Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Induction by endotoxin of nitric oxide synthase in the rat mesentery: lack of effect on action of vasoconstrictors

1 Male Sprague‐Dawley or Wistar rats were injected with bacterial lipopolysacharride (LPS; 5 mg kg−1, i.p.) and killed after 1, 3, 6, 15, and 24 h. The brains, mesenteries, spleens, lungs, livers, kidneys, hearts, aortae and diaphragms were removed and frozen immediately. Control rats were injected with sterile saline and killed after 6 h. 2 The organs were homogenized in a semi‐frozen state and NO synthase (NOS) activity measured in tissues from both LPS‐treated and saline‐treated groups by the ability of homogenates to convert [3H]‐l‐arginine to [3H]‐l‐citrulline in a NADPH‐dependent manner. 3 The NOS activity in all organs taken from control animals was found to be calcium‐dependent, with the highest activity being in the brain. After LPS‐treatment an induced calcium‐independent NOS was detected in all tissues tested, with the exception of the brain. The spleen, lung, mesentery and liver had the highest amounts of LPS‐induced NOS activity. No induction of calcium‐dependent NOS was detected. 4 Induction of NOS was maximum 6 h after administration of LPS and had returned to control levels in 24 h. 5 The constitutive NOS in brain and mesentery and the LPS‐induced activities in the spleen, lung, liver and mesentery were inhibited by NG‐monomethyl‐l‐arginine (l‐NMMA) or NG‐nitro‐l‐arginine methyl ester (l‐NAME) according to concentration. The IC50 for l‐NAME was 2.5 μm against the constitutive NOS from brain, and 20–25 μm against the inducible NOS. For l‐NMMA the IC50 was 20–25 μm against either NOS isoform. 7 The vascular responses to endothelin‐1 (ET‐1), the thromboxane A2‐mimetic 11α,9α‐epoxymethano prostaglandin F2α (U46619), phenylephrine (PE) or 5‐hydroxytryptamine (5‐HT) were measured in the simultaneously perfused arterial and venous mesenteric vascular beds from both control and LPS‐treated (6 h) rats. Vasoconstrictor responses to all agonists tested were unaffected by LPS treatment. In the presence of l‐NAME (100 μm) vasoconstrictor responses were potentiated in both the arterial and venous portion of the mesenteric beds from both control and LPS‐treated rats. The potentiation of responses to U46619 was significantly greater in beds from LPS‐treated rats. 8 Injection of LPS i.p. is associated with induction of NOS in all organs tested, except for the brain. In the mesentery this is not accompanied by a hyporesponsiveness to constrictor agents suggesting an increased sensitivity, particularly to U46619. This may explain the poor perfusion and tissue damage in the splanchnic circulation associated with sepsis.
Using Sound feedback to counteract visual distractor during robot-assisted movement training

Patient engagement and effort are thought to be important for maximizing the therapeutic benefit of robot-assisted movement exercise after neurologic injury, but little is understood about how the audio-visual feedback presented during training affects engagement and effort. For the study reported here, we hypothesized that visual distraction would decrease engagement during robot-assisted movement training, but that appropriate auditory feedback would counteract this effect. Non-disabled participants (n = 10) participated in a common therapeutic exercise in which they attempted to track a moving target presented on a computer screen as a robotic exoskeleton compliantly assisted their arm movement. Introducing a simple visual distractor significantly increased both tracking error and the interaction forces between the participants and the robot. Introducing auditory feedback of tracking error reduced the effect of the visual distractor, decreasing tracking error and interaction forces toward normative values. If tracking error is taken as a surrogate measure of participant engagement, these results indicate that the presence of even a modest level of visual distraction in the training environment may decrease engagement, and thus present a hazard to the effectiveness of training. However, providing appropriate task feedback through the auditory system can reduce the effect of visual distractors. Therefore, an integrated design of the audio, visual, and haptic environment is important for optimizing robot-assisted movement training.
Microemulsions: A Potential Delivery System for Bioactives in Food

