TSB increased to 326% of the control value at 63 hours and then fell to approximately twice the control value for the remainder of the fast. A diurnal rhythm of the TSB was demonstrated in one patient, but was suppressed by nocturnal feedings. It was concluded that an increase in bilirubin concentration occurs as a function of fasting.
Intercurrent events and comorbid conditions influence hemoglobin level variability in dialysis patients.

BACKGROUND To help identify factors contributing to intra-patient Hb variability, pooled records were analyzed from 5,592 patients undergoing hemodialysis (HD) in European, multicenter, open-label, single-arm Phase 3b trials. PATIENTS AND METHODS Patients previously treated with recombinant human erythropoietin (rHuEPO) were switched to darbepoietin-alpha administered once a week (QW) or once every 2 weeks (Q2W), maintaining the same dosing schedule and route of ESA administration (intravenous or subcutaneous) up to and through the evaluation period. Patients were treated with darbepoietin-alpha to maintain Hb levels between 10 and 13 g/dl. Intrapatient variability was calculated using the SD model, taking all of an individual patient's Hb values during the evaluation period (Weeks 21 - 24 after conversion) and calculating the SD of these Hb values. Adverse events (AE) of infection or inflammation were recorded. RESULTS Smaller variability was seen for patients 65 years of age or older compared with younger patients (p = 0.0044) and greater variability for patients less than 40 years of age compared with older patients (p < 0.01). Little difference in variability was seen in relation to sex overall or to the presence or absence of diabetes. Intra-patient Hb variability was greater in the presence of intercurrent conditions, including infection or inflammation (p = 0.0032), blood transfusion (p < 0.0001), hospitalization (p < 0.0001), or hospitalization for cardiovascular (CV) causes (p = 0.0012), than in their absence. Iron status differences had little detectable effect on intra-patient Hb variability. A larger number of changes made to the ESA dose during the evaluation period was also associated with greater Hb variability compared with fewer dose changes, but this association could not be proved as being causative. Although p values were calculated for some comparisons, statistical significance might not indicate clinical significance because of the large sample size. Multivariable analysis to assess the association between AE status and intra-patient Hb variability, adjusting for age, sex, diabetes status, number of dose changes and iron status showed that AE status was significantly associated with Hb variability. CONCLUSION Additional studies would be needed to further investigate causes and effects of Hb variability and intercurrent events.
Effects of Exercise Intervention on Knee Morphology in Middle-Aged Women: A Longitudinal Analysis Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Introduction:Epidemiological studies show a positive relationship between physical activity and cartilage volume, suggesting that exercise may protect against osteoarthritis. Cross-sectional experimental studies, however, have failed to show significant differences in knee cartilage morphology between athletes and nonathletic controls. The aim of the study was to test the hypothesis that knee cartilage morphology, specifically regional cartilage thickness and global subchondral bone area, is modified in sedentary, untrained adult women who increased their physical fitness during a 3-month supervised exercise intervention. Materials and Methods: Thirty-eight untrained women, aged 45–55 years, were randomly assigned to: endurance training (n = 18), strength training (n = 15) and autogenic training (control group, n = 5). Patellar and femorotibial knee cartilage morphology was determined before and after the 3-month supervised training intervention, using magnetic resonance imaging and state-of-the-art image analysis. Results: Whereas the endurance training group showed a significant increase in cardiorespiratory fitness and the strength training group a significant increase in the maximal voluntary isometric contraction force of the leg, this study did not show significant differences in knee cartilage thickness and volume, subchondral bone area or regional cartilage thickness between baseline and follow-up acquisitions within any intervention group. Discussion:This randomized longitudinal study provides no evidence that a 3-month exercise intervention in untrained middle-aged women can significantly alter knee joint morphology. Longitudinal evidence supporting that a training program, successful in increasing physical fitness, can also induce functional adaptation of articular tissues and may protect against knee osteoarthritis, remains to be presented.
The acquisition of ergativity

Ergativity is one of the main challenges both for linguistic and acquisition theories. This book is unique, taking a cross-linguistic approach to the acquisition of ergativity in a large variety of typologically distinct languages. The chapters cover languages from different families and from different geographic areas with different expressions of ergativity. Each chapter includes a description of ergativity in the language(s), the nature of the input, the social context of acquisition and developmental patterns. Comparisons of the acquisition process across closely related languages are made, change in progress of the ergative systems is discussed and, for one language, acquisition by bilingual and monolingual children is compared. The volume will be of particular interest to language acquisition researchers, linguists, psycholinguists and cognitive scientists.
Hearing Preservation Cochlear Implantation in Adolescents

