Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of acute myocardial ischemia on intramyocardial contraction heterogeneity: A study performed with ultrasound integrated backscatter during transesophageal atrial pacing.

BACKGROUND [corrected] Subendocardial thickening is greater than subepicardial thickening and acute myocardial ischemia mainly impairs the former. Integrated backscatter cyclic variations (IBScv) reflect regional myocardial contractility and are blunted during myocardial ischemia. We hypothesized that stress-induced myocardial ischemia mainly affects subendocardial IBScv. METHODS AND RESULTS Multiplane transesophageal echocardiography and simultaneous atrial pacing were performed in 12 patients without coronary artery disease (CAD) and in 25 with significant CAD. In a transgastric 2-chamber view, we calculated IBScv in subendocardium and subepicardium and a heterogeneity index, both at rest and at peak-pacing. In 27 myocardial segments of patients with normal coronary arteries, and in 16 myocardial segments supplied by coronary artery without significant stenosis in patients with CAD, there was a transmural gradient of IBScv at rest and the heterogeneity index did not change during all the protocol steps. In the 53 myocardial segments related to a significantly narrowed coronary artery, the transmural gradient of IBScv, present at rest, significantly decreased at peak-pacing because of subendocardial blunting, but promptly recovered 5 seconds after pacing interruption. Moreover, the myocardial thickening at rest and peak pacing correlated with the subendocardial IBScv behavior and not with the subepicardial one. CONCLUSIONS IBScv are greater in the subendocardium than in the subepicardium. Atrial pacing stress test does not affect IBScv in segments supplied by nonstenotic coronary arteries, whereas it affects segments supplied by diseased coronary arteries, blunting exclusively subendocardial IBScv. Heterogeneity of IBScv intramyocardial changes caused by stress-induced ischemia must be taken into account when using IBScv for investigating myocardial ischemia.
Statistical methods for linking the chemical composition of particulate matter to health outcomes

Short-term exposure to particulate matter air pollution less than 2.5 micrometers in aerodynamic diameter (PM2.5) has been associated with mortality and morbidity in epidemiologic studies. PM2.5 is a complex mixture of many different chemicals that are emitted from both natural and anthropogenic sources. Recent studies have found that the toxicity of PM2.5 depends on its chemical composition, however estimating ambient PM2.5 constituent concentrations is challenging in part for several reasons. First, the network of ambient monitors that measure PM2.5 chemical constituents is spatially sparse and many communities have only one monitor. Additionally, some constituents of PM2.5 are spatially heterogeneous and their concentrations observed at ambient monitors may not be representative of surrounding areas. Last, PM2.5 constituents that contribute minimally to PM2.5 total mass frequently have censored concentrations that fall below minimum detection limits. Together, these attributes of the available data make estimating ambient PM2.5 constituent concentrations difficult and complicate subsequent health effects analyses. We could also estimate health effects of PM2.5 sources, which emit combinations of chemical constituents. PM2.5 sources are not directly measured and are frequently inferred from PM2.5 constituent concentrations. The challenge of estimating PM2.5 sources is magnified by the measurement error and data limitations of observed PM2.5 constituent concentrations. This dissertation developed methods to address measurement issues in estimating ambient concentrations of PM2.5 constituents and PM2.5 sources. Then, these methods were used to estimate associations between mortality and short-term exposure to PM2.5 constituents and PM2.5 sources.
Passive Exercise Using Whole-Body Periodic Acceleration Enhances Blood Supply to Ischemic Hindlimb

