Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Metabolism and disposition of the αv‐integrin ß3/ß5 receptor antagonist cilengitide, a cyclic polypeptide, in humans

Cilengitide (EMD 121974, manufactured by Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany) is an αv‐integrin receptor antagonist showing high affinity for αvβ3 and αvβ5. This study determined the mass balance of cilengitide in healthy volunteers receiving a single intravenous infusion of 2.1 MBq 14C‐cilengitide spiked into 250 mL of 2000 mg of cilengitide. Blood, urine, and feces were collected up to day 15 or until excretion of radioactivity was below 1% of the administered dose. Total radioactivity derived from the administration of 14C‐cilengitide and unlabeled cilengitide levels were determined and used for calculation of pharmacokinetic parameters.14C‐cilengitide‐related radioactivity was completely recovered (94.5%; 87.4%–100.6%) and was mainly excreted into urine (mean, 79.0%; range, 70.3%–88.2%) and to a lesser extent into feces (mean, 15.5%; range, 9.3%–20.3%). Of the administered dose, 77.5% was recovered as unchanged cilengitide in urine. The concentration profiles of cilengitide and total radioactivity in plasma were comparable. No circulating metabolites were identified in plasma and urine. Two metabolites,M606‐1 and M606‐2, were identified in feces considered to be formed by intestinal peptidases or by peptidases from fecal bacteria. In conclusion, the data show that following intravenous administration, 14C‐cilengitide was completely recovered, was excreted mainly via renal elimination, and was not metabolized systemically.
Supplementation of Fat Grafts With Adipose-Derived Regenerative Cells Improves Long-Term Graft Retention

Current practice of autologous fat transfer for soft tissue augmentation is limited by poor long-term graft retention. Adipose-derived regenerative cells (ADRCs) contain several types of stem and regenerative cells, which may help improve graft retention through multiple mechanisms. Using a murine fat transplantation model, ADRCs were added to transplanted fat to test whether ADRCs could improve the long-term retention of the grafts. This study showed, at both 6 and 9 months after transplantation, ADRCs not only increased graft retention by 2-fold but also improved the quality of the grafts. ADRC-supplemented grafts had a higher capillary density, indicating ADRCs could promote neovascularization. Further cell tracking and gene expression studies suggest ADRCs may promote angiogenesis and adipocyte differentiation and prevent apoptosis through the expression of various growth factors, including VEGFA and IGF-1. Taken together, these results suggest a potential clinical utility of ADRCs in facilitating autologous fat transfer for soft tissue augmentation.
Procedural pain and distress in young children as perceived by medical and nursing staff

Introduction: Currently there is no comparison of pain and distress experienced by young children undergoing a range of procedures. This would be important when considering choices between alternative management approaches and to facilitate development of measures to reduce procedural pain and distress. We set out to determine staff perceptions of pain and distress across a range of common emergency procedures.
Y‐chromosome genetic variation in Rio De Janeiro population

The present‐day Brazilian gene pool is known to be the outcome of an admixture process of populations from different origins, mainly Amerindians, Europeans, and Africans. It is also known that in Brazil, a wide variation in the admixture process occurred in different regions of the country or even in different subpopulations from the same region. In the present study, we aimed to characterize the male lineages present in the Rio de Janeiro population, the second most populated of the 26 Brazilian states. A random sample of 127 unrelated males from Rio de Janeiro was typed for 28 Y‐chromosome‐specific biallelic markers. In total, 17 different haplogroups were defined within our sample, most of them of European ancestry (88.1%). Those of sub‐Saharan African origin (E3a) amounted to 7.9%, while only 2 males carried Amerindian lineages (characterized by the presence of an M3 mutation: haplogroup Q3). Using both Y‐STR haplotype and Y‐SNP haplogroup information, genetic distances were calculated between the subgroup of Rio de Janeiro males carrying European haplogroups and the Portuguese population. Low, nonsignificant, values were obtained. Thus, in contrast with what is observed in their female counterparts, the vast majority of the present Rio de Janeiro male gene pool is of European extraction, while the original Amerindian lineages are residual and much less frequent than the sub‐Saharan component resulting from the slave trade. These observations can be interpreted as the signature of the strong gender asymmetry of the admixture processes in colonial systems. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 18:829–837, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Magnetic resonance coil for 31P spectroscopy of skin over curved body surfaces

