Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Effects of Drilling on Revascularization and New Bone Formation in Canine Femoral Heads with Avascular Necrosis: An Initial Study

Summary In this study, the effects of drilling on revascularization and new bone formation were evaluated in nine dogs with surgically induced avascular necrosis (AVN) of the femoral head. Six animals had holes drilled from the greater trochanter into the femoral head at the time of vascular interruption. Vital fluorescent bone stains were injected immediately postoperatively (calcein green), 6 weeks postoperatively (xylenol orange), and 12 weeks postoperatively (oxytetracycline). In the operative femoral heads, a relative absence of calcein green indicated successful production of AVN. All of the specimens had uptake of oxytetracycline, indicating complete revascularization by 12 weeks postoperatively. Xylenol orange was found throughout the femoral head in the six drilled heads, indicating complete revascularization by 6 weeks postoperatively. Two of the three undrilled dogs failed to show distribution of xylenol orange throughout the femoral head, which indicated incomplete revascularization by 6 weeks postoperatively. In the drill tracts that were identified, calcein green was observed along the full length of the tract, indicating very early new bone deposition in the drill tracts following surgery. These results suggest that a drill hole provides a path for rapid vascular invasion and quickly results in new bone formation in and around the drill tracts. In addition, revascularization takes place more rapidly in canine femoral heads that have been drilled.
Assessing sustainable development in urban areas using cognitive mapping and MCDA

ABSTRACT As interest in sustainability-related issues has increased over recent years, so too has urban sustainability risen to the fore, in academic, practitioner, and policymaking circles alike. Urban sustainability requires a balance between environmental concerns, the economy, and social development in urban areas. However, over the years, there has been an exponential increase in urban density, accompanied by increased economic activity and high levels of consumption, which have hindered urban planning and made the sustainable management of urban areas more difficult. It has therefore become increasingly necessary to combine the interests of the various stakeholders involved in – or affected by – urban planning measures, in order to achieve a balance between their needs, those of the environment and future generations, and the need for economic development. Sustainability evaluation models can in this sense be considered a baseline condition for sustainable development. However, most existing evaluation systems present limitations in terms of criteria identification and the calculation of the respective trade-offs. To address these issues, the current study aims to combine cognitive mapping and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to prioritize the determinants of sustainable development in urban areas. The advantages and limitations of our proposal are also analyzed.
Climate change mitigation strategies for agriculture: an analysis of nationally determined contributions, biennial reports and biennial update reports

ABSTRACT The role of agriculture in the context of climate change is a complex issue. On the one hand, concerns about food security highlight the need to prioritize adaptation; on the other hand, the target of the Paris Agreement (keeping global temperature rise well below 2°C) cannot be achieved without a significant decrease in agricultural emissions. Various analyses of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) submitted under the Paris Agreement show how countries intend to prioritize the needs for adaptation and mitigation in the agricultural sector. This paper focuses on 46 countries that contribute 90% of global agricultural emissions and asks how they are addressing the agricultural sector in their climate mitigation policies. It takes into account that conditions and circumstances in countries vary significantly but might also indicate similar patterns. The analysis is based on information provided by countries in their NDCs, as well as their Biennial Reports (BRs) or Biennial Update Reports (BURs) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It further includes data on national agricultural emissions. By applying a mixed methods approach, which combines qualitative content analysis and comparative cluster analysis, we find that countries vary in their progress on agriculture and climate mitigation for many different reasons. These reasons include the national perception of the problem, divergent starting points for climate policy, particularities of the agricultural sector and, correspondingly, the availability of cost-effective mitigation technologies. Key policy insights While for many countries the NDCs signify the beginning of their climate policy, UNFCCC biennial reports can be used to learn more about the policies that countries have already implemented. Mitigation action in the agricultural sector is emphasized most prominently in cases where co-benefits are possible and production is not impacted negatively. Policies and measures in the agricultural sector often do not align with the UNFCCC system of monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV). In addition to improving MRV-systems, it seems equally important to exchange national experiences with implemented measures and policies. The Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture could take into account the problem of different definitions of sector boundaries and thus the importance of different mitigation measures.
Developing relationships in innovation clusters

