Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A 24-h pneumoperitoneum leads to multiple organ impairment in a porcine model.

BACKGROUND An intra-abdominal pressure (IAP) of 15 mm Hg reduces intestinal organ perfusion in humans and animals, but it is unknown whether this results in organ damage. The purpose of this study was to evaluate if an IAP of 15 mm Hg lasting for 24 h in a porcine model will lead to morphologic impairment of intestinal and adjacent organs. METHODS We examined 12 intubated and anesthetized domestic pigs (51.8 +/- 4.4 kg). Using CO2 pneumoperitoneum, the IAP was raised to 15 mm Hg (study group, n = 6) for an investigation period of 24 h. In the control group, the IAP remained unchanged. Investigated parameters were cardiac output (CO), peak inspiratory pressure (PIP), and urine output (UO), as well as serum creatinine, alanine aminotransferase (ALT), lactate, lipase, and alkaline phosphatase (AP). Additionally, histopathological examinations were performed.Results. In comparison to the control, CO did not change, while UO decreased significantly by 59% and PIP increased significantly to more than 30 mbar. Serum ALT and AP increased significantly while there was no change in creatinine, lactate, and lipase. Histopathologically, low-grade liver necrosis (12% of liver lobuli), low-grade proximal tubular epithelial necrosis, and low bowel mucosal damage were observed.Conclusion. In this porcine model, an IAP of 15 mm Hg lasting for 24 h was found to result in functional and morphologic impairment of lungs, liver, kidneys, and bowel. These results imply that a prolonged IAP of 15 mm Hg predisposes to multiorgan dysfunction and that a safe duration of increased IAP still has to be determined.
S band dual polarized antenna for DAB application

This paper presents a dual polarized antenna system incorporating a low profile annular ring patch antenna fed by short circuit pins incorporating 90/spl deg/ phase delay element for circular polarization (CP) and a reactive-loaded monopole linear polarized (LP) antenna which is connected to the circular patch and two additional wires. The simulated return loss characteristics of the proposed antennas reveal bandwidth greater than 100 MHz for VSWR < 1.5 criterion which is much wider than the required bandwidth (25 MHz) at desired center frequency. The calculated axial ratio is less than 3 dB in the entire frequency region. Even further, the proposed CP antenna provides good broadside radiation patterns, while LP antenna radiation pattern is very similar to those of the monopole antennas. The gain of the CP and LP antennas are calculated to have maximum +4.6 dBi and minimum -1.5 dBi, respectively.
Temperature-dependent benefits of bacterial exposure in embryonic development of Daphnia magna resting eggs

ABSTRACT The environments in which animals develop and evolve are profoundly shaped by bacteria, which affect animals both indirectly through their role in biogeochemical processes and directly through antagonistic or beneficial interactions. The outcomes of these activities can differ according to environmental context. In a series of laboratory experiments with diapausing eggs of the water flea Daphnia magna, we manipulated two environmental parameters, temperature and presence of bacteria, and examined their effect on development. At elevated temperatures (≥26°C), resting eggs developing without live bacteria had reduced hatching success and correspondingly higher rates of severe morphological abnormalities compared with eggs with bacteria in their environment. The beneficial effect of bacteria was strongly reduced at 20°C. Neither temperature nor the presence of bacteria affected directly developing parthenogenetic eggs. The mechanistic basis of this effect of bacteria on development is unclear, but these results highlight the complex interplay of biotic and abiotic factors influencing animal development after diapause. Summary: The presence of bacteria increases successful development of Daphnia magna resting eggs at an elevated temperature.
Help-seeking behaviours of university students in a Northern Ontario community

Prevalence rates for mental illness are high for Canadian youth 15-24 years old and for those living in northern and rural populations; however, a concerning portion of youth in need do not access mental health services. Although university student populations have higher prevalence rates than the general population, little is known about how Canadian university students seek help for mental health issues and the barriers they may face. This mixed-methods study examined the help-seeking attitudes, intentions, barriers-to-care, depressive symptomology, and help-seeking experiences of a sample of 61 undergraduate university students in the Northern Ontario community of Sudbury, Ontario. There was a total of 61 participants for this study. All participants completed a questionnaire package and seven of the participants volunteered to engage in an additional semi-structured interview. The overall sample had moderately positive attitudes toward help-seeking. Students who had accessed services were more likely to seek help from professional mental health services, had experienced more barriers-to-care, and had higher BDI-II scores than students who had not accessed services. Students not accessing care were more likely to seek help from their parents. There were no differences in the types of barriers faced between users vs. non-users of mental health services. Using thematic analysis, three primary themes were identified from the interview data: 1) Important factors in mental health care; 2) Experiences with mental health professionals and services; and 3) Barriers to accessing mental health care. The findings may help direct future research and endorse the need to further refine outreach interventions and available mental health services to promote student engagement with treatment at universities across Ontario.
Where am I? An NDT-based prior for MCL

