Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rhythmic and Spatial Abnormalities of Gastric Slow Waves in Patients With Functional Dyspepsia

Objective The objectives of this study were to assess differences in gastric slow waves measured by a newly approved multichannel electrogastrogram (EGG) device between patients with functional dyspepsia (FD) and healthy controls. Materials and Methods Gastric myoelectrical activity was measured by multichannel EGG for 1 hour preprandially and for 2 hours postprandially in 72 FD patients and 16 healthy volunteers. Computerized spectral analysis methods were used to compute various EGG parameters. Results (1) Multichannel EGG was abnormal in 83.3% of patients. (2) The regularity of the gastric slow wave was significantly lower in the FD patients in both fasting and fed states; the lowest regularity was seen in channel 3. (3) There was a significantly higher incidence of arrhythmia and tachygastria in FD patients. The highest percentage of arrhythmia and tachygastria were both seen in channel 3. (4) The FD patients showed a significantly lower percentage of slow wave coupling among the 4-channel EGGs in the fed state. (5) The postprandial-preprandial power ratio was significantly less in FD patients. (6) These patients had high symptom scores particularly to nausea, upper abdominal pain, and bloating. However, no significant correlation was noted between the EGG parameters and the symptoms. Conclusions Gastric myoelectrical activity is impaired in most patients with FD. The impairment is reflected as a decreased percentage of normal slow waves and an excessive amount of arrhythmia as well as an abnormal spatial distribution of EGG parameters among the 4 channels, suggesting an impaired coordination of gastric slow waves.
Clinicopathologic Features and Germline Sequence Variants in Young Patients (⩽40 Years Old) With Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma

Objectives The median age of patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is approximately 70 years, and PDAC rarely affects individuals younger than 40 years. Here, we investigated clinicopathologic features and genetic background of PDAC occurring in young patients (age ⩽ 40 years) to determine whether any difference exists in comparison with those of older patients (>40 years). Methods We reviewed 908 patients with pathologically proven PDAC for clinicopathologic characteristics. In addition, we performed targeted sequencing of germline variants for 49 genes that are associated with a hereditary predisposition for cancer in 9 young patients with available DNA. Results Among the 908 patients, a total of 17 were diagnosed at age younger than 40 years. There were no significant differences between young and old groups in terms of sex, smoking history, tumor location, Union for International Cancer Control stage, family histories of any cancer and PDAC in first-degree relatives, and medical history of other cancer. Targeted sequencing analysis demonstrated no definite “pathogenic” variants. Conclusions The clinicopathologic features in young patients were generally similar to those in older patients. The rarity of family history of PDAC and the sequencing analysis for germline variants suggest that hereditary factors might have a weak, if any, relationship with early-onset PDAC.
Epidemiological evaluation of Mediterranean spotted fever in children of the Karak province in south Jordan.

INTRODUCTION The aim of this study was to describe the epidemiological patterns of Mediterranean spotted fever (MSF) as well as its treatment and outcomes in children in south Jordan. METHODOLOGY A retrospective observational study was conducted from June 2013 to December 2015. Data regarding demographics, clinical presentation, laboratory findings, treatment, and outcomes were collected. RESULTS In total, 35 male and 20 female patients (mean age: 6 years ± 3.6) were included. The incidence of MSF was 7.9 cases/100,000 inhabitants/year; MSF affected 89% of individuals in the summer, 74.5% of those living in a rural area with tent housing, and 100% of those who had contact with animals. All cases presented with fever, and 94.5% had a skin rash. Serological tests were positive in 87.2% of cases, and Rickettsia conorii (the Moroccan strain) was present in all positive cases. All cases had thrombocytopenia, but none had leukocytosis. Hyponatremia was present in 71% of cases, and 49%, 61.8%, and 72.7% had increased urea, alanine transaminase, and aspartate aminotransferase levels, respectively. Doxycycline was administered to all patients, with a cure rate of 96.4% and mortality rate of 3.6%. CONCLUSIONS MSF caused by R. conorii (the Moroccan strain) is prevalent in Jordan, and contact with animals is the route of transmission. The patients' responses to doxycycline were excellent. A high index of suspicion, early diagnosis, and specific treatment considerably decrease mortality. MSF should be considered as a possible cause of febrile disease in those with a rash and in those living in rural areas.
Memristors as synapse emulators in the context of event-based computation

