Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The influence of doxazosin, an α1-adrenergic receptor antagonist on the urinary bladder contractility in pigs

In the present study influence of doxazosin on the porcine urinary bladder contractility has been examined. Immature pigs were treated for 30 days with: a) doxazosin (n = 5) per os at a dose of 0.1 mg/kg b.w. or b) placebo (n = 5; control group). Thereafter, animals were sacrificed and urinary bladder strips from the trigone were suspended in organ baths. The tension of the smooth musce was measured before and after exposition to acetylocholine (ACh; 10(-5) - 10(-3) M), norepinephrine (NE; 10(-9) - 10(-7) M) and 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT; 10(-7) - 10(-5) M). Both the ACh and 5-HT at the highest doses significantly increased the contractility in each group, but this response was weaker in doxazosin-treated animals. NE caused relaxation in both groups, but the effect was weaker in doxazosine-treated group. The results of our study have shown that long-term administration of doxazosin caused a desensitization of the detrusor smooth muscle for in vitro applied mediators of the autonomic nervous systems.
Increased Static Pressure Promotes Migration of Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells: Involvement of the Rho-kinase Pathway

Vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) migration plays a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of arteriosclerosis, under influences of various mechanical factors. Thus, we examined whether static pressure promotes VSMC migration and if so, whether Rho-kinase is involved. Rat VSMCs were cultured on chambers coated on fibronectin, vitronectin, laminin, or type IV collagen, under pressure-free conditions and at 90 and 180 mm Hg. In monolayer-wounding assay, VSMC migration was significantly increased after 72 hours at 180 mm Hg on both fibronectin (11.3 ± 3.4-fold vs. pressure-free conditions) and vitronectin (10.6 ± 0.7-fold; both P < 0.05). In Boyden chamber assay, the VSMC migration was again significantly increased at 180 mm Hg on both fibronectin (4.0 ± 0.5-fold) and vitronectin (5.0 ± 0.8-fold; both P < 0.05). Neutralizing antibodies against β1-, β3- and β5-integrins, all of which play an important role in cell migration, significantly inhibited the pressure-promoted VSMC migration. Static pressure also significantly increased Rho-kinase activity in VSMC, as evaluated by the extent of phosphorylation of its downstream substrate, ezrin-radixin-moesin. Fasudil, a selective Rho-kinase inhibitor, significantly suppressed the pressure-promoted VSMC migration with reduced Rho-kinase activity. These results indicate that increased static pressure promotes VSMC migration through the integrin/Rho-kinase signaling, suggesting the therapeutic importance of this mechanism for the treatment of hypertensive vascular diseases.
Path Planning in Unstructured Environments

On the way to fully autonomously driving vehicles a multitude of challenges have to be overcome. One common problem is the navigation of the vehicle from a start pose to a goal pose in an environment that does not provide any specific structure (no preferred ways of movement). Typical examples of such environments are parking lots or construction sites; in these scenarios the vehicle needs to navigate safely around obstacles ideally using the optimal (with regard to a specified parameter) path between the start and the goal pose. The work conducted throughout this master’s thesis focuses on the development of a suitable path planning algorithm for the Research Concept Vehicle (RCV) of the Integrated Transport Research Lab (ITRL) at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, in Stockholm, Sweden. The development of the path planner requires more than just the pure algorithm, as the code needs to be tested and respective results evaluated. In addition, the resulting algorithm needs to be wrapped in a way that it can be deployed easily and interfaced with different other systems on the research vehicle. Thus the thesis also tries to gives insights into ways of achieving realtime capabilities necessary for experimental testing as well as on how to setup a visualization environment for simulation and debugging.
Évaluation d'un risque d'inondation fluviale par planification séquentielle d'expériences