Background/aims: Increasing signal‐to‐noise ratio for skin spectroscopy means increasing area, but increased area usually means resorting to Fourier window techniques to prevent overwhelming muscle contamination. The aim of this work was to develop a simple coil that would allow large areas of skin to be sampled while limiting muscle contamination simply by the coil's geometry.
Accelerated ventricular escapes induced in the intact dog by barium, strontium and calcium.

Accellerated ventricular escapes (AVE) were produced with infusion of BaCl2, SrCl2 and CaCl2. AVE demonstrated overdrive acceleration rather than overdrive suppression, i.e., faster pacing rates caused shorter escape intervals. BaCl2 (mean 20.2 mumol/kg) produced AVE in 18 of 23 dogs and a decrease in mean serum potassium (K+). SrCl2 alone (mean 2494 mumol/kg) did not produce AVE in 5 dogs and K+ was unchanged. When insulin and glucose were infused to lower K+ and SrCl2 was infused 30 minutes later, AVE was demonstrated in 7 of 10 dogs. CaCl2 alone (mean 1628 mumol/kg) produced AVE in 3 of 5 dogs and CaCl2 (mean 1733 mumol/kg) infused 30 minutes after insulin and glucose produced AVE in 4 of 4 dogs. This study demonstrates that AVE previously produced with cardiac glycosides can also be induced by infusion of barium, strontium and calcium.
Saving with Group or Individual Personal Pension Schemes: How Much Difference Does It Make?

The quality of services provided by institutional investors has attracted considerable attention. This paper adds to the debate by showing that institutional differences in setting up defined contribution personal schemes have an economically and statistically significant impact on the returns. Using a sample of 10,326 UK defined contribution personal pension funds over July 1990–June 2019, I show that pension funds that have a third party involved in contract setting and subsequent oversight deliver 0.96%–1.67% higher gross returns and charge 0.7% lower fees than pension funds offered directly to the public without any well-informed third party involved. I also show that the introduction of additional governance bodies in 2015 resulted in a widening of the performance gap, which further supports the notion that investment governance has a material impact on fund performance. The results highlight the importance of investment oversight and call for more protection for individual investors. This paper was accepted by Tomasz Piskorski, finance.
Very Late Results of Esophagomyotomy for Patients With Achalasia: Clinical, Endoscopic, Histologic, Manometric, and Acid Reflux Studies in 67 Patients for a Mean Follow-up of 190 Months

Introduction:Laparoscopic esophagomyotomy is the preferred approach to patients with achalasia of the esophagus, However, there are very few long-term follow-up studies (>10 years) in these patients. Objective:To perform a very late subjective and objective follow-up in a group of 67 patients submitted to esophagomyotomy plus a partial antireflux surgery (Dor's technique). Material and Methods:In a prospective study that lasted 30 years, 67 patients submitted to surgery were divided into 3 groups: group I followed for 80 to 119 months (15 patients); group II, with follow-up of 120 to 239 months (35 patients); and group III, with follow-up more than 240 months (17 patients). They were submitted to clinical questionnaire, endoscopic evaluation, histologic analysis, radiologic studies, manometric determinations, and 24-hour pH studies late after surgery. Results:Three patients developed a squamous cell esophageal carcinoma 5, 7, and 15 years after surgery. At the late follow-up, Visick III and IV were seen in 7%, 23%, and 35%, according to the length of follow-up of each group. Endoscopic examination revealed a progressive nonsignificant deterioration of esophageal mucosa, histologic analysis distal to squamous-columnar junction showed a significant decrease of fundic mucosa in patients of group III, with increase of intestinal metaplasia, although not significant time. Lower esophageal sphincter showed a significant decrease of resting pressure 1 year after surgery, which remained similar at the late control. There was no return to peristaltic activity. Acid reflux measured by 24-hour pH studies revealed a progressive increase, and the follow-up was longer. Nine patients developed Barrett esophagus: 6 of them a short-segment and 3 a long-segment Barrett esophagus. Final clinical results in all 67 patients demonstrated excellent or good results in 73% of the cases, development of epidermoid carcinoma in 4.5%, and failures in 22.4% of the patients, mainly due to reflux esophagitis. Incomplete myotomy was seen in only 1 case. Conclusion:In patients with achalasia submitted to esophagomyotomy and Dor's antireflux procedure, there is a progressive clinical deterioration of initially good results if a very long follow-up is performed (23 years after surgery), mainly due to an increase in pathologic acid reflux disease and the development of short- or long-segment Barrett esophagus.
Neuromuscular dysfunction with the experimental arm acting as its own reference following eccentric and isometric exercise

