Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Naloxone, but Not Valsartan, Preserves Responses to Hypoglycemia After Antecedent Hypoglycemia

OBJECTIVE Hypoglycemia-associated autonomic failure (HAAF) constitutes one of the main clinical obstacles to optimum treatment of type 1 diabetes. Neurons in the ventromedial hypothalamus are thought to mediate counterregulatory responses to hypoglycemia. We have previously hypothesized that hypoglycemia-induced hypothalamic angiotensin might contribute to HAAF, suggesting that the angiotensin blocker valsartan might prevent HAAF. On the other hand, clinical studies have demonstrated that the opioid receptor blocker naloxone ameliorates HAAF. The goal of this study was to generate novel hypothalamic markers of hypoglycemia and use them to assess mechanisms mediating HAAF and its reversal. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Quantitative PCR was used to validate a novel panel of hypothalamic genes regulated by hypoglycemia. Mice were exposed to one or five episodes of insulin-induced hypoglycemia, with or without concurrent exposure to valsartan or naloxone. Corticosterone, glucagon, epinephrine, and hypothalamic gene expression were assessed after the final episode of hypoglycemia. RESULTS A subset of hypothalamic genes regulated acutely by hypoglycemia failed to respond after repetitive hypoglycemia. Responsiveness of a subset of these genes was preserved by naloxone but not valsartan. Notably, hypothalamic expression of four genes, including pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase 4 and glycerol 3-phosphate dehydrogenase 1, was acutely induced by a single episode of hypoglycemia, but not after antecedent hypoglycemia; naloxone treatment prevented this failure. Similarly, carnitine palmitoyltransferase-1 was inhibited after repetitive hypoglycemia, and this inhibition was prevented by naloxone. Repetitive hypoglycemia also caused a loss of hypoglycemia-induced elevation of glucocorticoid secretion, a failure prevented by naloxone but not valsartan. CONCLUSIONS Based on these observations we speculate that acute hypoglycemia induces reprogramming of hypothalamic metabolism away from glycolysis toward β-oxidation, HAAF is associated with a reversal of this reprogramming, and naloxone preserves some responses to hypoglycemia by preventing this reversal.
Candida Pneumonia in Intensive Care Unit?

It has been questioned if Candida pneumonia exists as a clinical entity. Only histopathology can establish the definite diagnosis. Less invasive diagnostic strategies lack specificity and have been insufficiently validated. Scarcity of this pathomechanism and nonspecific clinical presentation make validation and the development of a clinical algorithm difficult. In the present study, we analyze whether Candida pneumonia exists in our critical care population. We used a bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) specimen database that we have built in a structural diagnostic approach to ventilator-associated pneumonia for more than a decade consisting of 832 samples. Microbiological data were linked to clinical information and available autopsy data. We searched for critically ill patients with respiratory failure with no other microbiological or clinical explanation than exclusive presence of Candida species in BAL fluid. Five cases could be identified with Candida as the likely cause of pneumonia.
Clinical disorders of the heart beat.

Inevitably, reading is one of the requirements to be undergone. To improve the performance and quality, someone needs to have something new every day. It will suggest you to have more inspirations, then. However, the needs of inspirations will make you searching for some sources. Even from the other people experience, internet, and many books. Books and internet are the recommended media to help you improving your quality and performance.
Refficientlib: An Efficient Load-Rebalanced Adaptive Mesh Refinement Algorithm for High-Performance Computational Physics Meshes

In this paper we present a novel algorithm for adaptive mesh refinement in computational physics meshes in a distributed memory parallel setting. The proposed method is developed for nodally based parallel domain partitions where the nodes of the mesh belong to a single processor, whereas the elements can belong to multiple processors. Some of the main features of the algorithm presented in this paper are its capability of handling multiple types of elements in two and three dimensions (triangular, quadrilateral, tetrahedral, and hexahedral), the small amount of memory required per processor, and the parallel scalability up to thousands of processors. The presented algorithm is also capable of dealing with nonbalanced hierarchical refinement, where multirefinement level jumps are possible between neighbor elements. An algorithm for dealing with load rebalancing is also presented, which allows us to move the hierarchical data structure between processors so that load unbalancing is kept below an acceptable.
Radiometric analysis of the rotating synthetic aperture radiometers utilizing grid-based measurement approach