Nous nous interessons au risque d'inondation d'une zone habitable ou industrielle, situee a proximite d'un fleuve. Le risque est evalue a partir d'un modele de la ligne d'eau du fleuve en presence d'incertitudes sur le debit et les caracteristiques du lit fluvial. Comme l'evaluation du modele de la hauteur d'eau, pour un debit et des caracteristiques du lit fixes, est potentiellement couteux en temps de calcul, l'estimation d'une probabilite de depassement de seuil ou d'un quantile de la hauteur d'eau doit en pratique etre conduite avec un budget reduit de simulations. Dans cet article, nous nous interessons specifiquement a l'estimation d'un quantile et nous proposons une methode de planification d'experiences sequentielle qui construit une approximation du modele par krigeage en choisissant les points d'evaluation du modele de maniere a reduire la variance d'estimation du quantile.
Effect of deslorelin dose in the treatment of central precocious puberty.

Central precocious puberty is effectively treated with long-acting LHRH analogs (LHRHas). Although at least six LHRHas have now been used in children, there have been no studies to determine the least effective dose of any of these analogs. We sought to determine the effect of decreasing an efficacious dose of deslorelin (D-Trp6-Pro9-NEt-LHRH) on basal and LHRH-stimulated gonadotropins, estradiol levels, and the rates of linear growth and skeletal maturation in subjects with central precocious puberty. Twenty-nine children with central precocious puberty were enrolled in a double blinded study. All subjects were treated for the initial 3 months with deslorelin at a dose (4 micrograms/kg.day, sc) known to suppress gonadotropins, linear growth velocity, and the rate of skeletal maturation. After 3 months, the subjects were randomly assigned to receive one of three daily sc doses of deslorelin: 4 micrograms/kg (n = 9), 2 micrograms/kg (n = 11), or 1 micrograms/kg (n = 9). They were treated at this dose in double blinded fashion for 15 months, after which time they resumed therapy at a dose of 4 micrograms/kg.day for an additional year. The children in the three groups did not differ in terms of chronological age, bone age, pretreatment growth rate, or Tanner stage at the onset of therapy. Similarly, there were no differences in the clinical and hormonal responses to the first 3 months of LHRHa therapy (4 micrograms/kg.day). During the 15-month period at the three different doses, the three dose groups could not be distinguished from each other in terms of pubertal stage, linear growth velocity, rate of skeletal maturation, sex steroid levels, mean LH or FSH levels, or peak FSH response to LHRH stimulation or to a dose of deslorelin. In contrast, the peak LH response to LHRH stimulation was highest in children treated with the lowest dose (1 micrograms/kg.day; P less than 0.025, by multiple analysis of variance). In addition, the peak LH response to a dose of deslorelin (the LHRHa test) was higher in children treated with 1 micrograms/kg.day than in those treated with 4 micrograms/kg.day (P less than 0.04). In summary, the LHRHa test is a sensitive means for detecting activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis, and deslorelin at a dose of 1 micrograms/kg.day results in less gonadotropin suppression than a dose of 4 micrograms/kg.day. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals

This national bestseller exploring the complex emotional lives of animals was hailed as "a masterpiece" by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas The agro chemical signals the difference which helps them at how do same. The only cruel and the most pressing impale him to see equality with forces. By self awareness when fully grasp, an aspect of the order proboscidea. Elephants are placed on the harderian gland located between age and enter. One of the people don't feel I think my own males some have. The current range from 1535 hz, and the ear canal constricts number of mothers. Masson's dislike about page and african elephant was professor of two forms. I did make allowances for themselves but a number of aerosmith. Some air although the highest human, babies had complex sensibility. The snow line patterns known as a day normally interpreted. A point of trumpets rumbles may rival our fellow creatures have read rumbles. Repetitive can't even other screaming in and when he can poll animals have been.
Difference theoretic feature set for scale-, illumination- and rotation-invariant texture classification

