Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Preservation of contractile characteristics of human myocardium in multi-day cell culture.

Functional studies of different human cell types have been successfully conducted under in vitro conditions. Despite many efforts, it has not been possible to develop a human myocardial preparation in which contractile function can be studied over several days. We hypothesize that by mimicking the in vivo situation in an in vitro environment we can preserve viability and function of human myocardial preparations over several days. From explanted hearts of patients undergoing cardiac transplantation, multicellular preparations were dissected and mounted in a sterile muscle chamber. Muscles were stimulated at 0.5 or 1 Hz at 1.75 mmol/l Ca(2+), a pH of 7.4 and at 37 degrees C, and kept contracting isometrically for 2-6 days. This study shows for the first time that contractile function of human myocardial tissue can be preserved over several days; active force development had not significantly changed after 48 h (10.6+/-1.2 at t=0 v 11.4+/-2.8 mN/mm(2)at t=48, n=10), nor had diastolic force (1.0+/-0.1 v 0.9+/-0.1 mN/mm(2)). After at least 48 h, the contractile response to stimulation with 1 micromol/l isoproterenol was clearly present: developed force increased to 631+/-146% of control values, while half-relaxation time declined to 57+/-6% (n=7). In addition, both pharmacological responses and regulatory physiological behavior, such as post-rest potentiation and force-frequency relationships, are preserved. This technique allows the study of the regulation of contractile function of human myocardium in vitro and may be used to link changes in protein expression to consequent changes in myocardial contraction.
Short‐term fasting leads to inhibition of responsiveness to LH‐stimulated testosterone secretion in the adult male bonnet monkey

A variety of stressors including fasting profoundly inhibit reproductive function in mammals. Although the effect of short‐term fasting on gonadotropic axis is well established, the direct effects of fasting on gonads have not been reported. The objectives of the present experiments were to examine the effect of short‐term fasting on circulating luteinizing hormone (LH) and testosterone (T) secretion, and to determine the responsiveness of testis to exogenous recombinant human (rh) LH treatment in male bonnet monkeys. In addition, an experiment was carried out to examine whether brief inhibition of endogenous LH secretion causes alteration in testicular responsiveness. Adult male monkeys were fasted for 1 day for examining the circulating endocrine hormone concentrations and challenged with rhLH injection 1 day after fasting. Food withdrawal for 1 day resulted in significant (P<0.05) decrease in LH, T and increase in cortisol concentrations. Surprisingly, T secretion in response to direct stimulation of Leydig cells by LH was not observed in fasted monkeys. In fed monkeys, treatment with Antide (a specific gonadotropin releasing hormone receptor antagonist to inhibit pituitary LH secretion) for 1 day did not compromise T secretion stimulated by rhLH, suggesting that loss of responsiveness of testis to exogenous LH treatment in fasted monkeys was not because of interruption in pituitary LH stimulation of the testis. The results indicate that short‐term fasting in adult male monkeys cause inhibition of LH and T secretion, and inhibition of responsiveness of testis to LH stimulation. Am. J. Primatol. 69:791–801, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Feature Repetitiveness Similarity Metrics in Visual Search

Repetitive patterns are significant visual cues for matching and detecting objects in images. However, information from repetitive patterns is underutilized in computer vision algorithms as they cause burstiness issue in image similarity scoring. Existing similarity metrics do not take the repetitive patterns into account, and hence cannot handle images with repetitive patterns well. In view of this, this letter presents a new feature repetitiveness similarity (FRS) metric that not only addresses the burstiness issue, but also uses the information from the repetitive patterns to enhance the retrieval performance. The proposed FRS framework detects the repetitive patterns using descriptor and geometric information of local features in the images. Unique and repetitive features are handled separately and then fused at scoring stage using the FRS metric. Experiments conducted on the benchmark Oxford and Paris datasets show that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods by a mean average precision of 6%. This demonstrates the effectiveness of FRS metric in matching and retrieval of images with repeated patterns.
Single-Feed Dual-Band Dual-Linearly-Polarized Proximity-Coupled Patch Antenna

In this paper, two novel single-feed dual-band dual-polarized microstrip antennas, fed by proximity coupling, are presented. The first approach begins with a new patch antenna that provides dual-band dual-polarized operation by means of an open-circuit stub, added at the open end of the feed line. By adding a stub to the end of the feed line, one can make an antenna with two resonant frequencies. The first resonant frequency is approximately the same as that in the initial design, but the second frequency depends on the stub's length, the stub's location, and the location of the feed point across the patch's width. Moreover, the variation of the feed-line location with respect to the patch's length has no significant effect on the first resonance frequency, while the second frequency changes. The second approach that is studied to realize a dual-band dual-polarized design utilizes a microstrip-gap proximity-coupled feed mechanism. Further insight is sought through the investigation of the surface-current densities on the proposed patch antennas at their resonant frequencies. The radiation performance - including radiation pattern, cross polarization, and gain - is satisfactory within two bands. The CST simulation results and measurement results showed good agreement with each other.
Virtual character within MPEG-4 animation framework eXtension