Objective—Whole-body periodic acceleration (WBPA) has been developed as a passive exercise technique to improve endothelial function by increasing shear stress through repetitive movements in spinal axis direction. We investigated the effects of WBPA on blood flow recovery in a mouse model of hindlimb ischemia and in patients with peripheral arterial disease. Methods and Results—After unilateral femoral artery excision, mice were assigned to either the WBPA (n=15) or the control (n=13) group. WBPA was applied at 150 cpm for 45 minutes under anesthesia once a day. WBPA significantly increased blood flow recovery after ischemic surgery, as determined by laser Doppler perfusion imaging. Sections of ischemic adductor muscle stained with anti-CD31 antibody showed a significant increase in capillary density in WBPA mice compared with control mice. WBPA increased the phosphorylation of endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) in skeletal muscle. The proangiogenic effect of WBPA on ischemic limb was blunted in eNOS-deficient mice, suggesting that the stimulatory effects of WBPA on revascularization are eNOS dependent. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction analysis showed significant increases in angiogenic growth factor expression in ischemic hindlimb by WBPA. Facilitated blood flow recovery was observed in a mouse model of diabetes despite there being no changes in glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity. Furthermore, both a single session and 7-day repeated sessions of WBPA significantly improved blood flow in the lower extremity of patients with peripheral arterial disease. Conclusion—WBPA increased blood supply to ischemic lower extremities through activation of eNOS signaling and upregulation of proangiogenic growth factor in ischemic skeletal muscle. WBPA is a potentially suitable noninvasive intervention to facilitate therapeutic angiogenesis.
Monitoring the hemostasis with rotation thromboelastometry in patients with acute STEMI on dual antiplatelet therapy

Abstract Rotation thromboelastometry (ROTEM) is a viscoelastometric point-of-care-test for the complex evaluation of changes in hemostasis, performed in whole blood. However, no prospective study evaluating the efficacy of the antiplatelet therapy using ROTEM was performed. Fifty-six patients (34 men, 22 women, mean age 67.75 years, and age range 34–88 years) with acute ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), treated with dual antiplatelet therapy, undergoing urgent coronary angiography and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) of culprit coronary lesion were included. Three blood samples were taken (sample 1 taken before the urgent coronary angiography, sample 2 in 24 hours after the admission, and sample 3 in 30 days after acute STEMI). Twenty-one healthy blood donors (17 men, 4 women, mean age 50.38 years, and age range 40–74 years) were recruited as the control group. Blood samples were tested with ROTEM Gamma (Pentapharm GmbH, Munich, Germany) and light transmission aggregometry (LTA). Clotting time (CT) was significantly prolonged and maximum clot firmness (MCF) was significantly higher in patients compared to controls. Mean platelet aggregation after the induction with arachidonic acid (33.2% vs 74.6% in sample 1 and 21.1% vs 74.6% in sample 2), as well as adenosine diphosphate (51.4% vs 72.7% in sample 1 and 37.1% vs 72.7% in sample 2), were significantly lower in patients with acute STEMI. Significantly prolonged CT and increased MCF was found in patients with acute STEMI. This study confirmed the ability of ROTEM to identify changes in hemostasis in ACS patients on antithrombotic therapy.
Rating Prediction using Category Weight Factorization Machine in Bigdata environment

Rating Prediction is a key problem in recommendation system, especially in Bigdata environment with data sparsity. Recently, Factorization Machine (FM) has been proven to be effective in solving the recommendation problem. Whereas, valuable category information of users and items are neglected in basic FM model. In this paper, we fully explore the capabilities of category information to improve the accuracy of rating prediction, and proposed a Category Weight Factorization Machine (CW-FM) based on FM. CW-FM utilizes hierarchical category information to avoid the interaction between feature vectors which have the subordinate relations. Combined with user and item category information, CW-FM is proven to be an effective solutions to reducing the rating error in recommendation systems. The proposed CW-FM is evaluated by extensive experiments with real world datasets. Results show that CW-FM model achieves better iterative efficiency and higher rating accuracy compared to contemporary schemes.
A new approach to time dependent AR modeling of signals and its application to analysis of the fourth heart sound