Objective This study describes our experience of cochlear implantation (CI) with hearing preservation in adolescents. Our aim was to determine if hearing preservation is successful in this population, if the preserved hearing is maintained, and what the potential benefit of preserving hearing in this population is. Patients Fourteen profoundly deaf adolescents with preservation of low-frequency hearing (125, 250, and 500 Hz). Intervention Twelve adolescents had a single-sided CI, and two had bilateral CI. All were having their first implantation, and all patients had hearing preservation surgery (soft surgery). Main Outcome Measures Hearing preservation was measured with preoperative and postoperative pure-tone audiograms. Speech audiometry was performed before implantation and at subsequent follow-up appointments. Results Hearing preservation (measurable hearing thresholds) was achieved in 13 of 14 patients. Average follow-up was 2 years 10 months (range, 4 mo–4 yr 9 mo). Three of 13 patients with initial successful hearing preservation had deterioration of their hearing at subsequent follow-up. The addition of naturally preserved hearing to the cochlear implant improved speech audiometry scores compared with using the implants in isolation. Conclusion This study demonstrates that residual hearing can be consistently preserved and maintained in adolescents during the short-/medium-term using a soft surgical technique to insert standard-length electrodes. The potential benefit of preserving residual low-frequency hearing seems to be improvement in speech discrimination in challenging hearing conditions, although larger studies are required.
The Cost of Ill Health

(iii) To Provide Education and Training to meet the Professional Needs and the General Public There is far too often a dichotomy between the ideal image of nursing and nursing as it is practised. Provision must be made for basic, post-basic and further education of nurses in all specialties. Health Education should play a very much greater part in the lives of children, adults, and the elderly with the aim of preventing disease. It is also important that the public should be educated into the needs of society, i.e. the elderly mentally ill, and the mentally handicapped. (iv) To Recruit Nursing Staff It is important to improve recruitment and selection techniques to avoid wastage and to give attention to retraining staff by ensuring staff have high standards of Patient Care, Job satisfaction; adequate learning facilities, good conditions of service-which include adequate residential accommodation and changing rooms-and career development programmes. It may well be necessary to redeploy staff to areas of need.
Improved upper bounds for 3-SAT

The CNF Satisfiability problem is to determine, given a CNF formula F , whether or not there exists a satisfying assignment for F . If each clause of F contains at most k literals, then F is called a k-CNF formula and the problem is called k-SAT. For small k’s, especially for k = 3, there exists a lot of algorithms which run significantly faster than the trivial 2 bound. The following list summarizes those algorithms where a constant c means that the algorithm runs in time O(c). Roughly speaking most algorithms are based on Davis-Putnam. [Sch99] is the first local search algorithm which gives a guaranteed performance for general instances and [DGH+02], [HSSW02], [BS03] and [Rol03] follow up this Schoning’s approach.
Friendships and Social Interactions of School-Aged Children With Migraine

We set out to evaluate the friendships and social behaviour of school-aged children with migraine. Concern exists regarding the impact of paediatric migraine on daily activities and quality of life. We hypothesized that children with migraine would have fewer friends and be identified as more socially sensitive and isolated than comparison peers. Sixty-nine children with migraine participated in a school-based study of social functioning. A comparison sample without migraine included classmates matched for gender, race and age. Children with migraine had fewer friends at school; however, this effect was limited to those in elementary school. Behavioural difficulties were not found. Middle-school students with migraine were identified by peers as displaying higher levels of leadership and popularity than comparison peers. Concern may be warranted about the social functioning of pre-adolescent children with migraine; however, older children with migraine may function as well as or better than their peers.
Delivering safer conception services to HIV serodiscordant couples in Kenya: perspectives from healthcare providers and HIV serodiscordant couples

Introduction: For HIV serodiscordant couples in resource‐limited settings, pregnancy is common despite the risk of sexual and/or perinatal HIV transmission. Some safer conception strategies to reduce HIV transmission during pregnancy attempts are available but often not used for reasons including knowledge, accessibility, preference and others. We sought to understand Kenyan health providers’ and HIV serodiscordant couples’ perspectives and experiences with safer conception.
Air pollution and mortality in the Rotorua geothermal area