Eccentric exercise has been extensively used as a model to study muscle damage-induced neuromuscular impairment, adopting mainly a bilateral matching task between the reference (unexercised) arm and the indicator (exercised) arm. However, little attention has been given to the muscle proprioceptive function when the exercised arm acts as its own reference. This study investigated muscle proprioception and motor control, with the arm acting both as reference and indicator, following eccentric exercise and compared them with those observed after isometric exercise. Fourteen young male volunteers were equally divided into two groups and performed an eccentric or isometric exercise protocol with the elbow flexors of the non-dominant arm on an isokinetic dynamometer. Both exercise protocols induced significant changes in indicators of muscle damage, that is, muscle soreness, range of motion and maximal isometric force post-exercise (p < 0.05–0.001), and neuromuscular function was similarly affected following both protocols. Perception of force was impaired over the 4-day post-exercise period (p < 0.001), with the applied force being systematically overestimated. Perception of joint position was significantly disturbed (i.e., target angle was underestimated) only at one elbow angle on day 4 post-exercise (p < 0.05). The misjudgements and disturbed motor output observed when the exercised arm acted as its own reference concur with the view that they could be a result of a mismatch between the central motor command and an impaired motor control after muscle damage.
Con: Most clinical risk scores are useless.

While developing prediction models has become quite popular both in nephrology and in medicine in general, most models have not been implemented in clinical practice on a larger scale. This should be no surprise, as the majority of published models has been shown to be poorly reported and often developed using inappropriate methods. The main problems identified relate to either using too few candidate predictors (based on univariable P < 0.05) or too many (for the number of events), resulting in poorly performing prediction models. Guidelines on how to develop and test a prediction model all stress the importance of external validation to test discrimination and calibration in other populations, as prediction models usually perform less well in new subjects. However, external validity has not often been tested for prediction models in renal patients. Moreover, impact studies showing improved clinical outcomes when using a prediction model in routine clinical practice have been reported rarely. By and large, notwithstanding a few notable exceptions like the kidney failure risk equation prediction model, most models have not been validated externally or are at best inadequately reported, preventing them from be used in clinical practice. Therefore, we recommend researchers to spend more energy on validation and assessing the impact of existing models, instead of merely developing more models that will most likely never be used in clinical practice as well.
Prevalence Rates and Costs of Metabolic Syndrome and Associated Risk Factors Using Employees' Integrated Laboratory Data and Health Care Claims

Objective: This study assessed the relative value of using laboratory, claims, or integrated laboratory–claims data to identify prevalence rates and costs of metabolic syndrome among Chevron Texaco Corporation, San Ramon, California, employees. Methods: This study identified five metabolic syndrome risk factors by using three identification methods: (1) health-screening data, applying the National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel III and World Health Organization definitions; (2) employer-based claims data applying proxy International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision definitions; and (3) integrated laboratory–claims data. Prevalence rates and costs of metabolic syndrome and associated risk factors were estimated. Results: Laboratory-defined and claims-defined approaches underestimated metabolic syndrome prevalence rates compared with the integrated approach by 22.9% and 87.5%, respectively. Employees with metabolic syndrome had double the costs of those without any risk factors ($4603 vs $1859; P = 0.0384). Conclusions: Results suggest that integrating laboratory and claims data is a more balanced approach than either approach alone for identifying metabolic syndrome among Chevron employees.
Nurses’ Experiences Empowering Hospitalized Patients