The authors present a method for estimating spectrum transition between short-length signals of succeeding frames in low-SNR cases when the transition pattern is complex and/or there are large differences in the transition patterns among the individual sets of multiframe signals. The present approach uses a linear algorithm without any basic functions. Instead, the authors use the spectrum transition constraint, and the singular value decomposition. (SVD)-based technique is applied to obtain more accurate estimates. For the analysis of multiframe signals of the fourth heart sounds obtained during a stress test, significant differences in the transition patterns are clearly detected in the spectra between patients with myocardial infarction and normal persons The significant characteristics of these transition patterns may be applied to acoustic diagnosis of heart disease. >
High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry Elucidates Metabonate (False Metabolite) Formation from Alkylamine Drugs during In Vitro Metabolite Profiling

In vitro metabolite profiling and characterization experiments are widely employed in early drug development to support safety studies. Samples from incubations of investigational drugs with liver microsomes or hepatocytes are commonly analyzed by liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry for detection and structural elucidation of metabolites. Advanced mass spectrometers with accurate mass capabilities are becoming increasingly popular for characterization of drugs and metabolites, spurring changes in the routine workflows applied. In the present study, using a generic full-scan high-resolution data acquisition approach with a time-of-flight mass spectrometer combined with postacquisition data mining, we detected and characterized metabonates (false metabolites) in microsomal incubations of several alkylamine drugs. If a targeted approach to mass spectrometric detection (without full-scan acquisition and appropriate data mining) were employed, the metabonates may not have been detected, hence their formation underappreciated. In the absence of accurate mass data, the metabonate formation would have been incorrectly characterized because the detected metabonates manifested as direct cyanide-trapped conjugates or as cyanide-trapped metabolites formed from the parent drugs by the addition of 14 Da, the mass shift commonly associated with oxidation to yield a carbonyl. This study demonstrates that high-resolution mass spectrometry and the associated workflow is very useful for the detection and characterization of unpredicted sample components and that accurate mass data were critical to assignment of the correct metabonate structures. In addition, for drugs containing an alkylamine moiety, the results suggest that multiple negative controls and chemical trapping agents may be necessary to correctly interpret the results of in vitro experiments.
A Robust Spectral Method for Finding Lumpings and Meta Stable States of Non-Reversible Markov Chains

A spectral method for identifying lumping in large Markov chains is presented. The identification of meta stable states is treated as a special case. The method is based on the spectral analysis of a self-adjoint matrix that is a function of the original transition matrix. It is demonstrated that the technique is more robust than existing methods when applied to noisy non-reversible Markov chains.
State observer for a class of nonlinear systems and its application to machine vision

In this note, we consider the state observer problem for a class of nonlinear systems which are usually encountered in the machine vision study. The formulation of the state observer is motivated by the sliding mode methods and adaptive control techniques. The proposed observer is applied to the identification problems of the motion parameters and space position of a moving object by using the perspective observation of a single point. It is clarified that the rotation parameters can be observed by using the observation of one camera, and the position and translation parameters cannot be observed by using one camera and must appeal to stereo vision. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is effective.
Three‐Dimensional Raman Tomographic Microspectroscopy: A Novel Imaging Technique

Chemical constituents and their spatial distributions in terrestrial and extraterrestrial samples may provide clues to their formation histories and secondary processes they were subjected to. Most analytical tools are either limited in imaging the interior of samples or they are destructive such that the sample is chemically modified. In this work, we have conducted three‐dimensional Raman tomographic imaging experiments on both terrestrial and extraterrestrial samples. The in situ nondestructive analytical technique presented here provides spatial distribution of various chemical constituents from the interior of the samples with high spatial and depth resolution. Raman data were first collected from two‐dimensional layers at the surface and at various depths inside the samples by means of confocal Raman imaging. Individual chemical distribution maps were generated for each layer, which were then stacked to form and visualize the three‐dimensional distributions. In addition to three‐dimensional distributions, Raman spectral information was also collected from each pixel within the measured areas, thus allowing us to also perform detailed spectral investigations of the samples.
Omnidirectional horizontally-polarized cylindrical microstrip antenna with two parasitic patches