Synthetic aperture radiometers with a rotating thinned array can effectively reduce the number of antenna units required for the applications with very high spatial resolution, like GEO atmospheric sounding. The rotating array results in non-regular distributed visibility samples. A grid-based measurement approach is proposed in this paper to facilitate the image reconstruction and system performance evaluation, especially the radiometric sensitivity computation.
Anti-quorum sensing and antimicrobial activities of some traditional Chinese medicinal plants commonly used in South-East Asia

Aims: Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been used for relief and treatment of ailments dating back thousands of years and continues to the present day, with rapidly increasing interest in evidence-based evaluation of its efficacy. Studies of TCM plants have demonstrated that several have antimicrobial properties but few have explored their antiquorum sensing potential. Quorum sensing (QS), also known as bacterial cell-to-cell communication, is used by a number of opportunistic pathogenic bacteria in the regulation of virulence expression. Compounds that interfere with QS signals and attenuate bacterial virulence without killing them may offer an alternative therapeutic solution with less pressure of antibiotic resistance developing. This study screened TCM plants for anti-quorum sensing properties and antimicrobial activities. Methodology and Results: Twenty TCM plants commonly used in South-East Asia were screened for QS inhibitors using two biomonitor strains, Chromobacterium violaceum CV026 and Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1. Ten of these selected TCM plant (50%) were found to have QS inhibitory properties: Angelica sinensis (Umbelliferae), Cnidium monnieri (Umbelliferae), Astragalus membranaceus (Leguminosae), Crataegus cuneata (Rosaceae), Dioscorea nipponica (Dioscoreaceae), Lilium brownii (Liliaceae), Aloe barbadensis (Liliaceae), Magnolia officinalis (Magnoliaceae), Ephedra sinica (Ephedraceae) and Panax pseudoginseng (Araliaceae). Of these, six (30%) also showed varying antimicrobial activity against C. violaceum and P. aeruginosa. Conclusion, significance and impact of study: The results suggest that traditional Chinese medicinal plants could be a prospective source to explore for useful compounds in the fight against bacterial infections.
EFFICACY OF ANTEMORTEM RECTAL BIOPSIES TO DIAGNOSE AND ESTIMATE PREVALENCE OF CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE IN FREE-RANGING COW ELK (CERVUS ELAPHUS NELSONI)

A reliable antemortem test is needed to understand the ecology of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in elk (Cervus elaphus nelsoni). We measured the ability of antemortem biopsy samples from the rectal mucosa to detect the abnormal prion protein associated with CWD (PrPCWD), the relationship between test results from the obex and rectal biopsies at varying stages of CWD progression, and the prevalence of CWD in free-ranging elk from Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, USA. We sampled and placed radio collars on 136 adult female elk in the winter of 2007–08. Elk with biopsy samples found positive for PrPCWD by immunohistochemistry (IHC) were euthanized and the obex and retropharyngeal lymph nodes were examined with IHC. We resampled, euthanized, and necropsied 20, 25, and 34 of the remaining study elk in each of the three following winters, respectively. Sensitivity of rectal biopsy samples increased in an asymptotic fashion with follicle count and was maximized at 85% (95% credible limits [CL]=60, 98) in the beginning of the study, when a greater proportion of elk were in a detectable stage of prion infection. However, maximum sensitivity was reduced to 72% (CL=46, 94) when we included resampled elk, which included recently infected elk that were initially negative using rectal biopsies and IHC. Test results were similar between rectal biopsies and the obex, but the earliest stages of prion infection were only detected by using retropharyngeal lymph nodes. Minimum CWD prevalence was estimated to be 9.9% (CL=5.7, 15.7) using rectal biopsies, but this rose to 12.9% (CL=8.0, 19.1) when we included four elk that were likely misdiagnosed at initial capture. Our results indicate rectal biopsies can provide a useful research tool for CWD in elk populations, but should be used with caution because they can miss individuals in early stages of infection and underestimate prevalence. Prevalence estimates from this population are the highest reported to date in elk and indicate that under appropriate conditions, CWD may be able to affect the dynamics of high-density elk populations.
Event recognition using a semantic-probabilistic network