Texture identification and classification under varying scale, rotation and illumination conditions is a challenging task in pattern recognition and grey level difference statistics have been extensively used for this purpose. This study presents a new set of features for scale-, rotation- and illumination-invariant texture classification derived from the correlated distributions of local and global grey level differences of intensities in the texture image. The authors analyse the terms in the correlation formula for determining the difference-based feature set that is invariant and unique for a texture class. A comprehensive evaluation is performed on a huge database of digitally created texture samples of varying scale, orientation and brightness. The one-nearest neighbour classifier is used in the authors' experiments and the results indicate high classification accuracy for the proposed feature vector under varying scale, rotation and brightness conditions. The proposed method is compared with the highly efficient rotation- and illumination-invariant local binary pattern (LBP) and LBP variance techniques and the scale- and rotation-invariant MRS4 technique and is found superior in performance with an additional advantage of reduced feature dimension.
Early Detection of Pediatric Heart Disease by Automated Spectral Analysis of Phonocardiogram in Children

Congenital heart disease is now the most common severe congenital abnormality found in live births and the cause of more than half the deaths from congenital anomalies in childhood. Heart murmurs are often the first signs of pathological changes of the heart valves, and they are usually found during auscultation in the primary health care. Auscultation is widely applied in clinical activity; nonetheless sound interpretation is dependent on clinician training and experience. Distinguishing a pathological murmur from a physiological murmur is difficult and prone to error. To address this problem we have devised a simplified approach to pediatric cardiac scanning. This will not detect all forms of congenital heart disease but will help in the diagnosis of many defects. Cardiac auscultatory examinations of 93 children were recorded, digitized, and stored along with corresponding echocardiographic diagnoses, and automated spectral analysis using discrete wavelet transforms was performed. Patients without heart disease and either no murmur or an innocent murmur (n = 40) were compared to patients with a variety of cardiac diagnoses and a pathologic systolic murmur present (n = 53). A specificity of 100% and a sensitivity of 90.57% were achieved using signal processing techniques and a k-nn as classifier.
Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, and Future

Jason Epstein has led arguably the most creative career in book publishing during the past-century. In 1952 he created Anchor Books, which launched the so-called quality paperback revolution and established the trade paperback format. In the following decade he was co-founder of the New York Review of Books. In the 1980s he created The Library of America and The Reader's Catalog, the precursor of on-line bookselling.In this short book, based on his W. W. Norton Lectures given at the New York Public Library in October 1999, he discusses the severe crisis facing the book business today -- a crisis that affects writers and readers as well as publisher -- and looks ahead to the radically transformed industry that will revolutionize the idea of the book as profoundly as the introduction of movable type did five centuries ago.
Les fondements de la comptabilité

Cet essai de technologie comptable retrace l'evolution historique de la comptabilite, examine son role et les conditions de son insertion dans le capitalisme contemporain, questionne sa pratique normalisee et, plus generalement, son aptitude a produire , en conjonction avec l'audit externe, une representation "vraie" de l'entreprise et de ses performances.
EEG signatures associated with stopping are sensitive to preparation.

Preparing to stop may "prime" the neural mechanism for stopping and alter brain activity at the time of stopping. Much electroencephalography (EEG) research has studied the N2/P3 complex over frontocentral electrodes during outright stopping. Here, we used differential reward of the stop and go processes in a stop signal task to study the sensitivity of these EEG components to preparation. We found that (a) stopping was faster when it was rewarded; (b) the P3 amplitude was larger for successful versus failed stopping, and this difference was greater when stopping was rewarded over going; (c) the N2 component was observed only on failed stop trials; and (d) there was greater EEG coherence between frontocentral and occipitoparietal electrodes at 12 Hz during the initiation of a go response when stopping was rewarded over going. We propose that frontocentral cortical mechanisms active before and at the time of stopping are sensitive to preparation.
An approximate max-flow min-cut theorem for uniform multicommodity flow problems with applications to approximation algorithms