In this paper a conformal cylindrical microstrip antenna (CMA) with an omnidirectional radiation is proposed. The antenna consists of three main components: a probe-fed main patch and two parasitic patches, placed conformally on a cylindrical structure. This cylindrical structure is sized to be about the size of a typical human waist, and was designed in the form of a belt for horizontally-polarized applications. The overall structure was simulated using CST Microwave Studio. Results indicated a satisfactory performance with 1.46 % bandwidth, and an omnidirectional pattern at the desired frequency.
Sox5 controls dorsal progenitor and interneuron specification in the spinal cord

The basic organization of somatosensory circuits in the spinal cord is already setup during the initial patterning of the dorsal neural tube. Extrinsic signals, such as Wnt and TGF‐β pathways, activate combinatorial codes of transcription factors that are responsible for generating a pattern of discrete domains of dorsal progenitors (dp). These progenitors will give rise to distinct dorsal interneurons (dI). The Wnt/ βcatenin signaling pathway controls specification of dp/dI1–3 progenitors and interneurons. According to the current model in the field, Wnt/βcatenin activity seems to act in a graded fashion in the spinal cord, as different relative levels determine the identity of adjacent progenitors. However, it is not clear how this activity gradient is controlled and how the identities of dI1–3 are differentially regulated by Wnt signalling. We have determined that two SoxD transcription factors, Sox5 and Sox6, are expressed in restricted domains of dorsal progenitors in the neural tube. Using gain‐ and loss‐of function approaches in chicken embryos, we have established that Sox5 controls cell fate specification of dp2 and dp3 progenitors and, as a result, controls the correct number of the corresponding dorsal interneurons (dI2 and dI3). Furthermore, Sox5 exerts its function by restricting dorsally Wnt signaling activity via direct transcriptional induction of the negative Wnt pathway regulator Axin2. By that way, Sox5 acts as a Wnt pathway modulator that contributes to sharpen the dorsal gradient of Wnt/βcatenin activity to control the distinction of two functionally distinct types of interneurons, dI2 and dI3 involved in the somatosensory relay. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Develop Neurobiol 75: 522–538, 2015
Open-circuit and short-circuit core losses computation in a large hydro generator

Predictions of the different magnetic core losses with acceptable accuracy are key parameters for temperaturerise calculations for considered up-rate in large hydro electrical machines. In this paper, available core loss model is used to compute the electromagnetic core losses in large hydro electrical machine during no-load and short-circuit modes. The obtained results are discussed and compared with the available test data.
Simulating the climate response to atmospheric oxygen variability in the Phanerozoic: a focus on the Holocene, Cretaceous and Permian

Abstract. The amount of dioxygen (O2) in the atmosphere may have varied from as little as 5 % to as much as 35 % during the Phanerozoic eon (54 Ma–present). These changes in the amount of O2 are large enough to have led to changes in atmospheric mass, which may alter the radiative budget of the atmosphere, leading to this mechanism being invoked to explain discrepancies between climate model simulations and proxy reconstructions of past climates. Here, we present the first fully 3-D numerical model simulations to investigate the climate impacts of changes in O2 under different climate states using the coupled atmosphere–ocean Hadley Centre Global Environmental Model version 3 (HadGEM3-AO) and Hadley Centre Coupled Model version 3 (HadCM3-BL) models. We show that simulations with an increase in O2 content result in increased global-mean surface air temperature under conditions of a pre-industrial Holocene climate state, in agreement with idealised 1-D and 2-D modelling studies. We demonstrate the mechanism behind the warming is complex and involves a trade-off between a number of factors. Increasing atmospheric O2 leads to a reduction in incident shortwave radiation at the Earth's surface due to Rayleigh scattering, a cooling effect. However, there is a competing warming effect due to an increase in the pressure broadening of greenhouse gas absorption lines and dynamical feedbacks, which alter the meridional heat transport of the ocean, warming polar regions and cooling tropical regions. Case studies from past climates are investigated using HadCM3-BL and show that, in the warmest climate states in the Maastrichtian (72.1–66.0 Ma), increasing oxygen may lead to a temperature decrease, as the equilibrium climate sensitivity is lower. For the Asselian (298.9–295.0 Ma), increasing oxygen content leads to a warmer global-mean surface temperature and reduced carbon storage on land, suggesting that high oxygen content may have been a contributing factor in preventing a “Snowball Earth” during this period of the early Permian. These climate model simulations reconcile the surface temperature response to oxygen content changes across the hierarchy of model complexity and highlight the broad range of Earth system feedbacks that need to be accounted for when considering the climate response to changes in atmospheric oxygen content.
Dynamic Network Competition — Very Preliminary and incomplete —