Event-based computation is a well-established way of reducing the complexity of neural modelling, often used as an enabling step towards the simulation of large neuronal ensembles. Recently, the advent of the physical memristor has provided the scientific community with a stand-alone nanoelectronic device that exhibits strongly `synapse-like' behaviour and can be used in general neural modelling. In this paper we review the suitability of the most common, basic memristor models for use in tandem with event-based techniques and conclude that neither of them can support spike timing-dependent plasticity (STDP); a staple of modern neuroscience.We then identify the necessary attributes of any model that can enmesh STDP into event-based computation and present measured results evidencing that solid-state TiO2-based memristors intrinsically support such feature.
Community dynamics of denitrifying bacteria in full-scale wastewater treatment plants

ABSTRACT Effective and stable nitrogen removal from wastewater requires abundant and active denitrifying populations. In this study, a one-year investigation of the population dynamics of phylogenetic groups known to harbor nitrate reducers was conducted in three municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). The bacterial community composition was determined by amplicon sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene, and putative nitrate reducers were identified by sequencing narG and napA genes. Fluorescence in situ hybridization with oligonucleotide probes targeting known nitrate reducers in wastewater revealed that certain bacteria predominated in the WWTPs: Curvibacter-related bacteria, Comamonadaceae, Azoarcus, Thauera, Dechloromonas, and Candidatus Accumulibacter within Rhodocyclaceae. The data showed high diversity in the nitrate-reducing community and a large degree of redundancy, with a relatively stable core group of bacteria in each plant that ensured small yearly variation in nitrate reduction rates.
Multigenerational Challenges in Academic Medicine: UCDavis's Responses

Academic medicine is a unique work environment, one of the few where members of four different generations regularly interact and where multigenerational teams are key to fulfilling its missions, particularly education. This can lead to increased creativity, but also to intergenerational conflict, since each generation has different values and expectations. The authors describe multigenerational challenges confronted at the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine, and that school's responses to them. These challenges include issues related to work hours, workload, compensation, evaluation for advancement, recruitment and retention, and attendance at required meetings. Awareness of the different generational qualities and values allowed the school of medicine to identify the multigenerational origin of many of these ongoing issues and challenges and to plan appropriate solutions within the Office of Academic Affairs. These include policy changes related to work–life balance, utilizing multiple faculty tracks with different roles, allowing part-time faculty appointments, creating a variety of faculty development programs geared toward different generational needs (which utilize flexible modules, menus of options, and alternative technologies for presentation), defining appropriate reward and incentives through compensations plans, and creating peer-reviewed awards. The authors conclude that these efforts mitigate conflict, promote diversity, and allow multigenerational teams to function more effectively and creatively in education, research, and clinical care. Ongoing evaluation will further refine this approach.
Governance through Global Networks and Corporate Signaling

The article exposes a new form of global governance based on an emergent network of corporate social responsibility (CSR) schemes. Our study is the first to uncover the network structure of this system, based on a dataset that includes 61 transnational CSR schemes and 31,987 firms. We demonstrate that the network exhibits a significant level of cohesiveness, despite having evolved outside the formal framework of the international treaty system. Drawing on social network analysis, we find a positive correlation between the sustainability performance of the firms, their membership in CSR schemes, and their network characteristics. We show that membership in multiple schemes and the firms’ position in the CSR-schemes network constitute credible predictors of their sustainability performance, generating a separating equilibrium that distinguishes top CSR performers from low ones. We develop a model that explains the effectiveness of the CSR-schemes network, based on the network synergistic properties and on a distinctive signaling dynamic. Our findings highlight the potential contribution of CSR to the resolution of global governance dilemmas.
Transient effects of delay, switching and recovery in phase change memory (PCM) devices