One of the key requirements of autonomous mobile robots is a robust and accurate localisation system. Recent advances in the development of Monte Carlo Localisation (MCL) algorithms, especially the Normal Distribution Transform Monte Carlo Localisation (NDT-MCL), provides memory-efficient reliable localisation with industry-grade precision. We propose an approach for building an informed prior for NDT-MCL (in fact for any MCL algorithm) using an initial observation of the environment and its map. Leveraging on the NDT map representation, we build a set of poses using partial observations. After that we construct a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) over it. Next we obtain scores for each distribution in GMM. In this way we obtain in an efficient way a prior for NDT-MCL. Our approach provides a more focused then uniform initial distribution, concentrated in states where the robot is more likely to be, by building a Gaussian mixture model over potential poses. We present evaluations and quantitative results using real-world data from an indoor environment. Our experiments show that, compared to a uniform prior, the proposed method significantly increases the number of successful initialisations of NDT-MCL and reduces the time until convergence, at a negligible initial cost for computing the prior.
Narcolepsy and sleep‐disordered breathing

Background and purpose: There is a high incidence of sleep‐disordered breathing (SDB) in narcoleptic patients. Some narcoleptics with SDB may benefit from treatment with continuous positive airway pressure therapy (CPAP). The aim of this study was to examine the prevalence of SDB in narcoleptics referred to a tertiary sleep disorders clinic and assess the effectiveness of CPAP as adjunctive therapy.
RODI: Benchmarking relational-to-ontology mapping generation quality

Accessing and utilizing enterprise or Web data that is scattered across multiple data sources is an important task for both applications and users. Ontology-based data integration, where an ontology mediates between the raw data and its consumers, is a promising approach to facilitate such scenarios. This approach crucially relies on useful mappings to relate the ontology and the data, the latter being typically stored in relational databases. A number of systems to support the construction of such mappings have recently been developed. A generic and effective benchmark for reliable and comparable evaluation of the practical utility of such systems would make an important contribution to the development of ontology-based data integration systems and their application in practice. We have proposed such a benchmark, called RODI. In this paper, we present a new version of RODI, which significantly extends our previous benchmark, and we evaluate various systems with it. RODI includes test scenarios from the domains of scientific conferences, geographical data, and oil and gas exploration. Scenarios are constituted of databases, ontologies, and queries to test expected results. Systems that compute relational-to-ontology mappings can be evaluated using RODI by checking how well they can handle various features of relational schemas and ontologies, and how well the computed mappings work for query answering. Using RODI, we conducted a comprehensive evaluation of seven systems.
A Comparison of the Vasotrac with Invasive Arterial Blood Pressure Monitoring in Children After Pediatric Cardiac Surgery

The Vasotrac is a device that provides near-continuous and noninvasive arterial blood pressure monitoring and may be an alternative to direct intraarterial measurement. It has been evaluated in adult patients, but minimal information is available for pediatric patients. We evaluated agreement between measurements of arterial blood pressure and heart rate obtained from the Vasotrac versus an arterial catheter in a pediatric population. Children undergoing corrective cardiac surgery were enrolled. Simultaneous arterial blood pressure measurements were obtained postoperatively from the Vasotrac unit and an arterial catheter. Bland-Altman plots were constructed to assess agreement. Paired correlation analysis, bias, and precision calculations were performed. Sixteen patients, mean age 10.1 ± 2.3 yr and weight 34.6 ± 11.9 kg, were enrolled. Four-thousand-one- hundred- two paired measurements were obtained. Arterial blood pressures measured noninvasively correlated with catheter measurements with Pearson r values of 0.90, 0.80, and 0.91 for systolic, diastolic, and mean arterial blood pressures, respectively (all P < 0.001). There was excellent agreement between arterial blood pressure measurement methods. Absolute mean differences based on mixed-model regression with 95% confidence intervals were 4.0 mm Hg (3.0–5.0 mm Hg), 4.3 mm Hg (3.1–5.5 mm Hg), and 3.5 mm Hg (2.5–4.0 mm Hg) for systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and mean blood pressure, respectively. Arterial blood pressure measurements obtained from the Vasotrac agreed well with invasive arterial monitoring in pediatric patients.
Load flow method for unbalanced distribution networks with Dispersed Generation units