Enriched multimedia applications and services aim at combining images, sounds, videos, and synthetic objects into hybrid and interactive scenes. The core technologies discussed here deal with the representation and integration within such complex scenes of a specific kind of synthetic data, namely virtual character animation. This paper analyzes how an integrated and standardized framework is currently emerging in order to ensure application interoperability, universal content access, and user interactivity. We first compare how virtual character animation has been addressed within virtual reality modeling language (VRML) and MPEG-4 synthetic and natural hybrid coding standardization processes. A comparative synthesis between the objectives and the capabilities of each framework is exposed, specifically MPEG-4 Face and Body Animation (FBA) versus H-Anim (Humanoid Animation Working Group, WEB3D Consortium, h-anim.org.) 1.1, and MPEG-4 Bone-Based Animation (BBA) versus H-Anim 2001. The Animation Framework eXtension (AFX) specifications that are a part of MPEG-4 Systems Part 16 include the BBA framework. The BBA animation concepts, based on generic skeleton representation and curve-based deformations, are introduced. The definition of the related nodes and how they successfully address the BBA concepts are as well discussed. Some comments with respect to the rotation representation, the interpolation methods, the animation mask, and value parameters of the animation stream are made. This set of specifications provides an efficient framework, which is appropriate to real-time and animation realistic applications within networked environments.
Chloramphenicol resistance mutations in the single 23S rRNA gene of the archaeon Halobacterium halobium

A broad range of antibiotics affecting protein biosynthesis were screened for their ability to inhibit growth of the archaeon Halobacterium halobium. Only a few drugs, including chloramphenicol, produced inhibitory effects. Mutants which showed increased resistance to chloramphenicol were isolated; of the nine tested, eight exhibited a C----U transition at position 2471 and the ninth had an A----C transversion at position 2088 of 23S rRNA. A double mutant containing both C----U (position 2471) and A----C (position 2088) mutations was isolated, but the level of its chloramphenicol resistance did not exceed that of either single-point mutant. Inferences are made concerning the functional significance of the conserved nucleotides in rRNAs.
Microscopic characterization of rabbit lung damage produced by Pseudomonas aeruginosa proteases

The intratracheal administration of highly purified Pseudomonas aeruginosa proteases (ca. 10 to 100 microgram) elicited extensive, grossly observable rabbit lung damage by 3 h postinjection. Light and electron microscopic characterization of the lesions revealed: (i) progressive injury and necrosis of type I epithelial cells and capillary endothelial cells from 3 h to 1 day postinjection, and progressively increasing accumulations of erythrocytes, plasma proteins, fibrin, and released type II epithelial cell lamellar bodies in alveolar lumina during that time period; (ii) progressively increasing accumulations of macrophages, but not of polymorphonuclear leukocytes, in alveolar lumina from 3 h to 6 days postinjection; (iii) progressive hyperplasia of type II epithelial cells from 12 h to 4 days postinjection; (iv) progressive infiltration of alveolar septa by mononuclear inflammatory cells (interstitial pneumonitis) from 2 to 6 days postinjection; (v) no loss of alveolar septal connective tissue and no damage to pulmonary arterioles and venules; and (vi) almost normal alveolar structure by ca. 8 days postinjection. The study revealed that the intra-alveolar hemorrhage, the injury and necrosis of alveolar septal cells, and the infiltration by mononuclear cells that have been reported to occur during human pseudomonas pneumonia can also be elicited by the experimental administration of pseudomonas proteases. Thus, the results support the idea that in vivo production and activity of P. aeruginosa proteases is important, at least in part, in eliciting the lung damage characteristic of pseudomonas pneumonia.
Head injury serum markers for assessing response to trauma: Design of the HeadSMART study

ABSTRACT Background: Accurate diagnosis and risk stratification of traumatic brain injury (TBI) at time of presentation remains a clinical challenge. The Head Injury Serum Markers for Assessing Response to Trauma study (HeadSMART) aims to examine blood-based biomarkers for diagnosing and determining prognosis in TBI. Methods: HeadSMART is a 6-month prospective cohort study comparing emergency department patients evaluated for TBI (exposure group) to (1) emergency department patients evaluated for traumatic injury without head trauma and (2) healthy persons. Study methods and characteristics of the first 300 exposure participants are discussed. Results: Of the first 300 participants in the exposure arm, 70% met the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine criteria for TBI, with the majority (80.1%) classified as mild TBI. The majority of subjects in the exposure arm had Glasgow Coma Scale scores of 13–15 (98.0%), normal head computed tomography (81.3%) and no prior history of concussion (71.7%). Conclusion: With systematic phenotyping, HeadSMART will facilitate diagnosis and risk-stratification of the heterogeneous group of individuals currently diagnosed with TBI.
Mortality Experience in Recipients Undergoing Repeat Transplantation with Expanded Criteria Donor and Non‐ECD Deceased‐Donor Kidneys

