Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impairment of &bgr;-Adrenergic Signaling in Healthy Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells Exposed to Serum from Patients with Septic Shock: Involvement of the Inhibitory Pathway of Adenylyl Cyclase Stimulation

The objective of this study was to determine whether the serum of patients with sepsis could alter the capability of healthy human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) to synthesize cAMP in response to &bgr;-adrenergic stimulation and to evaluate the involvement of the inhibitory pathway (Gi) of adenylyl cyclase in the sepsis-induced alteration of &bgr;-adrenergic signaling. First, PBMC from a healthy donor were incubated for 24 h in serum-containing medium according to three culture conditions: serum alone, serum with pertussis toxin, and serum with propranolol. Second, PBMC were stimulated with 10−5 M isoproterenol or 10−6 M forskolin, and measurement of cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) intracellular accumulation was performed. Serum samples were obtained from three groups of subjects: 14 patients with severe sepsis, 21 patients with septic shock, and 10 healthy control subjects. Basal and forskolin-stimulated cAMP levels were similar in PBMC cultured in control or in septic serum. Isoproterenol-stimulated accumulation was reduced in PBMC preincubated in septic serum. The lowest cAMP levels were found after exposure to serum from patients with septic shock. The addition of pertussis toxin in the incubation medium constantly increased cAMP response to isoproterenol, but more significantly in PBMC exposed to septic serum. Incubation in the presence of propranolol had no significant effect. The serum of patients with sepsis contained soluble depressant substances that inhibited adenylyl cyclase activation by &bgr;-adrenergic agonists. Septic shock serum exhibited the most potent inhibitory effect. Hyperactivation of the Gi pathway of adenylyl cyclase was mainly responsible for the altered transmembrane &bgr;-adrenergic signaling.
Effect of Long-Range Passivation of Impurity Atoms by Surface Dangling Bonds on the Conductivity of Porous Silicon

In the introductory part of the work, experimental data on the influence of various factors on the conductivity of porous silicon (PS), in particular, the surface structure, doping level, temperature, electric field, and the atmosphere of active molecules, are analyzed. Analysis of the theoretical models of PS conductivity, proposed to date, shows that none of them can simultaneously explain all experimentally established results. In particular, the models do not explain the energy range of thermal activation of PS conductivity Ea, the presence of two Ea values in different temperature ranges, the dependence of Ea on the size of PS nanocrystallites, the mechanism of influence on the PS conductivity of NO2 molecules. In this paper, a model of PS conductivity is proposed, according to which the main factor that causes low conductivity of PS is the presence of charged pb-centers (Si atoms with dangling bonds) that remotely passivate the impurity atoms of boron or phosphorus. Barriers for free carriers appear around charged pb-centers, which prevent them from passing through thin sections of nanowires in PS. To test this hypothesis, 3D modeling of the passage of free carriers through a thin (2-5 nm) cylindrical nanowire with a surface barrier was performed. For this, the finite-element method was used to solve the single-particle Schrödinger equation with “transparent boundary conditions” on the bases of the cylinder. The potential in the barrier was taken from previous papers on DFT modeling of long-range passivation. The transparency Tr of such a barrier structure was calculated depending on the energy Е of the free carrier. According to the obtained dependences Tr(Е), the values of the energy Eth for overcoming these barriers in nanowires of different diameters were found. The obtained values Eth  0.1-1 eV are in good agreement with the range of experimental values of the thermal activation energy of PS conductivity. The energy Eth increases with decreasing diameter of silicon nanowires, which also agrees with the experimental results. The presence of two values of the activation energy can be explained by the dominance of the processes of impurity depassivation at low temperatures and thermal overcoming of barriers near pb-centers at high temperatures.
Protocol for evaluation of the comparative effectiveness of percutaneous adhesiolysis and caudal epidural steroid injections in low back and/or lower extremity pain without post surgery syndrome or spinal stenosis.