Conventional load flow methods for transmission systems could not be utilized for distribution systems, due to their especial characteristics. If methods like Newton-Raphson and Fast-Decoupled are utilized in the case of distribution networks, probability of their convergence would be low. Therefore, due to inherent characteristics of distribution networks, it is essential to develop distribution version of load flow methods. Distribution networks usually have single source node and they have a radial configuration, but sometimes there are one or multiple Dispersed Generation (DG) units supplying a fraction of the distribution feeder loads. Unlike transmission systems, there might be some unbalanced loads along distribution networks. This paper presents a load flow method for unbalanced distribution networks, which can handle the presence of DG units on the distribution networks, in various operating modes.
Hybrid Random Access and Data Transmission Protocol for Machine-to-Machine Communications in Cellular Networks

To address random access channel (RACH) congestion and high signaling overhead problems of machine-to-machine (M2M) communication in cellular networks, we propose a new design of a random access procedure that is exclusively engineered for the M2M communication. Our design has two prominent features. One is a fast signaling process that allows M2M user equipment to transmit data right after preamble transmission on a physical RACH to reduce the signaling overhead. The other is a self-optimization feature that allows the cellular system to produce optimal M2M throughput by adaptively changing resource block (RB) composition and an access barring parameter according to the amount of available RBs and the M2M traffic load. We derive a closed-form analytic formula for the M2M traffic throughput and propose a joint adaptive resource allocation and access barring scheme based on the analytic results. By simulation, we show that the proposed scheme exhibits a near-optimal performance in terms of the capacity.
The Role of the TNC in the Process of Legalization: Insights from Economics and CSR

In this paper we will discuss what role Transnational Corporations (TNCs) are playing in the process of legalization in international relations. Bruetsch and Lehmkuhl (2007) introduced international 'legalization' as a concept that explains the current move to law in international politics and global regimes. In the literature these processes have also been described as 'global governance'. Bruetsch and Lehmkuhl developed a framework for analyzing the processes of rule making and governance that involve multiple actors beyond the nation state, including Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and private business firms (Bruetsch and Lehmkuhl 2007). To better understand the interaction between public rules and private actors a multi-disciplinary approach is helpful. This paper will provide insights from economics and business management and critically consider whether and how their contributions to corporate social responsibility (CSR) can complement the emerging perspectives of legalization in political science and legal studies.
Structural requirements in the herpes simplex virus type 1 transactivator Vmw65 for interaction with the cellular octamer-binding protein and target TAATGARAT sequences

Herpes simplex virus type 1 virion protein Vmw65 forms a complex (TRF.C) with TAATGARAT sequences and the cellular transcription factor oct-1, which has been implicated as an intermediate in the activation of gene expression by Vmw65. To examine structural requirements within Vmw65 for this interaction, we analyzed extracts of transfected cells that express mutant Vmw65 proteins by gel retardation assay and identified two regions in the primary sequence of Vmw65 which are necessary for in vitro assembly of TRF.C. The amino-terminal boundary for complex assembly and trans activation mapped between residues 49 and 75. At the carboxyl terminus, deletion as far as residue 388 did not affect in vitro TRF.C assembly, although trans-activating activity was abolished. Deletion beyond residue 388 rapidly impaired the ability of the protein to participate in the TRF.C complex, such that a truncated mutant of 380 residues was completely inactive. These requirements towards the carboxyl terminus overlap a region of strong local sequence similarity between Vmw65 and terminal protein p3 of bacteriophage phi 29. Although substitution of corresponding p3 residues into Vmw65 failed to produce a functional chimera, site-directed mutagenesis within the region of similarity identified a number of single-point mutant proteins which were completely deficient for TRF.C formation. These mutant proteins were also unable to trans activate expression from immediate-early promoters, despite the integrity of the acidic carboxyl terminus. The extreme sensitivity of both TRF.C formation and trans activation to single-residue substitutions within this region of Vmw65 suggests that it is directly involved in the protein-protein or protein-DNA interactions required for assembly of a transcriptional complex containing oct-1.
Autonomous grouping scheme for selfish DSC introduced spectrum sharing in asynchronous transmit timing conditions

This paper proposes an autonomous grouping in subsystem band for spectrum sharing with the aid of selfish dynamic spectrum control (S-DSC) for asynchronous private wireless networks. When S-DSC, in which each transmitter maps its original spectrum to spectrum with higher channel gain of a system band in a selfish manner, is employed in each link of a shared band, and their transmission timing is asynchronous, there arises mutual interference components in the receiver even at null spectrum positions of the original interference signal, and this causes a so-called near-far problem, which is much severer than the transmit timing synchronous case. To alleviate the critical problem, the proposed scheme introduces an autonomous subsystem band grouping in which each user autonomously selects one of the subsystem band in a system band to maximize its expected average capacity, thereby user links with moderate mutual interference are grouped in the same subsystem band autonomously. Computer simulations confirm that the proposed scheme mitigates the impact of the aforementioned near-far problem. Moreover, the simulations confirm that the frame error rate (FER) performance of the proposed scheme is better than that for the centralized control assumed orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA).
A Bio-Inspired Breathing Sampling Electronic Nose for Rapid Detection of Chinese Liquors