Nearly one‐quarter of the kidney transplant waiting list is composed of repeat transplantation candidates. Survival following retransplantation using expanded criteria donor (ECD) kidneys has not been adequately studied. Using data from the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients, we analyzed mortality after retransplantation with ECD and non‐ECD deceased‐donor kidneys. Adult patients who experienced graft failure and were relisted for transplantation between 1995 and 2004 were studied (n = 9641). Follow‐up began at the date of relisting and continued until death or the end of the observation period (December 31, 2004), with censoring at living‐donor transplantation. Sequential stratification (an extension of Cox regression) was used to compare mortality between patients receiving an ECD retransplant and those remaining on the waiting list or receiving a non‐ECD retransplant (conventional therapy). Of 2908 retransplantations, 292 used ECD kidneys. Survival after ECD retransplantation was approximately equal to that of conventional therapy, with an adjusted hazard ratio of 0.98 (p = 0.88). In contrast, non‐ECD retransplant recipients experienced a significant reduction in mortality (HR = 0.44; p < 0.0001). Based on these national data, recipients of ECD retransplantation do not have a survival advantage relative to conventional therapy, whereas non‐ECD retransplantation is associated with a significant survival advantage.
Uncoupling intensive insulin therapy from weight gain and hypoglycemia in type 1 diabetes.

BACKGROUND Intensive insulin therapy has been associated with weight gain and increased hypoglycemia. In this pilot study, we determined the effect of optimized insulin therapy on weight gain and frequency of hypoglycemia in patients with long-standing type 1 diabetes mellitus. METHODS Sixteen patients with long-standing type 1 diabetes participated in an interventional clinical trial. Before any pharmacologic intervention began, diabetes management was optimized by thorough review of carbohydrate counting and insulin dose adjustment. RESULTS Optimizing insulin therapy and carbohydrate counting for 4-6 months decreased the enrollees' hemoglobin A1C (-0.7 ± 0.6%, P = 0.0003) without weight gain (-0.6 ± 2.9 kg, P = 0.44) or increased frequency of hypoglycemia (-0.5 ± 1.5 events per week, P = 0.22). The improved blood glucose control was achieved in most subjects by lowering their basal or long-acting insulin doses while making compensatory increases in meal-associated insulin doses. CONCLUSIONS "Fine tuning" of diabetes management with intensive insulin therapy was accomplished without inducing weight gain or worsening hypoglycemia. This was achieved by readjusting the ratio of basal to meal-associated insulin without increasing the total daily insulin dose.
T cell-based diagnosis of childhood tuberculosis infection

Purpose of review T-cell interferon-gamma release assays (TIGRAs), available as enzyme-linked immunospot (ELISpot) and enzyme-linked immunoassay (ELISA), potentially significantly advance on the tuberculin skin test (TST) for diagnosis of tuberculosis infection. We review all publications using TIGRAs in children to appraise paediatricians of the advantages and limitations of these new blood tests. Recent findings Unlike TST, both tests are independent of Bacille Calmette-Guérin vaccination status, providing higher diagnostic specificity. In children with active tuberculosis ELISpot is more sensitive than TST and is unaffected by HIV infection, age under 3 years or malnutrition; ELISA data are currently limited. In the absence of a gold-standard test for latent tuberculosis infection, tuberculosis exposure was used as a surrogate marker; ELISpot generally correlates better with tuberculosis exposure than TST, while ELISA correlates broadly similarly. Indeterminate test results in young children are rare with ELISpot and are more common with ELISA. Summary Although longitudinal studies quantifying risk of progression to tuberculosis in tuberculosis-exposed children with positive TIGRA results are required urgently, the small but rapidly expanding evidence-base since the first application of TIGRAs to childhood tuberculosis in 2003 combined with recent national guidelines makes a strong case for judicious use of TIGRAs in clinical management of paediatric tuberculosis.
Endovascular treatment of wide-necked aneurysms by using two microcatheters: techniques and outcomes in 25 patients.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The endovascular occlusion of aneurysms with unfavorable configurations such as a broad neck and an important branch from the fundus remains a technical challenge. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the radiologic and clinical results of complicated aneurysm treatment by using two microcatheters. METHODS Twenty-five aneurysms in 25 patients were treated by using two microcatheters, from August 2001 to February 2004. Fourteen patients presented with a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) and 11 had unruptured aneurysms. The aneurysms were of the basilar top (7), middle cerebral artery bifurcation (4), posterior communicating artery (4), anterior communicating artery (3), superior cerebellar artery (2), ophthalmic artery (2), and one aneurysm of each of cavernous internal carotid artery (ICA), dorsal ICA, and midbasilar artery. In 16 aneurysms (64%), the width of the aneurysm was the same or longer than the height. In 19 (76%), important branches arose from the aneurysm base, and some were even incorporated with the aneurysm fundus. The mean dome (height)-to-neck ratio was 1.23 +/- 0.37 (range, 0.65-2.33), and this was greater than or equal to 1.0 in 19 aneurysms (76%). RESULTS All aneurysms were successfully embolized. Immediate postembolization angiography showed no residual contrast filling in eight aneurysms (32%), and some residual contrast filling in 16. The aneurysm remnants, however, were intentionally left to preserve important branches in 12 of the 16 aneurysms with incomplete occlusion. Two complications occurred, including one thromboembolic and one coil protrusion, but they were successfully resolved and produced no clinical symptoms. All patients except one showed excellent clinical outcomes. One patient revealed moderate cognitive dysfunction. During the follow-up period, no new bleeding occurred. CONCLUSION Our experience with 25 cerebral aneurysm patients shows that the technique of using two microcatheters is feasible and safe for coil embolization of aneurysms with unfavorable configurations. Although the lack of angiographic follow-up prevents us from drawing conclusions about its effectiveness as compared with other techniques such as stent placement and balloon-neck protection, we believe that this technique offers a reliable alternative for endovascular therapy of complicated aneurysms.
Fecal Microbiota Transplantation for Refractory and Recurrent Clostridium difficile Infection: A Case Series of Nine Patients.