BACKGROUND Treatment of chronic low back pain with or without lower extremity pain continues to be a challenge. Epidural steroids are commonly utilized in patients after the failure of conservative treatment. The results of epidural steroid injections have been variable based on the pathophysiology, the route of administration, injected drugs, and utilization of fluoroscopy. In patients resistant to fluoroscopically directed epidural injections, percutaneous epidural adhesiolysis and percutaneous targeted delivery of injections with or without adhesiolysis has been recommended. Percutaneous adhesiolysis has been studied in chronic pain syndromes related to post laminectomy syndrome and spinal stenosis with encouraging results. There is a paucity of literature regarding the effectiveness of the targeted delivery of medications with or without epidural adhesiolysis in patients recalcitrant to epidural steroid injections without a history of surgery and spinal stenosis. STUDY DESIGN A randomized, equivalence trial of percutaneous lumbar adhesiolysis and caudal epidural steroid injections in patients with low back and/or lower extremity pain without post surgery syndrome or spinal stenosis. SETTING An interventional pain management practice setting in the United States. OBJECTIVE The study is designed to evaluate the effectiveness of percutaneous epidural adhesiolysis in managing chronic low back and/or lower extremity pain in patients without post lumbar surgery syndrome or spinal stenosis and compare it with fluoroscopically directed caudal epidural steroid injections METHODS The study design includes 120 patients randomly assigned into 2 groups. Group I (60 patients), the control group, will receive caudal epidural injections with catheterization up to S3 with local anesthetic, steroids, and 0.9% sodium chloride solution; Group II (60 patients), the intervention group, will receive percutaneous adhesiolysis with target delivery of lidocaine, 10% hypertonic sodium chloride solution, and non-participate betamethasone. Randomization will be performed by computer-generated random allocation sequence by simple randomization. OUTCOME MEASURES Multiple outcome measures will be utilized including numeric rating scale (NRS), the Oswestry Disability Index 2.0 (ODI), employment status, and opioid intake with assessment at 3, 6, 12, 18 and 24 months post treatment. Significant pain relief is considered as 50% or more, whereas significant improvement in the disability score is defined as a reduction of 40% or more. RESULTS The results will be analyzed to show significant relief as well as improvement in functional status. LIMITATIONS This study is limited by potentially inadequate double blinding and the lack of a placebo group.
A new algorithm for elimination of common subexpressions

The problem of an efficient hardware implementation of multiplications with one or more constants is encountered in many different digital signal-processing areas, such as image processing or digital filter optimization. In a more general form, this is a problem of common subexpression elimination, and as such it also occurs in compiler optimization and many high-level synthesis tasks. An efficient solution of this problem can yield significant improvements in important design parameters like implementation area or power consumption. In this paper, a new solution of the multiple constant multiplication problem based on the common subexpression elimination technique is presented. The performance of our method is demonstrated primarily on a finite-duration impulse response filter design. The idea is to implement a set of constant multiplications as a set of add-shift operations and to optimize these with respect to the common subexpressions afterwards. We show that the number of add/subtract operations can be reduced significantly this way. The applicability of the presented algorithm to the different high-level synthesis tasks is also indicated. Benchmarks demonstrating the algorithm's efficiency are included as well.
Learning Instance Weights in Multi-Instance Learning

Multi-instance (MI) learning is a variant of supervised machine learning, where each learning example contains a bag of instances instead of just a single feature vector. MI learning has applications in areas such as drug activity prediction, fruit disease management and image classification. This thesis investigates the case where each instance has a weight value determining the level of influence that it has on its bag’s class label. This is a more general assumption than most existing approaches use, and thus is more widely applicable. The challenge is to accurately estimate these weights in order to make predictions at the bag level. An existing approach known as MILES is retroactively identified as an algorithm that uses instance weights for MI learning, and is evaluated using a variety of base learners on benchmark problems. New algorithms for learning instance weights for MI learning are also proposed and rigorously evaluated on both artificial and realworld datasets. The new algorithms are shown to achieve better root mean squared error rates than existing approaches on artificial data generated according to the algorithms’ underlying assumptions. Experimental results also demonstrate that the new algorithms are competitive with existing approaches on real-world problems.
Cadaveric Allograft for Wound Closure After Resection of Squamous Cell Carcinoma in Patients With Recessive Dystrophic Epidermolysis Bullosa: A Report of 32 Resections and Repairs in 2 Patients

