Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Left ventricular systolic dyssynchrony in patients with isolated symptomatic myocardial bridge

Abstract Objectives. The impact of myocardial bridge (MB) on left ventricular (LV) systolic synchrony is insufficiently understood. Design. Thirty-five subjects with isolated mid-left, anterior, descending artery (LAD) MB, preserved LV ejection fraction (LVEF > 50%), and otherwise, normal coronary angiogram were identified from 3607 patients who underwent diagnostic coronary angiography and were evaluated by tissue Doppler imaging and real-time three-dimensional echocardiography (RT3DE). Control subjects consisted of 26 age and sex-matched coronary angiographically “normal” subjects. Results. MB patients were characterized by reduced, early, diastolic strain rate in LAD-supplied apical segments (lateral and anterior), with prevalence of LV systolic dyssynchrony of 25.7% (9/35). MB patients were further classified by the medians of MB stenosis and length. For MB stenosis < 52.5%, Class I: length < 17 mm (n = 7), Class II: length ≥ 17 mm (n = 10); for stenosis ≥ 52.5%, Class III: length < 17 mm (n = 10), Class IV: length ≥ 17 mm (n = 8). Binary Logistic regression model revealed that higher MB lesion classification (odds ratio: 4.944, 95%CI 1.174–20.82, P < 0.05) and hypertension (odds ratio: 15.32, 95%CI: 1.252–187.6, P < 0.05) are statistically associated with LV systolic dyssynchrony, which was independent of LV mass. Conclusions. MB in the mid LAD is associated with myocardial dyssynchrony. Hypertensive individuals and those with more severe bridging (determined by length and stenosis) tend to have an increased incidence of dyssynchrony.
Chronic Stretching and Voluntary Muscle Force

The purpose of the study was to determine whether muscle force, power, and optimal length were affected by 4 weeks of static or ballistic stretching. Twenty-nine males (age, 18-60 years) performed 4 maximal hip extensions to measure peak torque (PT), rate of torque development (RTD), work (W), and PT angle (PTA). Then, participants completed 4 weeks of static or ballistic flexibility training of the hip extensors followed by repetition of the testing protocol. After training, PT increased 5.3 ± 19.0% in the static group (SG), 7.8 ± 12.7% in the ballistic group (BG), and 6.1 ± 17.9% in the control group (CG). RTD increased 4.8 ± 22.7% in the SG, 3.6 ± 28.0% in the BG and 9.7 ± 24.0% in the CG. W increased 3.9 ± 7.0% in the SG, 14.7 ± 27.4% in the BG, and 5.5 ± 9.5% in the CG. PTA changed little with a −1.6 ± 6.6% decrease in the SG and increases of 0.86 ± 4.1% in the BG and 0.18 ± 8.7% in the CG. None of the results were statistically different between stretching group and CG (α = 0.05). These data suggest that 4 weeks of stretching have little effect on muscle strength, power, W, or length-tension relationship. PTA changed little, suggesting that a lengthening of the muscle with stretching did not occur. It is suggested that individuals can routinely stretch following exercise to maintain flexibility but should avoid stretching prior to exercise requiring high levels of muscle force. Before exercise that requires high muscular forces, individuals may perform dynamic, sport-specific exercises to increase blood flow, metabolic activity, temperature, and compliance of the muscle.
Social norm processing in adult social phobia: atypically increased ventromedial frontal cortex responsiveness to unintentional (embarrassing) transgressions.