Threshold switching effects play a critical role in phase change memory (PCM) devices, since they contribute to the programming (set/reset) times and may lead to unwanted disturbs during the read operation. This work presents a detailed characterization and modeling of transient effects of delay, switching and recovery in PCM devices, allowing to quantitatively evaluate the statistical impact of read disturb and the ultimate speed limitations to set/reset and program/verify loops.
Role of quinones in the branch of the Escherichia coli respiratory chain that terminates in cytochrome o

The role of quinones in the cytochrome o branch of the Escherichia coli respiratory chain was investigated by using mutant strains lacking the cytochrome d terminal oxidase complex. The only cytochromes present were cytochrome b556 and the cytochrome o complex, consisting of cytochrome b555-b562. Mutant strains missing ubiquinone, menaquinone, or both were constructed in the cytochrome d-minus (cyd) background. The steady-state levels of cytochrome b reduction were examined and compared in these strains to assess the effects of the quinone deficiencies. The data clearly show that a ubiquinone deficiency results in a lower level of cytochrome b reduction in the steady state. The data are consistent with a simple model in which ubiquinone is placed on the dehydrogenase side of all the cytochromes in this branch of the respiratory chain. There is no evidence from these experiments for a role of quinones in the respiratory chain at any site besides this one.
CD64 index on neutrophils can diagnose sepsis and predict 30-day survival in subjects after ventilator-associated pneumonia.

INTRODUCTION Sepsis associated with ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) causes mortality in intensive care unit (ICU) patients. The time of diagnosis is crucial, and microbiological cultures take time. In this study, the diagnostic accuracy of CD64 index to predict VAP-induced sepsis and survival time in subjects requiring mechanical ventilation were evaluated and compared to conventional biomarkers and culturing methods. METHODOLOGY A total of 32 subjects with VAP were included. Sepsis after VAP was diagnosed in 25 (78.1%) patients according to clinical signs, radiographic examination, and samples of blood and trachea taken for culturing. Simultaneously with cultures, CD64 index on neutrophils, C-reactive protein (CRP), procalcitonin (PCT), and count of leucocytes and neutrophils were determined. RESULTS Biomarker values were evaluated in both groups of subjects (with and without sepsis after VAP). The values of CD64 index and CRP were significantly higher in the sepsis group. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis revealed an area under curve (AUC) of 0.929 for CD64 index in differentiating subjects with VAP-induced sepsis from those without sepsis. The biomarkers CRP and PCT showed comparable results (AUC of 0.869 and 0.909, respectively). Blood cultures were positive in 12 subjects, endotracheal aspirate in 19. CD64 index and isolation of pathogen with positive blood cultures or from endotracheal aspirate (positive in 24 cases) could predict survival time before application of more targeted antibiotic therapy. CONCLUSIONS CD64 index may be used as a useful diagnostic tool to recognize VAP-induced sepsis; moreover, accompanied with an identified pathogen, can predict survival for ICU patients.
A low-noise monolithic CMOS bio-potential detector

Bio-potential detection is important for bio-medical diagnostics and research. Bio-potentials are generally weak (µV) with high offsets (100mV level). Low noise processing is critical to extract the signal. In this paper, we report the design of a single-chip CMOS bio-potential detector. The design uses chopping to suppress the low-frequency noise in CMOS amplifiers. The strong offset is removed by a high gain feedback loop with a low pass filter with 1Hz cut-off frequency. A high-gain front stage is designed to further suppress the noise. The nonlinearity in the high-gain front stage can be compensated by calibration. A chopping-pulse free switched-capacitor low-pass filter follows for variable gain amplification and noise bandwidth limiting. The circuit is designed in a 0. 35µm CMOS process for 50µV–10mV bio-potentials with offset up to 100mV. HSPICE simulations verify that the designed detector achieve the gain of 400 and 4000. The selectable bandwidth is 1kHz for EEG/ECG/EMG or 5kHz for extra-cellular recording. The design does not require external capacitors. The in-band noise is lower than 58nV/Hz0.5. The power consumption of the detector is less than 160µW. The die area is 0.3mm×0.7mm.
ARNO Is a Guanine Nucleotide Exchange Factor for ADP-ribosylation Factor 6*