Microemulsions are thermodynamically stable, transparent, low viscosity, and isotropic dispersions consisting of oil and water stabilized by an interfacial film of surfactant molecules, typically in conjunction with a cosurfactant. Microemulsions (so-called due to their small particle size; 5–100 nm) have found application in a wide variety of systems, such as pharmaceutical and oil recovery, but their application in food systems has been hindered by the types of surfactant permissible for use in food. The objective of this review is to provide an overview of the structures and phase behavior of microemulsions, methods of microemulsion formation, and techniques which may be used for characterization. A comprehensive review of previous work on both food-grade microemulsion systems, and non-food-grade systems of specific food interest is included. The application of microemulsions as reaction media, their ability to solubilize proteins and hence their use as a separation technique is also documented. In addition, attention is focused on the application of microemulsions as delivery systems for delivery of bioactive compounds, and the links between microemulsions and increased bioavailability. Future research, both applied and fundamental, should focus on surfactants which are not restricted for use in foods.
Full-wafer fabrication by nanostencil lithography of micro/nanomechanical mass sensors monolithically integrated with CMOS

Wafer-scale nanostencil lithography (nSL) is used to define several types of silicon mechanical resonators, whose dimensions range from 20 µm down to 200 nm, monolithically integrated with CMOS circuits. We demonstrate the simultaneous patterning by nSL of ∼2000 nanodevices per wafer by post-processing standard CMOS substrates using one single metal evaporation, pattern transfer to silicon and subsequent etch of the sacrificial layer. Resonance frequencies in the MHz range were measured in air and vacuum. As proof-of-concept towards an application as high performance sensors, CMOS integrated nano/micromechanical resonators are successfully implemented as ultra-sensitive areal mass sensors. These devices demonstrate the ability to monitor the deposition of gold layers whose average thickness is smaller than a monolayer. Their areal mass sensitivity is in the range of 10−11 g cm−2 Hz−1, and their thickness resolution corresponds to approximately a thousandth of a monolayer.
Segmentation of the lateral ventricles in 3D ultrasound images of the brain in neonates

The diagnosis and prognosis of brain anomalies in preterm neonates can be improved by the quantification of the cerebral volumes of different brain areas, such as the ventricles [1]. In the current clinical routine, a diagnosis is made based on 2D images of the brain, without making quantitative assessment of the volumes of the cerebrospinal fluid in the ventricles. We propose a semi-automated segmentation method to determine the volume of the ventricles, the choroid plexus, the cavum vergae and the cavum pellucidum in 3D ultrasound images of the brain. The algorithm requires only three seed points given by the operator. We show the good agreement between the segmented contours and manually segmented images on clinical data acquired with a commercial neonatal head probe.
The Research about Method of Sustainable Consumption System Measure

From the sustainable development, the thesis puts on the target system of sustainable consumption system, and then discusses the need of the decision on the sustainable consumption measure. By applying the entropy formal flexible strategy to the sustainable consumption systematic measure, I apply the systematic entropy theory to the sustainable consumption system. On the basis of it, the thesis studies the crosswise and vertical method on sustainable consumption system measure. The thesis studies the authentic proof, and get the good conclusion.
TRIAD: Creating Synergies Between Memory, Disk and Log in Log Structured Key-Value Stores

We present TRIAD, a new persistent key-value (KV) store based on Log-Structured Merge (LSM) trees. TRIAD improves LSM KV throughput by reducing the write amplification arising in the maintenance of the LSM tree structure. Although occurring in the background, write amplification consumes significant CPU and I/O resources. By reducing write amplification, TRIAD allows these resources to be used instead to improve user-facing throughput. TRIAD uses a holistic combination of three techniques. At the LSM memory component level, TRIAD leverages skew in data popularity to avoid frequent I/O operations on the most popular keys. At the storage level, TRIAD amortizes management costs by deferring and batching multiple I/O operations. At the commit log level, TRIAD avoids duplicate writes to storage. We implement TRIAD as an extension of Facebook's RocksDB and evaluate it with production and synthetic workloads. With these workloads, TRIAD yields up to 193% improvement in throughput. It reduces write amplification by a factor of up to 4x, and decreases the amount of I/O by an order of magnitude.
Recovering speciation and extinction dynamics based on phylogenies