In this paper a semantic-probabilistic network for event recognition is proposed. The approach uses pre-defined domain ontology to describe the events and scenarios in the scene as a hierarchical decomposition of simple concepts and variables and then perform an automated conversion of the ontology into a Bayesian network. A novel approach to Bayesian network nodes weights calculation is used based on the weighted relation between concepts of the ontology. We then test the performance of our approach to recognize gestures in a human gesture recognition system.
Cooperari: a tool for cooperative testing of multithreaded Java programs

Bugs in multithreaded application can be elusive. They are often hard to trace and replicate, given the usual non-determinism and irreproducibility of scheduling decisions at runtime. We present Cooperari, a tool for deterministic testing of multithreaded Java code based on cooperative execution. In a cooperative execution, threads voluntarily suspend (yield) at interference points (e.g., lock acquisition), and code between two consecutive yield points of each thread always executes serially as a transaction. A cooperative scheduler takes over control at yield points and deterministically selects the next thread to run. An application test runs multiple times, until it either fails or the state-space of schedules is deemed as covered by a configurable policy that is responsible for the scheduling decisions. Beyond failed assertions in software tests, deadlocks and races are also detected as soon as they are exposed in the cooperative execution. Cooperari effectively finds, characterizes, and deterministically reproduces bugs that are not detected under unconstrained preemptive semantics, as illustrated by standard benchmark examples.
Image indexing and retrieval techniques: past, present, and next

This paper investigates retrieval and indexing schemes in pixel domain, and points to the future work on image retrieval schemes. Image retrieval schemes generate indices for images in pixel or compressed domain based on their features in the corresponding domain. These indices are used to retrieve images from a database. The features in pixel domain are extracted from the color, shape or texture characteristics of images. The application of these three methods depends on the characteristic of the image database, and the query image. In the near future the image databases contains the compressed version of images, therefore there will be a high demand for the image retrieval techniques in compressed domain.
Study of cost functionals for ptychographic phase retrieval to improve the robustness against noise, and a proposal for another noise-robust ptychographic phase retrieval scheme

Recently, efforts have been made to improve ptychography phase retrieval algorithms so that they are more robust against noise. Often the algorithm is adapted by changing the cost functional that needs to be minimized. In particular, it has been suggested that the cost functional should be obtained using a maximum-likelihood approach that takes the noise statistics into account. Here, we consider the different choices of cost functional, and to how they affect the reconstruction results. We find that seemingly the only consistently reliable way to improve reconstruction results in the presence of noise is to reduce the step size of the update function. In addition, a noise-robust ptychographic reconstruction method has been proposed that relies on adapting the intensity constraints
Topic-specific parser design in an air travel natural language understanding application

In this paper we contrast a traditional approach to semantic parsing for Natural Language Understanding applications in which a single parser captures a whole application domain, with an alternative approach consisting of a collection of smaller parsers, each able to handle only a portion of the domain. We implement this topic-specific parsing strategy by fragmenting the training corpus into subject specific subsets and developing from each subset a corresponding subject parser. We demonstrate this procedure on the Darpa Communicator task, and we observe that given an appropriate smoothing mechanism to overcome data sparseness, the set of subject-specific parsers performs as effectively (in accuracy terms) as the original parser. We present experiments both under supervised and unsupervised subject selection modes.
The role of professional chaplains on pediatric palliative care teams: perspectives from physicians and chaplains.