OBJECTIVE Little is known about the neural underpinnings of generalized social phobia, which is defined by a persistent heightened fear of social disapproval. Using event-related functional MRI (fMRI), the authors examined whether the intent of an event, which mediates the neural response to social disapproval in healthy individuals, differentially affects response in generalized social phobia. METHOD Sixteen patients with generalized social phobia and 16 healthy comparison subjects group-matched on age, gender, and IQ underwent fMRI scans while reading stories that involved neutral social events, unintentional social transgressions (e.g., choking on food at a party and coughing it up), or intentional social transgressions (e.g., disliking food at a party and spitting it out). RESULTS Significant group-by-transgression interactions were observed in ventral regions of the medial prefrontal cortex. Healthy individuals tended to show increased blood-oxygen-level-dependent responses to intentional relative to unintentional transgressions. Patients with generalized social phobia, however, showed significantly increased responses to the unintentional transgressions. They also rated the unintentional transgressions as significantly more embarrassing than did the comparison subjects. Results also revealed significant group main effects in the amygdala and insula bilaterally, reflecting elevated generalized social phobia responses in these regions to all event types. CONCLUSIONS These results further implicate the medial prefrontal cortex in the pathophysiology of generalized social phobia, specifically through its involvement in distorted self-referential processing. These results also further underscore the extended role of the amygdala and insula in the processing of social stimuli more generally in generalized social phobia.
Securing Healthgrid Environments

Grid technologies promise to change the way that health organizations tackle complex problems by offering unprecedented opportunities for resource sharing and collaboration. Healthgrids are Grid infrastructures comprising applications, services or middleware components that deal with the specific problems arising in the processing of biomedical data. Resources in Healthgrids are databases, computing power, medical expertise and even medical devices. Securing this new environment in Health organizations is a major issue today. Security considerations and more specifically authorization decisions is a critical problem. Personal data is confidential, so access to the information must be restricted to authorized and authenticated persons. Furthermore data must be protected to guarantee its confidentiality and integrity. This work provides a suitable authorization mechanism that facilitates the usage of grid and agent technology in HealthGrid environments. More specifically, our approach applies the RBAC access control model for dynamically assigning security roles to visiting agents on hosts of the HealthGrid environment. Our methodology proposes a flexible role decomposition method, which facilitates the role assignment process. The role decomposition relies on a set of common Attribute Fields, shared between Grid’s hosts, filled with Attribute values that every host evaluates according to its security goals. In any case, every host participating in the grid retains its security policy without altering or compromising its security policy in order to participate in the agent exchange process. The proposed process and the related assignment algorithms have been experimentally implemented and applied in a typical health environment. The results have shown that the proposed framework is applicable and implementable, and can be applied successfully in real life health
Deciding when to forget in the Elephant file system

Modern file systems associate the deletion of a file with the immediate release of storage, and file writes with the irrevocable change of file contents. We argue that this behavior is a relic of the past, when disk storage was a scarce resource. Today, large cheap disks make it possible for the file system to protect valuable data from accidental delete or overwrite.This paper describes the design, implementation, and performance of the Elephant file system, which automatically retains all important versions of user files. Users name previous file versions by combining a traditional pathname with a time when the desired version of a file or directory existed. Storage in Elephant is managed by the system using file-grain user-specified retention policies. This approach contrasts with checkpointing file systems such as Plan-9, AFS, and WAFL that periodically generate efficient checkpoints of entire file systems and thus restrict retention to be guided by a single policy for all files within that file system.Elephant is implemented as a new Virtual File System in the FreeBSD kernel.
Maximum Likelihood Angle Estimation For Signals With Known Waveforms

Maximum-likelihood estimation (MLE) of the arrival angles of narrowband plane waves when one or all signals have known waveforms is considered. Computationally efficient and rapidly converging algorithms that iteratively maximize the likelihood functions are presented. Cramer-Rao bounds for these estimators are obtained. The conditions under which incorporating knowledge of one or all of the signal waveforms in the estimators improves the accuracy of the angle estimates are described. >
A parallel subgradient algorithm for Lagrangean dual function of the p-median problem

In this paper we address a parallel version of subgradient algorithm to maximize Lagrangean dual function for the p-median problem. The parallelization is performed according to the sceme master-slave and using the Message Passing Interface. Computational results for very large-scale instances are given, showing the efficacy of the designed algorithm.
Nanoengineering of Next Generation Silicone Rubber Materials for Extreme Applications