Phylogenetic trees of only extant species contain information about the underlying speciation and extinction pattern. In this review, I provide an overview over the different methodologies that recover the speciation and extinction dynamics from phylogenetic trees. Broadly, the methods can be divided into two classes: (i) methods using the phylogenetic tree shapes (i.e. trees without branch length information) allowing us to test for speciation rate variation and (ii) methods using the phylogenetic trees with branch length information allowing us to quantify speciation and extinction rates. I end the article with an overview on limitations, open questions and challenges of the reviewed methodology.
Effect of acetate-free biofiltration and bicarbonate hemodialysis on neutrophil activation.

BACKGROUND Activation of polymorphonuclear neutrophils (PMNs) and monocytes has been described during hemodialysis (HD), which results in the release of reactive oxygen species and cytokines. Acetate-free biofiltration (AFB) has been shown to cause less monocyte activation and cytokine release than bicarbonate HD (BHD). No data are available to date on the effect of AFB on PMN activation. METHODS We studied ex vivo superoxide anion release by PMNs isolated from nine patients treated in random order with AFB or BHD (three sessions each). Plasma interleukin-1beta (IL-1beta) levels and the nitric oxide (NO) synthetic pathway also were evaluated. A polyacrylonitrile (AN69; Hospal, Bologna, Italy) dialyzer was used for both treatments. Fourteen healthy volunteers were used as controls. Blood samples were drawn predialysis and 5 and 15 minutes after starting dialysis to obtain plasma and PMNs. RESULTS Neither ex vivo superoxide anion release nor blood PMN count was affected by AFB. Conversely, a peak in superoxide anion production associated with a decrease in PMN count was observed at 5 minutes during BHD. Results of superoxide anion production by control PMNs exposed in vitro to AFB or bicarbonate dialysis bath or Hank's balanced salt solution supplemented with bicarbonate or acetate indicated that BHD-induced PMN activation could be attributed to the amount of bicarbonate present in the dialysis bath. IL-1beta plasma levels did not change during dialysis with AFB and were numerically higher at 5 and 15 minutes with respect to predialysis values during BHD. Uremic plasma obtained during either AFB or BHD induced greater NO synthesis by human umbilical vein endothelial cells than control plasma. CONCLUSION AFB, unlike BHD, does not cause PMN and monocyte activation, which could have a positive impact on dialysis-associated cardiovascular disease of dialyzed patients.
Fixational eye movements improve visual performance at the sampling limit.

PURPOSE We explored whether fixational movements of the eye in the human visual system might enhance visual acuity, by effectively scanning the retinal image with its sparse receptive fields, rather than taking a static snapshot of the retinal image with a fixed sampling array. METHODS We used an adaptive optics scanning laser ophthalmoscope to test orientation discrimination performance in three normal subjects while simultaneously imaging the underlying cone photoreceptor mosaic. Imaging and psychophysics were done with 840-nm light over a 1.2 deg field at about 1 degree from the foveal center. Stimuli were AO-corrected, negative-contrast tumbling-E optotypes presented randomly at one of four orientations. Stimulus size was held constant, with a gap opening that yielded ~40% correct discrimination performance determined in a preceding acuity experiment (0.57, 0.61, 0.74 arcmin of visual angle for the subjects). At that size and retinal eccentricity, the gap opening was below the retina's Nyquist sampling limit (0.94, 0.90, 0.85 arcmin). Stimulus presentation duration was 750 msec, trial progression was self-paced. Stimuli were presented either retinally stabilized by locking the stimulus to the underlying photoreceptor mosaic, or unstabilized, i.e. habitual retinal image motion was allowed to occur. Discrimination performance is reported based on 500 trials for each viewing condition, all pseudorandomly interleaved. RESULTS For all subjects, discrimination performance was significantly worse under stabilized than unstabilized conditions. Performance reductions were 33.6, 13.4, and 21.1% (p = 0.015, 0.046, 0.017, binomial z-test) for each subject. CONCLUSIONS Performance in the finest visual acuity tasks for retinal images that are at or below the Nyquist sampling limit seem to be enhanced by the retinal image motion caused by natural fixational eye movements. These findings suggest that fixational eye movements are used to facilitate a form of 'super-resolution' that surpasses the photoreceptor sampling resolution. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.
An Examination of the Formation of Consumer Csr Association: When Corporate Social Responsible Initiatives Are Effective