ADP-ribosylation factors (ARFs) constitute a family of small monomeric GTPases. ARFs 1 and 3 function in the recruitment of coat proteins to membranes of the Golgi apparatus, whereas ARF6 is localized to the plasma membrane, where it appears to modulate both the assembly of the actin cytoskeleton and endocytosis. Like other GTPases, ARF activation is facilitated by specific guanine nucleotide exchange factors (GEFs). ARNO (ARF nucleotide-binding site opener) is a member of a growing family of ARF-GEFs that share a common, tripartite structure consisting of an N-terminal coiled-coil domain, a central domain with homology to the yeast protein Sec7p, and a C-terminal pleckstrin homology domain. Recently, ARNO and its close homologue cytohesin-1 were found to catalyze in vitronucleotide exchange on ARF1 and ARF3, respectively, raising the possibility that these GEFs function in the Golgi. However, the actual function of these proteins may be determined in part by their ability to interact with specific ARFs and in part by their subcellular localization. We report here that in vitro ARNO can stimulate nucleotide exchange on both ARF1 and ARF6. Furthermore, based on subcellular fractionation and immunolocalization experiments, we find that ARNO is localized to the plasma membrane in mammalian cells rather than the Golgi. It is therefore likely that ARNO functions in plasma membrane events by modulating the activity of ARF6 in vivo. These findings are consistent with the previous observation that cytohesin-1 regulates the adhesiveness of αLβ2integrins at the plasma membrane of lymphocytes.
Investigating Peer and Sorting Effects within an Adaptive Multiplex Network Model

Individuals have a strong tendency to coordinate with all their neighbors on social and economics networks. Coordination is often influenced by intrinsic preferences among the available options, which drive people to associate with similar peers, i.e., homophily. Many studies reported that behind coordination game equilibria there is the individuals’ heterogeneity of preferences and that such heterogeneity is given a priori. We introduce a new mechanism which allows us to analyze the issue of heterogeneity from a cultural evolutionary point of view. Our framework considers agents interacting on a multiplex network who deal with coordination issues using social learning and payoff-driven dynamics. Agents form their heterogeneous preference through learning on one layer and they play a pure coordination game on the other layer. People learn from their peers that coordination is good and they also learn how to reach it either by conformism behavior or sorting strategy. We find that the presence of the social learning mechanism explains the rising and the endurance of a segregated society when members are diverse. Knowing how culture affects the ability to coordinate is useful for understanding how to reach social welfare in a diverse society.
Ion selectivities of the Ca2+ sensors for exocytosis in rat phaeochromocytoma cells