Silicone rubber materials are frequently used in extreme environments, including aviation, space, high voltage and other applications. In service, however, complex and difficult to predict damage mechanisms in the rubbers can occur which can lead to severe failures of essential infrastructural components. For example, Non-Ceramic Insulators (NCIs), which support some of the most critical high voltage lines in the world, regularly exhibit severe polymer aging due to environmental pollution, ultra-violet (UV) radiation, and dry band and corona arcing. Designing silicone rubbers to resist aging in these demanding environments is difficult and requires an interdisciplinary approach, including correctly assessing the actual aging factors. This work attempts to determine the actual causes of NCI aging in coastal high voltage environments, and to demonstrate that extreme aging of silicone rubbers can be mitigated through the inclusion of titanium dioxide (TiO2) microparticles. In-service aging of NCIs in salt rich environments was attributed for the first time to the formation of highly oxidizing hypochlorous acid, which forms in the presence of aqueous salt and minimal voltage. The addition of TiO2 was found to significantly improve the resistance of a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) material to aging by about 50% in HOCl and electrolyzed aqueous salt. Using molecular
Validity of self-reported morbidity

Measurement of health status has been done historically using a variety of measures. More objective measures, which take an “etic” perspective1, are performed by the clinicians on an individual basis. These methods rely on clinical assessments which may be supplemented with diagnostic investigations. However, application of these methods is often not possible in population based surveys due to logistic constraints. In such a situation, researchers have often relied on individual's own assessment of health status, also referred to as self-reported health (SRH), which is considered to be a ‘subjective’ assessment. One of the most commonly used questions in such surveys is “how is your health in general”2 ? In order to do way with the bias related to binary response to this question, responses are often ordered on a 5-point scale ranging from “very poor” to “excellent”.
Regulation and Cytoprotective Role of Hexokinase III

Background Hexokinases (HKs) catalyze the first step in glucose metabolism. Of the three mammalian 100-kDa HK isoforms, HKI and II can bind to mitochondria and protect against cell death. HKIII does not bind mitochondria, and little is known about its regulation or cytoprotective effects. We studied the regulation of HKIII at the transcriptional and protein levels and investigated its role in cellular protection. Methodology/Principal Findings We show that like HKII, HKIII expression is regulated by hypoxia, but other factors that regulate HKII expression have no effect on HKIII levels. This transcriptional regulation is partially dependent on hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) signaling. We also demonstrate regulation at the protein level, as mutations in putative N-terminal substrate binding residues altered C-terminal catalytic activity, suggesting that HKIII activity is governed, in part, by interactions between these two domains. Overexpression of HKIII reduced oxidant-induced cell death, increased ATP levels, decreased the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), and preserved mitochondrial membrane potential. HKIII overexpression was also associated with higher levels of transcription factors that regulate mitochondrial biogenesis, and greater total mitochondrial DNA content. Attempts to target HKIII to the mitochondria by replacing its N-terminal 32-amino-acid sequence with the mitochondrial-targeting sequence of HKII led to protein aggregation, suggesting that this region is necessary to maintain proper protein folding and solubility. Conclusions/Significance These results suggest that HKIII is regulated by hypoxia and there are functional interactions between its two halves. Furthermore, HKIII exerts protective effects against oxidative stress, perhaps by increasing ATP levels, reducing oxidant-induced ROS production, preserving mitochondrial membrane potential, and increasing mitochondrial biogenesis.
TOAIN: A Throughput Optimizing Adaptive Index for Answering Dynamic kNN Queries on Road Networks

We study the classical kNN queries on road networks. Existing solutions mostly focus on reducing query processing time. In many applications, however, system throughput is a more important measure. We devise a mathematical model that describes throughput in terms of a number of system characteristics. We show that query time is only one of the many parameters that impact throughput. Others include update time and query/update arrival rates. We show that the traditional approach of improving query time alone is generally inadequate in optimizing throughput. Moreover, existing solutions lack flexibility in adapting to environments of different characteristics. We propose Toain, which is a very flexible algorithm that can be easily trained to adapt to a given environment for maximizing query throughput. We conduct extensive experiments on both real and synthetic data and show that Toain gives significantly higher throughput compared with existing solutions.
Improved Ligand Binding Energies Derived from Molecular Dynamics: Replicate Sampling Enhances the Search of Conformational Space