CONTEXT Pediatric palliative care (PPC) specialists recognize spiritual care as integral to the services offered to seriously ill children and their families. Little is known about how PPC programs deliver spiritual care. OBJECTIVE The goal of this pilot study was to begin to describe the role of professional chaplains in established PPC programs in children's hospitals in the United States. METHODS In 2009 we surveyed 28 PPC programs to ascertain how spiritual care was provided. Of the 19 programs with staff chaplains who met additional study criteria, we randomly selected eight to study in detail. Based on interviews with the medical director and staff chaplain in these eight programs, we qualitatively delineated chaplains' roles in PPC. RESULTS Twenty-four of the 28 surveyed programs (86%) reported having a staff chaplain on their clinical team. Among the 8 interviewed programs, there was considerable variation in how chaplains functioned as members of interdisciplinary teams. Despite these variations, physicians and chaplains agreed that chaplains address patients' and families' spiritual suffering, improve family-team communication, and provide rituals valued by patients, families, and staff. CONCLUSIONS Our survey of these PPC programs found that spiritual care was typically provided by staff chaplains, and our interviews indicated that chaplains appeared to be well-integrated members of these teams. Further research is needed to evaluate how well the spiritual needs of patients, families, and staff are being met, and the organizational factors that support the delivery of spiritual care in children's hospitals.
Evapotranspiration Mapping in a Heterogeneous Landscape Using Remote Sensing and Global Weather Datasets: Application to the Mara Basin, East Africa

Actual evapotranspiration (ET) is a major water use flux in a basin water balance with crucial significance for water resources management and planning. Mapping ET with good accuracy has been the subject of ongoing research. Such mapping is even more challenging in heterogeneous and data-scarce regions. The main objective of our research is to estimate ET using daily Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) land surface temperature and Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) weather datasets based on the operational simplified surface energy balance (SSEBop) algorithm at a 1-km spatial scale and 8-day temporal resolution for the Mara Basin (Kenya/Tanzania). Unlike previous studies where the SSEBop algorithm was used, we use a seasonally-varying calibration coefficient for determining the “cold” reference temperature. Our results show that ET is highly variable, with a high inter-quartile range for wetlands and evergreen forest (24% to 29% of the median) and even up to 52% of the median for herbaceous land cover and rainfed agriculture. The basin average ET accounts for about 66% of the rainfall with minimal inter-annual variability. The basin scale validation using nine-years of monthly, gridded global flux tower-based ET (GFET) data reveals that our ET is able to explain 64% of the variance in GFET while the MOD16-NB (Nile Basin) explains 72%. We also observe a percent of bias (PBIAS) of 1.1% and 2.8%, respectively for SSEBop ET and MOD16-NB, indicating a good reliability in the ET estimates. Additionally, the SSEBop ET explains about 52% of the observed variability in the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) for a 16-day temporal resolution and 81% for the annual resolution, pointing to an increased reliability for longer aggregation periods. The annual SSEBop ET estimates are also consistent with the underlying primary (i.e., water and energy) and secondary (i.e., soil, topography, geology, land cover, etc.) controlling factors across the basin. This paper demonstrated how to effectively estimate and evaluate spatially-distributed and temporally-varying ET in data-scarce regions that can be applied elsewhere in the world where observed hydro-meteorological variables are limited.
AMTnet: Action-Micro-Tube Regression by End-to-end Trainable Deep Architecture