This is a review of the management of squamous cell carcinoma in 2 adult patients with recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa. The 2 have undergone 32 excisions of squamous cell carcinoma of the skin and soft tissue with subsequent reconstruction. Multiple strategies for wound closure have been described in this population. We highlight the usefulness of full thickness cadaveric allograft alone, to close wounds in situations when primary closure or donor site availability of autograft is limited or suboptimal.
Models of Service for Children in Out-of-home Care with Significant Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties

The study of out-of home care with the purpose of obtaining a detailed national profile of children with significant emotional and behavioural disorders, as well as a review of different interventions and services developed to meet the needs of this population internationally is summarised. The background characteristics such as placement history, social background, child characteristics that need to be analysed and the principal international trends in out-of-home care are discussed.
Simulating Drone-be-Gone: Agile Low-Cost Cyber-Physical UAV Testbed (Demonstration)

In this paper, we demonstrate Drone-Be-Gone (DbeG): a general-purpose, inexpensive, and agile UAV Cyber-Physical System (CPS) testbed. We implement on our testbed 2-D vision-based localization within 5 cm precision, controllability of multiple UAVs, a simulation environment of our testbed in 2-D (named TeSLA), and external processing units (EPU). The testbed has the ability to switch between centralized or distributed control and processing due to the addition of EPUs. The simulator will allow users to interact with our testbed virtually and observe its behavior.
How Much Residual Hearing Is ‘Useful’ for Music Perception with Cochlear Implants?

Aim: To compare performance on a song recognition task of bilaterally combined electric and acoustic hearing (bimodal stimulation) with electric or acoustic hearing alone. Methods:Subjects were 14 adults with cochlear implants (CI) who continued to use a hearing aid (HA) in one/both ears. Subjects were asked to identify excerpts from 15 popular songs, which were familiar to them, presented in a random order via a single loudspeaker. Presentation conditions were fixed in order: bimodal, CI alone and then HA alone. Musical excerpts were presented in each condition with and then without lyrics. Results:In a subgroup of subjects (n = 8) with better low-frequency residual hearing (thresholds <85 dB hearing level (HL)), mean scores for bimodal stimulation were significantly greater than for CI alone. In addition, mean ‘no lyrics’ scores for HA alone (59.7%) were significantly greater than for CI alone (38.8%). All of these subjects considered bimodal stimulation to be the most enjoyable way to listen to music. For the remaining subjects (n = 6) there was no benefit from using bimodal stimulation over CI alone, and the majority of these preferred to listen to music using CI alone. Conclusions:Bimodal stimulation provides better perception of popular music, particularly melody recognition, compared to CI alone when low-frequency residual hearing is better than 85 dB HL.
A framework for the design of dependent‐failure algorithms

Dependent failures constitute a real problem in distributed systems. In this paper, we present a framework for the design of distributed algorithms for systems in which failures of processes are not necessarily independent or identically distributed. To derive this framework, we revisit the traditional way of designing distributed algorithms: assuming a threshold t on the number of process failures and determining constraints on process replication of the form All mathematics should have $n > k\cdot t$. Under this model, there are several important results in the literature, and we use observations from these results to derive a framework that enables more expressive characterizations of failures, but still captures the essence of previous results. Our framework then has two parts: a characterization of the subsets of processes that can fail in an execution and properties that express constraints on process replication, called replication predicates. After presenting our model to characterize failures, we first consider a class of replication predicates that represent most well‐known problems in distributed computing. Second, we extend this set to also include some predicates for problems that have unusual bounds. We argue that, although being unusual, they have important practical implications, such as using fewer replicas. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Multiple Memory States in Resistive Switching Devices Through Controlled Size and Orientation of the Conductive Filament