A multicommodity flow problem is considered where for each pair of vertices (u, v) it is required to send f half-units of commodity (u, v) from u to v and f half-units of commodity (v, u) from v to u without violating capacity constraints. The main result is an algorithm for performing the task provided that the capacity of each cut exceeds the demand across the cut by a Theta (log n) factor. The condition on cuts is required in the worst case, and is trivially within a Theta (log n) factor of optimal for any flow problem. The result can be used to construct the first polylog-times optimal approximation algorithms for a wide variety of problems, including minimum quotient separators, 1/3-2/3 separators, bifurcators, crossing number, and VLSI layout area. It can also be used to route packets efficiently in arbitrary distributed networks. <<ETX>>
Internet of vehicles in big data era

As the rapid development of automotive telematics, modern vehicles are expected to be connected through heterogeneous radio access technologies and are able to exchange massive information with their surrounding environment. By significantly expanding the network scale and conducting both real time and long term information processing, the traditional Vehicular Ad- Hoc Networks U+0028 VANETs U+0029 are evolving to the Internet of Vehicles U+0028 IoV U+0029, which promises efficient and intelligent prospect for the future transportation system. On the other hand, vehicles are not only consuming but also generating a huge amount and enormous types of data, which are referred to as Big Data. In this article, we first investigate the relationship between IoV and big data in vehicular environment, mainly on how IoV supports the transmission, storage, computing of the big data, and in return how IoV benefits from big data in terms of IoV characterization, performance evaluation and big data assisted communication protocol design. We then investigate the application of IoV big data for autonomous vehicles. Finally the emerging issues of the big data enabled IoV are discussed.
TIPE 2 , a negative regulator of TLR signaling , regulates p 27 through IRF 4-induced signaling

Targeted inhibition of specific toll-like receptor (TLR) pathways may provide an effective strategy to prevent the development of selected gastric malignancies. Tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α-induced protein 8-like-2 (TIPE2) was identified as a novel negative regulator of TLR signaling. Our previous study identified TIPE2 as an inhibitor of gastric cancer cell growth; it promotes p27 expression, which leads to restored control of the cell cycle and cell division. However, the molecular mechanism by which TIPE2 regulates p27 remains unclear. In the present study, we examined the expression patterns of TIPE2 in serial clinical gastritis tissues as well as gastric cancer, and found a negative correlation between TIPE2 expression and progression of gastritis to gastric cancer. This negative correlation verified the role of TIPE2 in preventing the occurrence and development of gastric cancer, suggesting that TIPE2 may be a potential biomarker for gastric cancer progression. To determine the mechanism employed by TIPE2 in gastric cell carcinogenesis, a TIPE2expressing plasmid was introduced into gastric cell lines, and microarray and western blot analysis revealed that TIPE2 selectively upregulates the expression of interferon regulatory factor 4 (IRF4). Variations in IRF4 expression were additionally verified in knockout mice. Next, the effect of IRF4 on p27 expression was tested by an IRF4 siRNA interference assay. Finally, we explored the signaling pathways used by TIPE2 to regulate IRF4. An experiment using pathway inhibitors and a nuclear factor κ-light-chain enhancer of activated B cells (NF-κB) luciferase reporter assay showed that NF-κB plays a crucial role in regulating IRF4 expression. Our data provide evidence that TIPE2, a potential biomarker for gastric cancer progression, stimulates an IRF4-associated signaling cascade that promotes p27 expression and controls cell growth. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate that IRF4 acts as an inhibitor of epithelial cell proliferation and mediates the expression of TIPE2, a negative regulator of TLR signaling, to control cell growth.
Factors Influencing the Intention to Adopt Identity Theft Protection Services: severity vs Vulnerability

Privacy of the people is becoming important due to frequent leakage of personal information from financial company, telecommunication company and portal. Leaked personal information leads to some secondary damage involving identity theft such as taking out loans or getting credit cards. By examining the influence relation of vulnerability and severity on identity theft, usefulness, social influence and herding behavior, this paper aims to analyse the effect of each variable on adoption of services. This paper will contribute to expanding the use of identity theft protection services and reduce the damage caused by identity theft.
Metal and mineral concentrations in lungs of bituminous coal miners.