: Corporate Social Responsibility is becoming a central agenda item for companies as well as capturing the burgeoning interest of academic researchers. Taking a broad overview of the recent working in this area, only embryonic research has been dedicated thus far to the consumer cognition process towards the CSR information. Motivated by this, we construct a cognitive model to investigate why some CSR initiatives are highly valued by consumers while others go unacknowledged. Through an experimental design we test the effects of two mediating variables (consumer attribution and consumer awareness of consequence) on the formation of consumer CSR association. The results suggest that different types of CSR initiatives (commitment, timing and fit) stimulate different levels of consumer CSR association by affecting their information cognition process, which is motivation attribution and consequence expectation.
Changes in endothelium‐derived hyperpolarizing factor in hypertension and ageing: response to chronic treatment with renin–angiotensin system inhibitors

1. Endothelial function is impaired in hypertension and ageing and this may be associated with an increase in cardiovascular disease. Several clinical studies have shown that blocking the renin–angiotensin system (RAS) improves endothelial function not only in hypertensive patients, but also in normotensive patients with cardiovascular disease.
Robust nonlinear adaptive backstepping controller design for three-phase grid-connected solar photovoltaic systems with unknown parameters

This paper presents a nonlinear control scheme to regulate the dc-link voltage for extracting the maximum power from PV system and the current to control the amount of injected power into the grid. The controller is designed using an adaptive backstepping technique by considering the parameters of the system as totally unknown. The control of power injection into the grid requires the regulation of active and reactive components of the output current of the inverter in order to control active and reactive power, respectively. The proposed controller is adaptive to unknown parameters of grid-connected solar photovoltaic (PV) systems and these parameters are estimated through the adaptation laws while guaranteeing the extraction of maximum power from the PV system and delivering appropriate active and reactive power into the grid. The overall stability of the whole system is analyzed based on the formulation of control Lyapunov functions (CLFs). Finally, the performance of the designed controller is tested on a three-phase grid-connected PV system under changeing environmental conditions and the result is also compared with an existing backstepping controller in terms of improving power quality. Simulation results indicate the robustness of the proposed scheme under changing atmospheric conditions.
Parallel Kalman filter based time-domain harmonic state estimation

A time domain methodology is proposed for the harmonic state estimation (HSE) in power systems based on parallel Kalman filter (PKF) algorithm implemented on a graphical processing unit (GPU). The output variable measurements to be used by the HSE are taken from the simulation of the harmonics propagation in the power system. The time domain HSE solution process is based on the application of the PKF algorithm to estimate the waveforms for nodal voltages and line currents with various sources of harmonics, time-varying harmonics and inter-harmonics. The results obtained with the PKF to solve the HSE are validated against the transient program PSCAD/EMTDC. The PKF algorithm is implemented using the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) platform and the CUDA Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms (CUBLAS) library on a NVIDIA GPU card. Case studies show the effectiveness of the PKF to solve the HSE on the GPU, the speed-up is dependent of the size and complexity of the network model.
Sorafenib in advanced clear-cell renal-cell carcinoma.