ABSTRACT This study assesses the composition of micro-level behaviours embedded within innovation clusters. Drawing on network theory of innovation, we examine the relational complexities of a specific university-business form of clustered exchange to characterise the actor level behaviours that influence the breadth and spread of network involvement. Whilst some current research posits behavioural attributes of clustered networks, there have been few studies that have focused on the extent of influence that individuals have on the development of value creating relationships, the roles individuals play and the various factors that have the potential to impact their effectiveness. This conceptual development study provides insights into the actor-level behavioural features that play a central role in promoting the innovation effectiveness of these regions. The findings of this three year long ethnographic study suggest that in the face of resource constraints individuals act as agents in creating and sourcing external input for the benefit of their projects. This has implications for policy-makers as well, as our findings suggests that policies should be shaped to provide enabling factors for boundary-spanning, thus allowing relationships to be equipped with the ability to manage complex partner contexts to access the benefits of diversity.
Evaluation of low-flow metrics as environmental instream flow standards during long-term average and 2016 drought conditions: Tombigbee River Basin, Alabama and Mississippi, USA

Environmental instream flows are a common tool for maintaining river flows that are required to sustain both ecosystem and societal needs. Many of the most widely adopted environmental flow standards are based on historical flow, mainly because of the relative simplicity of these methods. Few previous studies, however, have examined the ability of historical flow standards to protect low flows. Here, the low-flow protective ability of five different historical flow methods, using 35 gaging stations in the Tombigbee River Basin of Alabama and Mississippi, was analyzed. The minimum environmental flow thresholds were calculated using the five indices, and the number of times in a recent 32-year period flows fell below each threshold was determined. The Tennant-based threshold was reached most frequently, followed by the modified Tennant. Although other low-flow metrics, such as 7Q10, were triggered infrequently (9% of the time) over the whole period, triggering rates increased to 46% for 7Q10 during the drought of 2016, suggesting that even minimal low-flow standards may provide some benefit during drought. Analyzing historical flow methods to see how often they would result in management actions if implemented is a useful way of developing guidance on the adoption of minimum environmental instream flow standards.
Carbachol, but not forskolin, increases mucosal-to-serosal transport of intact protein in rat ileum in vitro.

The effects of the secretagogues forskolin and carbachol on protein uptake in isolated ileum of rats were studied. The mucosal-to-serosal transport of horseradish peroxidase (HRP, mol mass 40 kDa) was measured in Ussing chambers, and afterwards tissues were processed for electron microscopy. In the absence of secretagogues, the flux of enzymatically active HRP was 5 pmol.cm-2.h-1 at a mucosal concentration of 10 microM. Electron micrographs showed vesicles filled with active HRP in enterocytes but no HRP activity in intercellular spaces. Forskolin decreased HRP activity in the cells. Carbachol increased the amount of HRP-filled vesicles in enterocytes and induced HRP filling in some intercellular spaces and tight junctions in the upper parts of the villi. The transepithelial flux of intact HRP increased more than 2.5-fold. This effect was suppressed by atropine. We conclude that cholinergic activation can increase the uptake of intact protein via endocytosis and the transepithelial passage by the induction of a diffusional paracellular pathway. We speculate that the increased transport of intact protein through the intestinal barrier may influence immunologic sensitization to food allergens.
GPU Acceleration of Finite Difference Schemes Used in Coupled Electromagnetic/Thermal Field Simulations

The solution procedure of coupled electromagnetic-/thermal-simulations with high resolution requires efficient solvers. High performance computing libraries and languages like Nvidia's CUDA help in unlocking the massively parallel capabilities of GPUs to accelerate calculations. They reduce the time needed to solve real world problems. In this paper, the speed-up is discussed, which is obtained by using GPUs for coupled time domain simulations with finite difference schemes. A tailor-made implementation of the time consuming sparse matrix vector multiplication is shown to have advantages over standard CUDA-libraries like cuSparse.
A comparative study of sleep architecture in non-institutionalized senior citizens of Bengaluru city and normative data of sleep