1 The ion selectivities of the Ca2+ sensors for the two components of exocytosis in rat phaeochromocytoma (PC12) cells were examined by measurement of membrane capacitance and amperometry. The cytosolic concentrations of metal ions were increased by photolysis of caged‐Ca2+ compounds and measured with low‐affinity indicators benzothiazole coumarin (BTC) or 5‐nitrobenzothiazole coumarin (BTC‐5N). 2 The Ca2+‐induced increases in membrane capacitance comprised two phases with time constants of 30‐100 ms and 5 s. Amperometric events reflecting the exocytosis of large dense‐core vesicles occurred selectively in the slow phase, even with increases in the cytosolic Ca2+ concentration of > 0.1 mM. 3 The slow component of exocytosis was activated by all metal ions investigated, including Cd2+ (median effective concentration, 18 pM), Mn2+ (500 nM), Co2+ (900 nM), Ca2+ (8 μM), Sr2+ (180 μM), Ba2+ (280 μM) and Mg2+ (> 5 mM). In contrast, the fast component of exocytosis was activated by Cd2+ (26 pM), Mn2+ (620 nM), Ca2+ (24 μM) and Sr2+ (320 μM), but was only slightly increased by Ba2+ (> 2 mM) and Co2+ and not at all by Mg2+. 4 The fast component, but not the slow component, was competitively blocked by Na+ (median effective concentration, 44 mM) but not by Li+, K+ or Cs+. Thus, the Ca2+ sensor for the fast component of exocytosis is more selective than is that for the slow component; moreover, this selectivity appears to be based on ionic radius, with cations with radii of 0.84 to 1.13 Å (1 Å= 0.1 nm) being effective. 5 These data support a role for synaptotagmin‐phospholipid as the Ca2+ sensor for the exocytosis of large dense‐core vesicles and they suggest that an additional Ca2+‐sensing mechanism operates in the synchronous exocytosis of synaptic‐like vesicles.
Reduced ADAMTS13 in children with severe meningococcal sepsis is associated with severity and outcome

Summary Multiple organ failure is a common feature of pediatric meningococcal sepsis and is associated with an imbalance of coagulation and fibrinolysis. This is partly due to an increased secretion of prothrombotic ultra-large von Willebrand factor (VWF) as the result of vascular endothelial damage. Another factor that may contribute is ADAMTS13, which converts VWF into smaller, less active, VWF multimers and thus influences VWF activity in plasma. We investigated the role of ADAMTS13 and VWF in the severity and outcome of sepsis. In 58 children with severe meningococcal sepsis we measured ADAMTS13 activity and antigen, VWF collagen binding activity (VWF:CB) and antigen levels (VWF:Ag), VWF propeptide and factor VIII at different time points during their stay in the paediatric intensive care unit. In the acute phase, both ADAMTS13 activity and antigen were decreased (median 23.4% and 33.7% of normal, respectively) and VWF:CB and VWF:Ag levels were strongly increased (325% and 348%, respectively.) ADAMTS13 antigen (23.9% vs. 34.6%; p=0.06) and VWF:CB (240% and 340% p<0.001) were lower in non-survivors than in survivors. ADAMTS13 activity and VWF:CB were both correlated with the severity of the disease, as indicated by the Pediatric Risk of Mortality score (Rs= –0.38 and Rs= –0.50, p=0.01, respectively, p<0.001). In the acute phase of severe sepsis decreased levels of ADAMTS13 and increased levels of VWF are observed, and the changes are related to severity of disease and outcome. This may contribute to the formation of microthrombi and the severity of thrombotic sequelae of sepsis.
Investigating the associations between polymorphisms in the NTRK2 and NGFR genes and completed suicide in the Slovenian sample

Objective The most abundant neurotrophin in the mammalian brain is brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which acts through binding to neurotrophic tyrosine kinase receptor type 2 (NTRK2) and to nerve growth factor receptor (NGFR). Our previous work showed an association of the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs6265 in the BDNF gene with completed suicide in the Slavic population. Therefore, we extended the investigation to the SNPs within NTRK2 and NGFR genes and searched for associations with the completed suicide phenotype. Materials and methods In 775 Caucasian individuals, namely, 486 suicide completers and 289 controls, we performed genotyping of five SNPs within the NTRK2 (rs11140714, rs1147198, rs1187323, rs10780691, and rs10868235) and six SNPs within the NGFR (rs2072446, rs7219709, rs7224806, rs734194, rs741071, and rs741072) genes. Results We did not find evidence for an association of the SNPs studied with the phenotype either on the single marker or on the haplotype level. Conclusion To our knowledge, this is the first study that has examined SNPs in the NTRK2 and NGFR genes for associations with the completed suicide phenotype. However, our findings suggest that these SNPs may not be associated particularly with completed suicide in Slovenia, although they might have a relevant informative value as the study has been carried out on a sample from a population that has one of the highest suicide rates in the world.