BACKGROUND We conducted a phase 3, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of sorafenib, a multikinase inhibitor of tumor-cell proliferation and angiogenesis, in patients with advanced clear-cell renal-cell carcinoma. METHODS From November 2003 to March 2005, we randomly assigned 903 patients with renal-cell carcinoma that was resistant to standard therapy to receive either continuous treatment with oral sorafenib (at a dose of 400 mg twice daily) or placebo; 451 patients received sorafenib and 452 received placebo. The primary end point was overall survival. A single planned analysis of progression-free survival in January 2005 showed a statistically significant benefit of sorafenib over placebo. Consequently, crossover was permitted from placebo to sorafenib, beginning in May 2005. RESULTS At the January 2005 cutoff, the median progression-free survival was 5.5 months in the sorafenib group and 2.8 months in the placebo group (hazard ratio for disease progression in the sorafenib group, 0.44; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.35 to 0.55; P<0.01). The first interim analysis of overall survival in May 2005 showed that sorafenib reduced the risk of death, as compared with placebo (hazard ratio, 0.72; 95% CI, 0.54 to 0.94; P=0.02), although this benefit was not statistically significant according to the O'Brien-Fleming threshold. Partial responses were reported as the best response in 10% of patients receiving sorafenib and in 2% of those receiving placebo (P<0.001). Diarrhea, rash, fatigue, and hand-foot skin reactions were the most common adverse events associated with sorafenib. Hypertension and cardiac ischemia were rare serious adverse events that were more common in patients receiving sorafenib than in those receiving placebo. CONCLUSIONS As compared with placebo, treatment with sorafenib prolongs progression-free survival in patients with advanced clear-cell renal-cell carcinoma in whom previous therapy has failed; however, treatment is associated with increased toxic effects. (ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00073307 [ClinicalTrials.gov].).
Value of Ethyl Glucuronide and Ethyl Sulfate in Serum as Biomarkers of Alcohol Consumption

Background: Urinary Ethyl glucuronide (EtG) and Ethyl sulfate (EtS) are established markers of alcohol conumption. Measurement of these markers in serum offers certain advantages. This outpatient department based study evaluated performance of serum Ethyl glucuronide (EtG) and Ethyl sulphate (EtS) as biomarkers of recent alcohol consumption in alcohol dependent subjects. It also evaluated effect of alcohol dose and time since consumption on serum EtG and EtS concentration. Methods: Information regarding alcohol intake was collected using Time line follow back calendar method from 152 subjects. Blood samples were collected to determine serum EtG and EtS concentration. Results: The results revealed that serum EtG (at a threshold of 45 ng/mL) could detect recent moderate to heavy alcohol consumption with 85 percent sensitivity and 89 percent specificity. The results also show that simultaneous measurement of EtS does not increase test accuracy. We found that dose of alcohol and time since alcohol consumption explain 68 and 62 percent variance in serum EtG and EtS levels. Conclusion: EtG testing in blood was found useful as a way to detect recent drinking. This sensitive and specific short-term biomarker provides valuable information about recent alcohol consumption.
Control strategy for three-phase converter under unbalanced grid voltage conditions considering line loss

This paper proposes a novel control scheme for minimizing the line loss of three-phase converters under unbalanced grid voltages. Most prior works focus on balancing phase currents or eliminating dc-link voltage ripples. However, they do not consider rms currents, so the efficiency may be lowered. In this paper, the optimal current reference is proposed to minimize sum of squares of rms currents in three lines. As a result of the proposed strategy, the efficiency of both converter itself and overall power system can be enhanced. Also, we calculate another optimal solution for removing active power ripples and verify that it coincides with previous works. Nevertheless, the corresponding control algorithm utilizes only line-to-line voltages, not positive- and negative-sequence ones; therefore, the proposed scheme does not include an extraction of sequential components and exhibits simpler implementation than its conventional counterpart. Experimental results prove the validity and the effectiveness of the proposed method.