Abstract: The effects on human health of geothermal emissions in the Rotorua area have been little studied. We calculated standardised mortality ratios (SMRs), comparing residents domiciled in the Rotorua territorial local authority area with those living in the rest of New Zealand, using mortality data for the decade 1981–1990. The SMRs were adjusted for age, calendar year, sex, and ethnicity. Diagnostic categories examined were based on known target–organ systems of hydrogen sulphide toxicity. Mortality causes examined were diseases of the nervous system and sense organs, diseases of the circulatory system, diseases of the respiratory system, and birth defects. Of these, notably elevated SMRs were found only for diseases of the respiratory system, particularly in Maori women (SMR = 1,61, 95 per cent confidence interval 1.19 to 2.12). A major concern was the possibility of confounding by ethnicity. This is because ethnicity in census data is based on self–identification, whereas ethnicity on death certificates is often based on funeral directors' impressions. This leads to serious underreporting of Maori mortality statistics. For the purposes of this study, this situation was further complicated by indications that ethnicity recording for Maori may be more accurate in the Rotorua area than in the rest of New Zealand. Our analysis suggested that, in general, SMRs based on ethnicity are likely to be spuriously high. Although this study found no clear indications of excess mortality in the Rotorua area likely to have been associated with geothermal emissions, there were limitations in the data that could have prevented the recognition of causal associations. (Aust N Z J Public Health 1997; 21: 581–6)
How Technology Readiness Explains Acceptance and Satisfaction of Digital Services in B2B Healthcare Sector?

Individuals differ in their propensity to adopt new technologies, and thus the paper integrates technology readiness index (TRI) 2.0 with technology acceptance model (TAM) by investigating how B2B decision makers’ technology readiness explains perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness of digital services. The study further investigates how perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness impacts satisfaction, and how satisfaction with the digital services contributes to loyalty towards the company. We test the model among customers of Finnish healthcare service company. The data consists of responses from 385 B2B customers, all experienced with using the company’s digital services. Results reveal that in B2B context technology readiness explains acceptance of digital services to a lesser extent than expected, but age and gender appear to moderate these relationships. Perceived ease of use and usefulness significantly enhances satisfaction, and satisfaction further contributes to loyalty. Findings of the study extend our knowledge of technology adoption behaviour in B2B markets where earlier research is scarce.
Diagnostic status, functional status and complexity among Canadian children with neurodevelopmental disorders and disabilities: a population-based study

Purpose: To identify and describe selected key characteristics of children with neurodevelopmental disorders and disabilities (NDD/D) in a national disability survey database. Method: Secondary analysis of data on children aged 5–14 years in the Canadian Participation and Activity Limitation Survey (PALS). Children with NDD/D were ascertained from ICD-10 diagnoses “fine-tuned” with functional limitation information, and classified into six predetermined NDD/D subtypes by independent expert evaluators. Results: Children with NDD/D accounted for 73.5% of children with disabilities. Amongst children with a single NDD/D type, 28.8% were in the Cognition-Learning subgroup, 22.2% Psychological, 19.9% Social interactive, 13.3% Sensory, 10.6% Motor and 5.2% Speech-Language disorders/disabilities. Complexity, both diagnostic (more than one ICD-10 diagnosis) and functional (more than one parent-identified functional limitation), was encountered frequently though variably across NDD/D subtypes. In aligning parent-identified functional limitation information with researcher-ascertained assignment of children to NDD/D subgroups, matching with additional limitations (61.3% of children) occurred far more commonly than simple 1:1 matches (14.0%) or non-matching (24.7%). Conclusions: Conceptual, definitional and terminology issues affect population-based research on children with NDD/D. Ascertainment methods can use diagnostic as well as functional information. Diagnostic information alone is likely to under-represent the complexity and needs of children with NDD/D and their families. Implications for Rehabilitation Identification of children with neurodevelopmental disorders and disabilities (NDD/D) in population-based studies can include diagnostic and functional information. Diagnostic and functional complexity are both common amongst children with NDD/D. Diagnostic information alone tends to under-describe the functional complexity of children with NDD/D; comprehensive rehabilitation planning needs to consider functional complexity.
Familiarity impacts person perception