Dominant approaches to action detection can only provide sub-optimal solutions to the problem, as they rely on seeking frame-level detections, to later compose them into ‘action tubes’ in a post-processing step. With this paper we radically depart from current practice, and take a first step towards the design and implementation of a deep network architecture able to classify and regress whole video subsets, so providing a truly optimal solution of the action detection problem. In this work, in particular, we propose a novel deep net framework able to regress and classify 3D region proposals spanning two successive video frames, whose core is an evolution of classical region proposal networks (RPNs). As such, our 3D-RPN net is able to effectively encode the temporal aspect of actions by purely exploiting appearance, as opposed to methods which heavily rely on expensive flow maps. The proposed model is end-to-end trainable and can be jointly optimised for action localisation and classification in a single step. At test time the network predicts ‘micro-tubes’ encompassing two successive frames, which are linked up into complete action tubes via a new algorithm which exploits the temporal encoding learned by the network and cuts computation time by 50%. Promising results on the J-HMDB-21 and UCF-101 action detection datasets show that our model does outperform the state-of-the-art when relying purely on appearance.
3D Texture Reconstruction from Extensive BTF Data

Textures often result from complicated surface geometries. We propose a method that extracts such geometry from raw BTF data. Exploiting the huge amount of input data, only a few and rather weak assumptions about reflectance and geometry suffice. A key element of our approach are viewpoint robustness of reflectance features. We propose a few and compare them for 3D reconstruction.
Learning to Become Lifelong Global Citizens

This study examines transition practices of four international male graduate students from Cambodia pursuing social science degrees at Northern Illinois University (NIU). An interview guide was designed and grounded in three questions: (1) How do informants describe their academic and social experiences during their first year at NIU? ; (2) What adaptation resources do they have at their disposal (i.e. on NIU campus, in DeKalb and neighbouring communities, social networks in Cambodia and America)? How do these resources help them to adjust; (3) How do they view themselves as international students at NIU? And, how does this view play a role in their adaptation process? The analysis is drawn upon four individual in-depth interviews. Two informants have been at NIU since August 2006 referred to as Senior 1 and Senior 2. The other two participants have been at NIU since August 2007and are referred to as Junior 1 and Junior 2. Excerpts of critical markers accumulated from interviews are employed to emphasize key themes in the data. Implications for teaching and learning in multicultural education context and literature dealing with similar groups of students from South East Asia are also discussed. Resume Le but de cet article est d’examiner les pratiques d’adaptation de quatre etudiants internationaux de troisieme cycle, originaires du Cambodge et qui etudient a la faculte de Sciences de l’Universite d’ Illinois du Nord (UIN). Nous avons mis en place un guide pour les interviews ou nous les avons interroges sur les trois questions suivantes: (1) Comment nos informateurs decrivent-ils leurs experiences academiques et sociales pendant leur premiere annee a UIN ? ; (2) A quelles ressources d’adaptation ont-ils acces (par exemple sur le campus de l’UIN, a DeKalb et dans le voisinage, dans leurs reseaux de relations sociales au Cambodge et aux Etats-Unis) ? Comment ces ressources leurs servent-elles a s’adapter ? ; (3) Comment se percoivent-ils eux-memes en tant qu’etudiants internationaux a UIN ? Et quel role joue cette perception dans leur processus d’adaptation ? Cette analyse puise dans les interviews de ces quatre individus. Deux informateurs sont a la UIN depuis aout 2006. Nous nous refererons a eux avec les mots anglais Senior 1 et Senior 2. Les autres deux participants sont a la UIN depuis aout 2007. Nous nous refererons a eux avec les mots anglais Junior 1 et Junior 2. Nous utiliserons des references critiques de quelques extraits des interviews afin de mettre l’accent sur des themes cles dans les donnees. Pour conclure, nous examinerons les implications pour l’enseignement et l’apprentissage dans des contextes educatifs multi culturaux et analyserons les resultats d’autres recherches avec des groupes d’etudiants similaires, originaires de l’Asie du Sud Est. . When sitting in class back in Cambodia, we don’t even sit with crossed legs when the teacher is present. That is our Khmer culture. But, when sitting in American classrooms, some of them sit in whatever positions