This paper considers a dynamic platform competition in a market with network externalities. We ask two research questions. The first one asks how the beliefs advantage carries over in time, and whether a low-quality platform can maintain its focal position along time. We show that for very high and very low discount factors it is possible for the low-quality platform to maintain its focal position indefinitely. But for the intermediate discount factor the higher quality platform wins and keeps the market. The second question asks what drives changes in the market leadership along time (observed in many markets, like smartphones and video-game consoles), and how such changes can be supported as a dynamic equilibrium outcome. We offer two explanations. The first explanation relies on intrinsic equilibrium uncertainty. The second explanation relies on the adoption of technology. One could expect such change in the market leader to be a sign of intense competition between platforms. However, we find that changes in leadership indicate softer price competition.
The dynamics of iterated transportation simulations

Iterating between a router and a traffic micro-simulation is an increasibly accepted method for doing traffic assignment. This paper, after pointing out that the analytical theory of simulation-based assignment to-date is insufficient for some practical cases, presents results of simulation studies from a real world study. Specifically, we look into the issues of uniqueness, variability, and robustness and validation. Regarding uniqueness, despite some cautionary notes from a theoretical point of view, we find no indication of ``meta-stable'' states for the iterations. Variability however is considerable. By variability we mean the variation of the simulation of a given plan set by just changing the random seed. We show then results from three different micro-simulations under the same iteration scenario in order to test for the robustness of the results under different implementations. We find the results encouraging, also when comparing to reality and with a traditional assignment result.
Habituation of White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in an Urban / Suburban Environment to an Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Quad Copter

The use of remote control Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) with photographic instrumentation has the potential to be a useful tool for various aspects of wildlife management. However, if the presence of an UAS significantly alters normal behavior, use of these devices may be limited. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate behavioral changes of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) when repeatedly exposed to a commercially available UAS. We hypothesized that whitetailed deer in an urban/suburban environment would rapidly become habituated to the presence of an UAS. Deer in two hay fields on the Berry College campus were subjected to 1 UAS flight per day for 10 consecutive days. Each flight consisted of 2 overhead passes by the UAS at an initial height of 50 m above the ground followed by 2 passes at 40 m, 30 m, and 20 m altitude. Digital camcorder recordings at ground level were obtained during each flight from a minimal distance of 100 m from the deer. Behavior of deer during 12 predefined, 10 sec components of each flight, within the field of view of the digital camcorder, were categorized as Passive (no altered behavior), Alert (actively observing and/or listening toward the UAS), Active (slow to moderate movement away from area), or Flight (running away from area). The average number of deer observed during each flight was similar (P ≥ 0.05) at each respective location (12.1 ± 3.9; 12.8 ± 5.6). There was an increase in Passive Behavior (P ≤ 0.05) and a corresponding decrease in Alert Behavior (P ≤ 0.05) of deer as the number of flights and subsequent exposure to the UAS increased. Too few observations of Active or Flight Behavior were recorded to provide meaningful interpretation. The results of this study indicate white-tailed deer in an urban/suburban environment can readily become habituated to the presence of an UAS with repeated