We investigated the effects of familiarity on person perception. We predicted that familiarity would increase non-analytic processing, reducing attention to and the impact of individuating information, and increasing the impact of category labels on judgments about a target person. In two studies participants read either incriminating or exculpatory individuating information about a defendant in a criminal case and made judgments of guilt. In Study 1, participants were subliminally exposed to the defendant's photo, another matched photo, or no photo before seeing the evidence. Participants familiar with the defendant's photo both processed and used the individuating information less. In Study 2, participants were subtly made familiar or not with the incriminating and exculpatory information itself, and the defendant was described either as a priest or as a skinhead. Familiarity with the information reduced attention to its content and also tended to increase reliance on category information in guilt judgments. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The Amino Acid Sequence of Neisseria lactamica PorB Surface-Exposed Loops Influences Toll-Like Receptor 2-Dependent Cell Activation

ABSTRACT Toll-like receptors (TLRs) play a major role in host mucosal and systemic defense mechanisms by recognizing a diverse array of conserved pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs). TLR2, with TLR1 and TLR6, recognizes structurally diverse bacterial products such as lipidated factors (lipoproteins and peptidoglycans) and nonlipidated proteins, i.e., bacterial porins. PorB is a pan-neisserial porin expressed regardless of organisms' pathogenicity. However, commensal Neisseria lactamica organisms and purified N. lactamica PorB (published elsewhere as Nlac PorB) induce TLR2-dependent proinflammatory responses of lower magnitude than N. meningitidis organisms and N. meningitidis PorB (published elsewhere as Nme PorB). Both PorB types bind to TLR2 in vitro but with different apparent specificities. The structural and molecular details of PorB-TLR2 interaction are only beginning to be unraveled and may be due to electrostatic attraction. PorB molecules have significant strain-specific sequence variability within surface-exposed regions (loops) putatively involved in TLR2 interaction. By constructing chimeric recombinant PorB loop mutants in which surface-exposed loop residues have been switched between N. lactamica PorB and N. meningitidis PorB, we identified residues in loop 5 and loop 7 that influence TLR2-dependent cell activation using HEK cells and BEAS-2B cells. These loops are not uniquely responsible for PorB interaction with TLR2, but NF-κB and MAP kinases signaling downstream of TLR2 recognition are likely influenced by a hypothetical “TLR2-binding signature” within the sequence of PorB surface-exposed loops. Consistent with the effect of purified PorB in vitro, a chimeric N. meningitidis strain expressing N. lactamica PorB induces lower levels of interleukin 8 (IL-8) secretion than wild-type N. meningitidis, suggesting a role for PorB in induction of host cell activation by whole bacteria.
Increased positive selection pressure within the complementarity determining regions of the T‐cell receptor β gene in New World monkeys

Because of the long‐term co‐evolution of TCR and MHC molecules, numerous nucleotide substitutions have accumulated within the domains of TCRβ genes. We previously found that nonsynonymous nucleotide substitutions occurred more frequently in complementarity determining region (CDR)β than in CDRα, even though only a limited number of common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) and human T‐cell receptor β variable (TRBV) sequences were compared. This interesting finding raised the question of whether the increased selective pressure within CDRβ was species‐specific. In this study, we identified 21 TRBV region sequences from the common marmoset and performed comparative sequence analyses of the T‐cell receptor α variable (TRAV) and TRBV regions from human, chimpanzee, rhesus monkey, cotton‐top tamarin, Ma's night monkey, and common marmoset. The ratios of the number of nonsynonymous nucleotide substitutions per site (dN) to the dS values (dN/dS) were less than 1 within the framework regions (FRs) of TRAV and TRBV region sequences, suggesting that purifying selection is largely dominant within the FRs. In contrast, the dN values were statistically significantly greater for CDRβ than for CDRα only in New World monkeys. Also, increased dN/dS ratios (dN/dS>1) were observed within CDRβ between humans and New World monkeys and, interestingly, between New World monkeys, which share a relatively recent common ancestor. Moreover, phylogenetic analysis by maximum likelihood analysis provided firm evidence to support that positive selection occurred within CDRβ along New World monkey lineages. These results suggest that increased positive selection pressure within CDRβ is common in New World monkeys rather than being species‐specific. This study provides an intriguing insight into the co‐evolution of TCR and MHC molecules within primates. Am. J. Primatol. 73:1082–1092, 2011. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.