Background: Sleep disturbances are particularly common among even the apparently healthy aging population, and its role as a cause or consequence of chronic illness makes it an issue worth addressing. Aims and Objectives: (i) To record and score the sleep architecture in familial senior citizens using polysomnography, (ii) to compare the score with the normative data provided by American Academy of Sleep Medicine for the same age group, and (iii) to compare the polysomnographic recordings of male and female subjects. Materials and Methods: The study was done on apparently healthy 30 non‑institutionalized senior citizens (15 males and 15 females) residing with their families in residential areas of Bengaluru city. Eligible subjects underwent overnight polysomnography. The recorded sleep parameters included total sleep time (TST), sleep latency (SL), rapid eye movement (REM) latency (RL), wake after sleep onset, sleep efficiency (SE), and stages N1%, N2%, N3%, and REM%. The data were manually scored, tabulated, and compared with normative data using the appropriate statistical tools. Results: On statistical analysis, TST was not significantly altered. The SL, RL, WASO, N1%, and N2% were significantly (P < 0.05) increased in the study group compared to normative data. SE, N1%, and N2% are significantly decreased compared to the normative data. Furthermore, males had longer RL and females had greater percentage of N1% compared to each other. Conclusion: The sleep architecture of the senior citizens under study is significantly deviate from the normative data and the causes for this may be altered circadian rhythm, nutritional, hormonal, or psychosocial factors.
Assessment method of dynamic reactive power valuation for transient voltage stability

Dynamic reactive power sources can make response for reactive power demand rapidly in order to improve power system transient voltage stability. As reactive power is a local product, its value to transient voltage support very much depends on the location in the power system. Meanwhile, the value of reactive power compensation at the same location is nonlinear as well. It has resulted in a great need to quantify the value of reactive power support from dynamic reactive power sources for transient voltage stability. This paper presents a method of equivalent dynamic reactive power valuation for transient voltage stability. This method emphasizes that the valuation of dynamic reactive power sources should be based on their contributions to system transient voltage stability. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been tested on a 10-bus test system.
A comparison between serum carbohydrate-deficient transferrin and hair ethyl glucuronide in detecting chronic alcohol consumption in routine.

AIMS In heavy alcohol consumption laboratory tests represent an objective evidence. In this study we compared older and newer biomarkers in blood and in hair. METHODS Carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (CDT), ethyl glucuronide (EtG), AST, ALT, GGT, MCV were measured in a large sample (n = 562). All people declared no alcohol consumption within the last 3 months. Serum CDT was measured by the candidate HPLC reference method and expressed as relative amount of disialotransferrin (%DST: cutoff 1.7%). EtG was measured in hair by a validated in-house method by LC-MS/MS (cutoff 30 pg/mg). RESULTS Respectively, 42 (7.5%) and 76 (13.5%) subjects were positive to CDT and EtG. In particular, 30 (5.3%) subjects were positive to both tests, 12 (2.1%) only to CDT, while 46 (8.2%) only to EtG. The agreement (positive and negative pairs) between CDT and EtG was 89.7%. Interestingly, 6 out of 12 (50%) CDT-positive subjects had EtG < 15 pg/mg, whereas 27 out of 46 (59%) EtG-positive subjects had CDT < 1.1%. Forty-one out of 76 (54%) EtG-positive subjects display EtG values within 30-50 pg/mg. CONCLUSION Large variability exists between CDT and EtG in detecting chronic alcohol consumption. We suggest to use CDT, or a combination of different biomarkers, to identify alcohol abuse in a forensic context. EtG results close to the cutoff (30-50 pg/mg) should be cautiously considered before any sanction is assigned.
Large eddy simulation of a turbulent diffusion flame with Conditional Source-term Estimation

1. Motivation and objectives Direct numerical simulation (DNS) of turbulent reacting flows at technically relevant high Reynolds numbers will be computationally unaffordable for the foreseeable future. Large eddy simulation (LES) represents an attractive alternative. The basic idea of LES is to resolve only the large scale motion of the flow while modeling the contribution of the small (i.e. sub-grid) scales, which tend to be more isotropic, hence, easier to model. Resolving only the large scales keeps the computational cost affordable. The LES set of equations is obtained by applying a spatial filter to the governing transport equations of mass, momentum and energy leading to
Involvement of Potassium Channels and Calcium-Independent Mechanisms in Hydrogen Sulfide–Induced Relaxation of Rat Mesenteric Small Arteries