Multilevel operation in resistive switching memory (RRAM) based on HfOx is demonstrated through variable sizes and orientations of the conductive filament. Memory states with the same resistance, but opposite orientation of defects, display a different response to an applied read voltage, therefore allowing an improvement of the information stored in each physical cell. The multilevel scheme allows a 50% increase (from 2 to 3 bits) of the stored information.
An investigation of concurrent segregation abilities in autistic spectrum disorder utilizing the dichotic pitch and mistuned harmonic paradigms

Research using the dichotic pitch and mistuned harmonic paradigms has identified neurophysiological markers for concurrent sound segregation (the Object Related Negativity [ORN], N2 difference and P400). The aim of this thesis was to determine whether these components are elicited, and if they differ in amplitude, for individuals with autistic spectrum disorder (ASDs) and typicals. Experiment 1 found ASDs elicited a diminished ORN compared to typicals for time-shifted dichotic pitch, indicating low-level deficits in ASD. Other stimuli that elicit these components were used in Experiment 2 (mistuned harmonics). The addition of the interaural time difference (ITD) cue to mistuning increased the ORN amplitude in both groups. An ORN was elicited by ITD alone for Experiment 2. Experiment 3 revisited the dichotic pitch stimulus and utilized ITD and interaural amplitude difference (IAD) cues separately. Both groups elicited an ORN for the IAD dichotic pitch. Again ASDs elicited a diminished ORN for the ITD cue. This indicates that Gaussian noise is not the cause of the diminished ORN for ASDs. Experiment 4 explored the effects of separate and combined ITD and IAD cues in dichotic pitch on the ORN amplitude. The ITD cue did not increase the ORN amplitude for ASDs. ASDs only elicited an ORN when the ITD was lateralized to the opposite side of the IAD. This indicates that the ITD interferes with the ability of the ASDs to parse concurrent auditory objects. ASDs also elicited a diminished N2 difference for ITD and IAD dichotic pitch. This might suggest that the ASDs have difficulty with processing spatial information. An N2 difference was not found for mistuned harmonic stimuli. ASDs showed P400s for ITD dichotic pitch and mistuned harmonic stimuli. This indicates that controlled processes in ASD are intact for concurrent segregation. A diminished P400 was elicited by ASDs, compared to typicals, for the ITD and IAD cues in dichotic pitch (Experiment 3). This may indicate controlled processing difficulties with multiple cues for ASDs. Main findings indicate that ASDs have a low-level processing deficit in processing ITD cues but not for other cues for concurrent sound segregation. Controlled processes are intact in ASDs for concurrent sound segregation.
Assessing the Liberal Peace with Alternative Specifications: Trade Still Reduces Conflict

Some recent analyses challenge previous reports which show that economically important trade significantly reduces the probability of militarized disputes between countries. Beck et al. (1998) address the effect of temporal dependence in the time-series data on empirical support for the liberal peace, while Barbieri (1998) makes a number of important changes in theoretical specification and measurement. Using data for nearly the entire post-World War II era (1950-92), we first replicate the specifications of the challengers. When analyzing all dyads, we find no relationship between interdependence and peace, but the pacific benefits of trade become evident among the politically relevant dyads (those including a major power, or two contiguous states), among whom the great majority of disputes occur. Subsequently, we introduce, in stages, an alternative method of controlling for temporal dependence, our theoretically preferred measures of interdependence and proximity, and new dyadic estimates for unreported trade. With these sequential modifications we find increasingly strong support for the liberals' belief that economic interdependence and democracy have important pacific benefits. This support is largely robust to the methods of controlling for temporal dependence and to whether an attempt is made to explain involvement in disputes or merely their onset. We find no evidence that asymmetric trade increases conflict.
Purification and Characterization of the Alanine Aminotransferase from the Hyperthermophilic Archaeon Pyrococcus furiosus and Its Role in Alanine Production