The rapid detection of Chinese liquors is one of the most demanded techniques of the China light industry and electronic noses (e-noses) have been used to solve this problem. However, these e-noses using classic dynamic sampling (CDS) method consume quite long sampling time. In this paper, a novel bio-inspired breathing sampling (BBS) method is proposed to shorten the sampling time. The proposed BBS is a bionic multi-stage sampling method that imitates the biological process of continuous short breathings. Based on the CDS and BBS methods, the same data processing procedures are employed to process the sampled data. Compared with the CDS, the sampling time of the BBS is much shorter and the extracted features of the BBS are simpler. To test the performance of the two sampling methods, three classification methods are employed to identify seven kinds of Chinese liquors using the self-designed electronic nose. The experimental results indicate that the BBS method achieves not only rapider detection but also higher classification accuracy.
The climate change signal in the Mediterranean Sea in a regionally
coupled ocean-atmosphere model

Abstract. We assess the role of ocean feedbacks in the simulation of the present climate and on the downscaled climate change signal in the Mediterranean Sea with the regionally coupled model REMO-OASIS-MPIOM (ROM). The ROM oceanic component is global with regionally high horizontal resolution in the Mediterranean Sea. In our setup the Atlantic and Black Sea circulations are simulated explicitly. Simulations forced by ERA-Interim show a good representation of the present Mediterranean climate. Our analysis of the RCP8.5 scenario driven by MPI-ESM shows that the Mediterranean waters will be warmer and saltier across most of the basin by the end of the century. In the upper ocean layer temperature is projected to have a mean increase of 2.73 °C, while the mean salinity increases by 0.17 psu, presenting a decreasing trend in the Western Mediterranean, opposite to the rest of the basin. The warming initially takes place at the surface and propagates gradually to the deeper layers.
Use of Prophylactic Mesh When Creating a Colostomy Does Not Prevent Parastomal Hernia

Objective: The aim of this study was to determine whether parastomal hernia (PSH) rate can be reduced by using synthetic mesh in the sublay position when constructing permanent end colostomy. The secondary aim was to investigate possible side-effects of the mesh. Background: Prevention of PSH is important as it often causes discomfort and leakage from stoma dressing. Different methods of prevention have been tried, including several mesh techniques. The incidence of PSH is high; up to 78%. Methods: Randomized controlled double-blinded multicenter trial. Patients undergoing open colorectal surgery, including creation of a permanent end colostomy, were randomized into 2 groups, with and without mesh. A lightweight polypropylene mesh was placed around the colostomy in the sublay position. Follow up after 1 month and 1 year. Computerized tomography and clinical examination were used to detect PSH at the 1-year follow up. Data were analyzed on an intention-to-treat basis. Results: After 1 year, 211 of 232 patients underwent clinical examination and 198 radiologic assessments. Operation time was 36 minutes longer in the mesh arm. No difference in rate of PSH was revealed in the analyses of clinical (P = 0.866) and radiologic (P = 0.748) data. There was no significant difference in perioperative complications. Conclusions: The use of reinforcing mesh does not alter the rate of PSH. No difference in complication rate was seen between the 2 arms. Based on these results, the prophylactic use of mesh to prevent PSH cannot be recommended.
Repeated assessment of neuropsychological deficits in multiple sclerosis using the Symbol Digit Modalities Test and the MS Neuropsychological Screening Questionnaire

Background Brief cognitive performance tests and self-report measures of neuropsychological symptoms have been proposed for screening purposes in multiple sclerosis (MS) clinics. To better understand the reliability of screening methods, two tests, the Symbol Digit Modalities Test (SDMT) and the MS Neuropsychological Screening Questionnaire (MSNQ), were administered to 76 patients with MS and 25 healthy controls, matched on demographic characteristics. Methods Tests were administered at monthly intervals, over 6 months. In addition, the Beck Depression Inventory Fast Screen for medical patients (BDIFS) was administered to monitor for changes in depression. Our objectives were to determine the reliability of these measures and the relative contribution of cognitive impairment and depression in predicting self-report MSNQ scores. Results Results showed that both the SDMT and MSNQ have good to excellent reproducibility over repeated testing. In MS, there are minimal practice effects over successive tests, in the order of 0.2 SD for SDMT and minimal change in the MSNQ. Regression analyses modeled to predict MSNQ based on SDMT and BDIFS showed significant contribution for both, but with the majority of variance being accounted for depression. Conclusions We conclude that these brief screening tests provide some independent information about the mental status of patients with MS and are reliable, even when used in monthly, successive examinations.