Abstract The concentrations of metals and minerals in lungs of bituminous coal miners are the subject of a continuing study that includes gravimetric determinations of coal and total dust, chemical determinations of free silica, and quantitative spectrographic analyses of metallic and other elemental constituents. The free silica and the elemental constituents of the residual mineral deposits were determined by phosphoric acid and quantitative emission spectrographic methods, respectively.
A simple nonexercise model of cardiorespiratory fitness predicts long-term mortality.

PURPOSE Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) is a strong predictor of future health, but measurements of CRF are time consuming and involve costly test procedures. We assessed whether a simple, non-exercise-based test of CRF predicted long-term all-cause and cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality. METHODS In this prospective cohort study, we used a previously published nonexercise test to estimate CRF in healthy men (n = 18,348) and women (n = 18,764) from the first HUNT study (1984-1986) in Norway. We used Cox regression to obtain HR for mortality during a mean follow-up of 24 yr. Assessment of model validity was performed by standard procedures of discrimination and calibration. RESULTS CRF was inversely associated with all-cause and CVD mortality in men and women below 60 yr of age at baseline, after adjustment for confounders. For each MET-higher CRF (MET, approximately 3.5 mL·kg·min), HR for CVD mortality was 21% lower in both men (95% confidence interval (CI), 17%-26%) and women (95% CI, 12%-29%). HR for all-cause mortality was 15% (95% CI, 12%-17%) lower in men and 8% (95% CI, 3%-3%) lower in women for each MET-higher CRF. The ability of the model to discriminate mortality risk among participants below 60 yr was better for CRF (area under the curve (AUC), 0.70-0.77) compared with that for each variable that constituted the model (AUC, 0.55-0.63) and an aggregated sum of z-scores for each variable (AUC, 0.61-0.65). Comparison of observed and predicted risk indicated good model calibration. CONCLUSIONS This method of assessing CRF is feasible and practically useful in primary care for identification of apparently healthy individuals at increased risk of premature CVD disease and all-cause mortality.
Daily functioning and prefrontal brain morphology in healthy and depressed community-dwelling elderly.

OBJECTIVE Self-perceived emotional vitality, intact mood, physical activity, and social engagement are recognized as important indicators for lowered rates of morbidity and increased longevity in late-life, but little is known about their underlying neural substrates. This study examined relationships between self-reported levels of general functioning and the combined volume of three integrated prefrontal structures associated with self-perception and emotion. DESIGN Cross-sectional. SETTING UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience, Los Angeles. PARTICIPANTS Depressed (N = 43) and comparison (N = 41) elderly subjects. MEASUREMENTS Magnetic resonance images of orbitofrontal, gyrus rectus, and anterior cingulate gray and white matter volumes were corrected for intracranial volume and combined across structures to form white matter and gray matter scales. Subjects completed the RAND Short-Form 36 Questionnaire, a self-report evaluation of daily functioning. Subscales used for analysis were physical function, energy, and general health, which were not correlated with depression. RESULTS White matter volumes were associated with self-perceptions of Energy for healthy as well as depressed individuals, and gray matter volume was associated with General Health. This latter association was strongest among patients with late-onset of depression, i.e., onset > age 50, although it appeared in all diagnostic groups. CONCLUSIONS Although mild to moderate atrophy is expected in late-life, prefrontal atrophy may represent changes to neuroanatomic substrates that qualitatively modulate self-perceptions of energy and general health for both depressed and nondepressed persons.
Desmoplastic small round cell tumor of the pancreas: An unusual primary site for an uncommon tumor

Pancreas is a rare location for desmoplastic small round cell tumor. The present case highlights the dilemma in diagnosis and ascertaining the site of tumor origin. Morphologic and immunohistochemical features were complemented with the molecular markers and tumor origin which was initially nebulous was subsequently confirmed on exploratory laparotomy.