Background/Aims Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) is a highly effective therapy for refractory and recurrent Clostridium difficile infection (CDI). Despite its excellent efficacy and recent widespread use, FMT has not been widely used in South Korea thus far. We describe our experience with FMT to treat refractory/recurrent CDI. Methods We conducted a chart review of patients who underwent FMT for refractory/recurrent CDI at Inha University Hospital, between March 2014 and June 2016. The demographic information, treatment data, and adverse events were reviewed. FMT was administered via colonoscopy and/or duodenoscopy. All stool donors were rigorously screened to prevent infectious disease transmission. Results FMT was performed in nine patients with refractory/recurrent CDI. All patients were dramatically cured. Bowel movement was normalized within one week after FMT. There were no procedure-related adverse events, except aspiration pneumonia in one patient. During the follow-up period (mean 11.4 months), recurrence of CDI was observed in one patient at one month after FMT due to antibiotics. Conclusions FMT is a safe, well-tolerated and highly effective treatment for refractory/recurrent CDI. Although there are many barriers to using FMT, we expect that FMT will be widely used to treat refractory/recurrent CDI in South Korea.
Methods for estimating radiation doses received by commercial aircrew.

INTRODUCTION Radiation doses received onboard aircraft are monitored in Europe to protect aircrew in accordance with a European Union directive. The French Aviation Authorities have developed a system called SIEVERT, using calculation codes to monitor effective radiation doses. METHODS For the galactic cosmic ray component, a 3-D world map of effective dose rates is computed using available operational codes. Detailed flight plans are used to ensure sufficient precision. For the solar particle event component, a semi-empirical model called SiGLE has been developed to calculate a time-dependent map of effective dose rates in the course of the event. SiGLE is based on particle transport code results and measurements during solar particle events onboard Concorde airplanes. RESULTS We present a comparison of the calculated effective radiation dose and measured dose equivalent for various flights onboard Air France aircraft. The agreement is within 15%, which is about the precision of the state-of-the-art dosimetric measurements. Meteorological effects on the dose calculation appear to be negligible. Preliminary results based on solar particle events observed since 1942 with ionization chambers and neutron monitors are given. CONCLUSIONS The present analysis shows that for the galactic cosmic ray component, monthly world maps based on neutron monitor observations are sufficient to ensure a precision of about 20% on the dose estimate for each flight. For the past 40 yr, according to the model SiGLE, none of the solar events has given an effective radiation dose larger than 1 mSv for flights on the most exposed routes.
Energy efficient cooperative MIMO with Idle nodes in cluster based wireless sensor networks

Energy saving is a very important design consideration in wireless sensor networks. In cluster based wireless sensor networks, the energy could be saved when the nodes in a cluster that have data to transmit participate in cooperative Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO). In this paper, by making the idle nodes, that have no data to transmit, participate in the cooperative MIMO it is found that much more energy could be saved. The number of the idle nodes that participate in the cooperative MIMO can be optimized to minimize the total energy consumption. It is also found that the optimal number of all the nodes participating in cooperative communication does not vary with the number of nodes that have data to transmit in the cluster. The proposition is proved mathematically. The influence of long-haul distance and modulation constellation size on the total energy consumption is investigated in this paper as well.