Four focus groups were conducted to explore acute care nurses’ experiences empowering patients and the facilitators and barriers they encountered during the process. Thirty-four nurses employed at four hospitals in the Midwestern United States participated in the study between February and April 2015. Facilitators of empowerment included establishing a therapeutic relationship, fostering communication, providing education, respecting patient autonomy, engaging support systems, and lifting spirit/giving hope. Barriers included conflicting information about plans of care, lack of time, fear and anxiety over unfamiliar environments and routines, ineffective or inadequate support systems, lack of/low accountability, and killing the soul. Nurses also described innovative strategies they used to overcome the barriers. The development of future inpatient empowerment interventions needs to focus on the innovative strategies nurses used to overcome barriers in addition to considering the facilitators and barriers to empowerment that nurses identified.
Acceptability and feasibility of mini-clinical evaluation exercise as a formative assessment tool for workplace-based assessment for surgical postgraduate students

Background: Despite an increasing emphasis on workplace-based assessment (WPBA) during medical training, the existing assessment system largely relies on summative assessment while formative assessment is less valued. Various tools have been described for WPBA, mini-clinical evaluation exercise (mini-CEX) being one of them. Mini-CEX is well accepted in Western countries, however, reports of its use in India are scarce. We conducted this study to assess acceptability and feasibility of mini-CEX as a formative assessment tool for WPBA of surgical postgraduate students in an Indian setting. Methods: Faculty members and 2nd year surgical residents were sensitized toward mini-CEX and requisite numbers of exercises were conducted. The difficulties during conduction of these exercises were identified, recorded, and appropriate measures were taken to address them. At the conclusion, the opinion of residents and faculty members regarding their experience with mini-CEX was taken using a questionnaire. The results were analyzed using simple statistical tools. Results: Nine faculty members out of 11 approached participated in the study (81.8%). All 16 2nd year postgraduate surgical residents participated (100%). Sixty mini-CEX were conducted over 7 months. Each resident underwent 3–5 encounters. The mean time taken by the assessor for observation was 12.3 min (8–30 min) while the mean feedback time was 4.2 min (3–10 min). The faculty reported good overall satisfaction with mini-CEX and found it acceptable as a formative assessment tool. Three faculty members (33.3%) reported mini-CEX as more time-consuming while 2 (22.2%) found it difficult to carry the exercises often. All residents accepted mini-CEX and most of them reported good to high satisfaction with the exercises conducted. Conclusions: Mini-CEX is well accepted by residents and faculty as a formative assessment tool. It is feasible to utilize mini-CEX for WPBA of postgraduate students of surgery.
Experience‐dependent regulation of adult hippocampal neurogenesis: Effects of long‐term stimulation and stimulus withdrawal

Exposure to an enriched environment has been shown to cause an increase in neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus of adult mice. In this study we examined how this experience‐dependent response in adult hippocampal neurogenesis of C57BL/6 mice is modulated under the conditions of long‐term stimulation and of withdrawal from the enriched environment. We found that a group which experienced withdrawal from the enriched environment 3 months earlier, had more than twice as many proliferating cells in the subgranular zone as controls and mice experiencing long‐term stimulation. We propose that the greater number of proliferating cells after withdrawal reflects a survival‐promoting effect on the dividing neuronal stem and progenitor cells during the earlier period of stimulation. No differences between the groups were observed in the number of surviving progeny or their phenotypes. Therefore, the existence of more dividing cells in the withdrawal group did not translate into a significant net increase in neurogenesis in the absence of continued stimulation. Similarly, the finding in the group experiencing long‐term stimulation showing no clear benefit over controls could be interpreted as a diminished efficiency of continued environmental stimuli to elicit a neurogenic response. Thus, we propose as a working hypothesis that: 1) stimulation early in life may preserve the neurogenic potential in the dentate gyrus, and 2) the novelty of complex stimuli rather than simply continued exposure to complex stimuli elicits the environmental effects on adult hippocampal neurogenesis. Hippocampus 1999;9:321–332. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Gender variation in leptin circadian rhythm and pulsatility in adult growth hormone deficiency: effects of growth hormone replacement