Does a single molecular trajectory provide an adequate sample conformational space? Our calculations indicate that for Molecular Mechanics--Poisson-Boltzmann Surface Area (MM-PBSA) measurement of protein ligand binding, a single molecular dynamics trajectory does not provide a representative sampling of phase space. For a single trajectory, the binding energy obtained by averaging over a number of molecular dynamics frames in an equilibrated system will converge after an adequate simulation time. A separate trajectory with nearly identical starting coordinates (1% randomly perturbed by 0.001 Å), however, can lead to a significantly different calculated binding energy. Thus, even though the calculated energy converges for a single molecular dynamics run, the variation across separate runs implies that a single run inadequately samples the system. The divergence in the trajectories is reflected in the individual energy components, such as the van der Waals and the electrostatics terms. These results indicate that the trajectories sample different conformations that are not in rapid exchange. Extending the length of the dynamics simulation does not resolve the energy differences observed between different trajectories. By averaging over multiple simulations, each with a nearly equivalent starting structure, we find the standard deviation in the calculated binding energy to be ∼1.3 kcal/mol. The work presented here indicates that combining MM-PBSA with multiple samples of the initial starting coordinates will produce more precise and accurate estimates of protein/ligand affinity.
TECHNIQUES OF PLETHYSMOGRAPHY.

Four plethysmographic techniques-rheoplethysmography, electrical impedance plethysmography, girth plethysmography, and photoplethysmography–are described and their theoretic bases discussed. Advantages and limitations are noted, and particular emphasis is given to the optical methods and the use of glass fiber light guides in the construction of the transducer. Typical examples of current plethysmographic research are presented.
Towards the Characterization of Biological Nanoparticles

Lipids are integral to all forms of life. Both cells and the majority of particles involved with living systems are enveloped by a lipid membrane, which protects their content from the external environment while simultaneously controlling molecular transport using membrane-embedded proteins. A subset of these particles are known as biological nanoparticles (BNPs), including extracellular vesicles, exosomes and viruses. BNPs are known to transfer genetic material during cellular communication, but many aspects of the mechanisms regulating their various functions remain unknown. Progress within this scientific discipline is hampered by their small size (between 50 and 200 nm in diameter) and significant biomolecular heterogeneity, making both quantitative nanoparticle analytics and functional characterization, highly demanding tasks. To overcome the challenges of BNP characterization, we constructed an approach to identify the mechanism by which lipid vesicles are spontaneously converted into a planar supported lipid bilayer (SLB) on glass surfaces (Paper I). Total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) microscopy was used to track and temporally resolve the rate of vesicle adsorption, the onset of supported lipid bilayer (SLB) formation and the kinetics of their growth into a continuous SLB, through the use of a small fraction (1/100) of labelled lipid vesicles. It was found that the SLB formation processes was initiated by the merger of multiple small SLB patches at appreciably high vesicle coverage. In addition, the subsequent growth of SLB patches was, for the first time, shown to occur via a gradual increase in the average front velocity. Paper II focuses on quantifying both the size and molecular content of different types of BNPs. This was accomplished by tethering BNPs of varying complexity, to a fluid SLB formed on the floor of a microfluidic channel. By moving the BNPs with an applied hydrodynamic shear flow and by determining both the Brownian and directed motion using single particle tracking analysis, it was possible to determine the hydrodynamic radii for each BNP. Furthermore, imaging the BNPs using TIRF or epi-microscopy, made it possible to simultaneously determine the extent of fluorescent label attachment, which was specifically used to address how the incorporation efficiency of the membrane-staining dye spDIO depends on the size of the BNP. The insights gained on the SLB formation processes and BNP characterization are fundamental for the future development and advancement of novel techniques aimed at probing the molecular interaction between BNPs and cellular membranes.
Functional metagenomics to decipher food–microbe–host crosstalk