ABSTRACT Alanine aminotransferase (AlaAT) was purified from cell extracts of the hyperthermophilic archaeon Pyrococcus furiosusby multistep chromatography. The enzyme has an apparent molecular mass of 93.5 kDa, as estimated by gel filtration, and consists of two identical subunits of 46 kDa, as deduced by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and the gene sequence. The AlaAT displayed a broader substrate specificity than AlaATs from eukaryal sources and exhibited significant activity with alanine, glutamate, and aspartate with either 2-oxoglutarate or pyruvate as the amino acceptor. Optimal activity was found in the pH range of 6.5 to 7.8 and at a temperature of over 95°C. The N-terminal amino acid sequence of the purified AlaAT was determined and enabled the identification of the gene encoding AlaAT (aat) in theP. furiosus genome database. The gene was expressed inEscherichia coli, and the recombinant enzyme was purified. The pH and temperature dependence, molecular mass, and kinetic parameters of the recombinant were indistinguishable from those of the native enzyme from P. furiosus. Thekcat/Km values for alanine and pyruvate formation were 41 and 33 s−1mM−1, respectively, suggesting that the enzyme is not biased toward either the formation of pyruvate, or alanine. Northern analysis identified a single 1.2-kb transcript for the aatgene. In addition, both the aat and gdh(encoding the glutamate dehydrogenase) transcripts appear to be coregulated at the transcriptional level, because the expression of both genes was induced when the cells were grown on pyruvate. The coordinated control found for the aat and gdhgenes is in good agreement with these enzymes acting in a concerted manner to form an electron sink in P. furiosus.
Dissociation of Semantic Priming, Word and Non-Word Repetition Effects by Event-Related Potentials

Two experiments investigated the modulation of event-related potentials (ERPs) by semantic priming and item repetition. In Experiment 1, subjects silently counted occasional non-words against a background of words, a proportion of which were either semantic associates or repetitions of a preceding word. Compared to control items, ERPs to repeated words were distinguished by an early (ca. 200 msec) transient negative-going deflection and a later, topographically widespread and temporally sustained positive-going shift. In contrast, semantically primed words showed a relatively small, topographically and temporally limited positive-going modulation peaking around 500 msec. These data were interpreted as evidence against models of priming and repetition which postulate similar loci for these effects. In Experiment 2, subjects counted occasional words against a background of non-words, some of which were repeated. ERPs to repetitions showed a similar early ERP modulation to that in Experiment 1, and also displayed a later slow positive shift. This latter effect was smaller in magnitude and had a delayed onset in comparison to Experiment 1. It was concluded that the effects of repetition differ as a consequence of whether, prior to their first presentation, items possess a representation in lexical memory.
Intact neurovascular coupling during executive function in migraine without aura: Interictal near-infrared spectroscopy study

An altered neurovascular coupling has been proposed in migraine. We aimed to investigate neurovascular coupling during a mental task interictally in patients with migraine without aura (MO) by near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). Twelve migraineurs and 12 healthy controls were included. Using NIRS, we recorded the magnitude and latency of cortical changes in oxyhaemoglobin (HbO2) and deoxyhaemoglobin (Hb) during the colour-word matching Stroop test via 16 channels covering the forehead. We found no differences in the magnitude of responses between migraineurs and healthy subjects in the incongruent Stroop task subtracted by the neutral Stroop task on either side of the frontal cortex for HbO2 (left, P = 0.984; right, P = 0.406) or Hb (left, P = 0.689; right, P = 0.406) values. No differences in error rate (P = 0.611) or reaction time (P = 0.936) were found between healthy subjects and MO patients for incongruent tasks. The present study suggests that vascular reactivity and oxygen supply during a mental task in patients with MO are intact interictally.