objectives Adult growth hormone deficiency (AGHD) is characterized by obesity and associated with increased leptin concentration and decreased leptin pulsatility. Growth hormone replacement (GHR) results in a decrease in leptin concentration and increase in leptin pulsatility, followed by reduction in body fat mass (BFM). In both health and AGHD, women exhibit relatively higher leptin concentrations compared to men. The effect of gender on leptin rhythm and pulse parameters in AGHD is yet to be defined and the gender difference in the response of leptin secretory pattern to GHR has not been determined. Therefore the aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of gender on circadian and pulse parameters of leptin secretion in AGHD, and examine the gender variation in response of these parameters to GHR.
Searching for bequest motives and attitudes to leaving a bequest among Malaysian Muslims

This study aims to identify bequest motives and investigate the attitudes to leaving a bequest among malaysian Muslims.Data are collected by means of questionnaire and analysed with multinomial logit model.Results from this model are compared with the verbatim responses given by respondents. Evidences suggest to co-existences of various bequest motives with no preference in order, namely pure life-cycle,life-cycle with some strategic or exchange features.altruistic and dynastic bequest models. However, the domination of one particular bequest motive over others is solved via analaysis carried out on the verbatim responses.
Switching condition and loss modeling of GaN-based dual active bridge converter for PHEV charger

The dual active bridge converter is examined as the DC/DC stage of a battery charger for the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle where both load voltage and load current have very wide operating range. The load current for sinusoidal charging scheme could swing down to zero. To optimize the battery charger under this charging scheme, a DAB loss model over wide load range is needed. Traditional DAB analysis focus on the loss model within the full zero-voltage-switching (ZVS) region where all DAB switches have ZVS. Beyond this region, the switching conditions of the DAB switches are more complicated with mixed states of ZVS, hard-switching (HS), or partial zero-voltage-switching (PZVS). This paper investigates the DAB operating and switching conditions with the consideration of the resonant transition and deatime, and identified the boundaries among hard-switching, partial zero-voltage-switching, and zero-voltage-switching conditions. Based on this, accurate DAB loss model can be derived. The loss model was verified by experimental measurement of a 500 kHz GaN DAB converter.
Brain Network Organization and Social Executive Performance in Frontotemporal Dementia

Abstract Objectives: Behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) is characterized by early atrophy in the frontotemporoinsular regions. These regions overlap with networks that are engaged in social cognition-executive functions, two hallmarks deficits of bvFTD. We examine (i) whether Network Centrality (a graph theory metric that measures how important a node is in a brain network) in the frontotemporoinsular network is disrupted in bvFTD, and (ii) the level of involvement of this network in social-executive performance. Methods: Patients with probable bvFTD, healthy controls, and frontoinsular stroke patients underwent functional MRI resting-state recordings and completed social-executive behavioral measures. Results: Relative to the controls and the stroke group, the bvFTD patients presented decreased Network Centrality. In addition, this measure was associated with social cognition and executive functions. To test the specificity of these results for the Network Centrality of the frontotemporoinsular network, we assessed the main areas from six resting-state networks. No group differences or behavioral associations were found in these networks. Finally, Network Centrality and behavior distinguished bvFTD patients from the other groups with a high classification rate. Conclusions: bvFTD selectively affects Network Centrality in the frontotemporoinsular network, which is associated with high-level social and executive profile. (JINS, 2016, 22, 250–262)