The recent developments of metagenomics permit an extremely high-resolution molecular scan of the intestinal microbiota giving new insights and opening perspectives for clinical applications. Beyond the unprecedented vision of the intestinal microbiota given by large-scale quantitative metagenomics studies, such as the EU MetaHIT project, functional metagenomics tools allow the exploration of fine interactions between food constituents, microbiota and host, leading to the identification of signals and intimate mechanisms of crosstalk, especially between bacteria and human cells. Cloning of large genome fragments, either from complex intestinal communities or from selected bacteria, allows the screening of these biological resources for bioactivity towards complex plant polymers or functional food such as prebiotics. This permitted identification of novel carbohydrate-active enzyme families involved in dietary fibre and host glycan breakdown, and highlighted unsuspected bacterial players at the top of the intestinal microbial food chain. Similarly, exposure of fractions from genomic and metagenomic clones onto human cells engineered with reporter systems to track modulation of immune response, cell proliferation or cell metabolism has allowed the identification of bioactive clones modulating key cell signalling pathways or the induction of specific genes. This opens the possibility to decipher mechanisms by which commensal bacteria or candidate probiotics can modulate the activity of cells in the intestinal epithelium or even in distal organs such as the liver, adipose tissue or the brain. Hence, in spite of our inability to culture many of the dominant microbes of the human intestine, functional metagenomics open a new window for the exploration of food–microbe–host crosstalk.
COMPUTED-TOMOGRAPHY BASED MODELING OF TEXTILE COMPOSITE MATERIALS

The present work focuses on computed-tomography based modelling and simulation of thermo-chemomechanical behaviour of carbon/epoxy 2D and 3D textile composites for aircraft applications. Dedicated segmentation procedures were developed to retrieve the real geometry and orientations of the composites and its defects. Then, image based finite element models are built through different meshing strategies at local and global scales.
Post-thaw removal of DMSO does not completely abrogate infusional toxicity or the need for pre-infusion histamine blockade.

BACKGROUND The infusion of PBSC or BM cells cryopreserved with DMSO is associated with frequent, but generally minor, toxicity. The incidence and severity of infusion-related toxicity is proportional to the amount of DMSO infused. In an attempt to reduce the incidence of symptoms reported by patients receiving cryopreserved PBSC and to avoid the necessity of diphenhydramine premedication, we studied the infusion of PBSC components from which the DMSO was depleted after thawing. METHODS This was a Phase I/II study of post-thaw removal of DMSO. Patients undergoing autologous PBSC transplantation with components cryopreserved using 10% DMSO were eligible. The PBSC components were thawed, diluted with 10% dextran-40 and 5% HSA, centrifuged to remove the DMSO, resuspended in dextran and HSA, and infused without prior medication of the patient. Visual analog scale questionnaires were used for measurement of infusion-related symptoms. RESULTS Five patients were enrolled on this study and received washed PBSC components. One patient experienced severe infusion-related toxicity and the study was stopped for safety reasons. Events experienced by these patients included flushing (two patients), emesis (three patients), and post-infusion rigors (two patients). Two patients reported an increase in nausea after the infusion. All patients achieved granulocyte engraftment (an ANC > 0.5 x 10(9)/L) at a median of 14 days and platelet engraftment (platelet count without transfusion > 20 x 10(9)/L) at a median of 11 days. No patient required infusion of additional cells because of engraftment failure. DISCUSSION In theory, the post-thaw reduction of DMSO should reduce the risk of infusion-related toxicity that is commonly attributed to DMSO. Although not demonstrated by the data developed from this study, effective reduction in DMSO could also eliminate the need for pre-infusion histamine blockade. However, the technique used in this study was not adequate and a more rigorous depletion technique must be developed to completely abrogate clinical infusion-related toxicity.