Endogenous hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is involved in the regulation of vascular tone. We hypothesized that the lowering of calcium and opening of potassium (K) channels as well as calcium-independent mechanisms are involved in H2S-induced relaxation in rat mesenteric small arteries. Amperometric recordings revealed that free [H2S] after addition to closed tubes of sodium hydrosulfide (NaHS), Na2S, and GYY4137 [P-(4-methoxyphenyl)-P-4-morpholinyl-phosphinodithioic acid] were, respectively, 14%, 17%, and 1% of added amount. The compounds caused equipotent relaxations in isometric myographs, but based on the measured free [H2S], GYY4137 caused more relaxation in relation to released free H2S than NaHS and Na2S in rat mesenteric small arteries. Simultaneous measurements of [H2S] and tension showed that 15 µM of free H2S caused 61% relaxation in superior mesenteric arteries. Simultaneous measurements of smooth muscle calcium and tension revealed that NaHS lowered calcium and caused relaxation of NE-contracted arteries, while high extracellular potassium reduced NaHS relaxation without corresponding calcium changes. In NE-contracted arteries, NaHS (1 mM) lowered the phosphorylation of myosin light chain, while phosphorylation of myosin phosphatase target subunit 1 remained unchanged. Protein kinase A and G, inhibitors of guanylate cyclase, failed to reduce NaHS relaxation, whereas blockers of voltage-gated KV7 channels inhibited NaHS relaxation, and blockers of mitochondrial complex I and III abolished NaHS relaxation. Our findings suggest that low micromolar concentrations of free H2S open K channels followed by lowering of smooth muscle calcium, and by another mechanism involving mitochondrial complex I and III leads to uncoupling of force, and hence vasodilation.
Insulin Resistance, Prediabetes, Metabolic Syndrome: What Should Every Pediatrician Know?

The Metabolic syndrome describes a clustering of typical cardiovascular risk factors. The syndrome is also known as “Insulin Resistance syndrome” as a substantial part of the pathophysiology is driven by resistance to the metabolic effects of insulin. The major cause of insulin resistance in childhood is a typical lipid partitioning pattern characterized by increased deposition of lipids within insulin responsive tissues, such as the liver and skeletal muscle and within the viscera. This lipid deposition pattern is also associated with infiltration of intra-abdominal tissues with cells of the immune system, inducing systemic, low-grade inflammation typically observed in insulin resistant obese children and adolescents. Several clues derived from a careful history and physical examination, along with a basic laboratory workup, provide clues in regards to risk stratification in obese children.
Nicastrin controls aspects of photoreceptor neuron specification and differentiation in the Drosophila eye

Nicastrin is a component of the Notch signaling pathway involved in proteolytic release of the Notch receptor intracellular domain. It has been postulated that intracellular Notch is required within the nucleus of fly eye progenitor cells to enhance (proneural enhancement) and then repress (lateral inhibition) transcription of proneural genes. We present here an analysis of Nicastrin function during eye development and find that Nicastrin is essential to early photoreceptor neuron development. Nicastrin mutant tissue displays neuronal loss or hyperplasia; these phenotypes can be rescued by targeted expression of an intracellular form of Notch. Thus, nuclear translocation of Notch and its direct regulation of gene expression appear to be critical to proneural enhancement as well as lateral inhibition. In addition, we show that Nicastrin as well as Notch are required to maintain normal R‐cell morphology, because the nuclei of mutant photoreceptor neurons cannot maintain their proper position. Thus, Notch signaling plays a role, not only in cell fate specification, but also in differentiation of photoreceptor neurons. Developmental Dynamics 234:590–601, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Report of the Working Group for Dietary Salt Reduction of the Japanese Society of Hypertension: (2) Assessment of Salt Intake in the Management of Hypertension

Restriction of dietary salt is widely recommended in the management of hypertension, but assessment of individual salt intake has drawn little attention. The understanding of salt intake is important as a guide for optimizing salt-restriction strategies. However, precise evaluation of salt intake is difficult. More reliable methods are more difficult to perform, whereas easier methods are less reliable. Thus, the method to assess salt intake should be determined as the situation demands. The Working Group for Dietary Salt Reduction of the Japanese Society of Hypertension recommends the assessment of individual salt intake using one of the following methods in the management of hypertension. 1) The measurement of the sodium (Na) excretion from 24-h urine sampling or nutritionist's analysis of the dietary contents, which are reliable but difficult to perform, are suitable for facilities specializing in the treatment of hypertension. 2) Estimation of the Na excretion from the Na/creatinine (Cr) ratio in spot urine is less reliable but practical and is suitable for general medical facilities. 3) Estimation using an electronic salt sensor equipped with a calculation formula is also less reliable but is simple enough that patients can use it themselves. The patients are considered to be compliant with the salt-restriction regimen if salt intake measured by whichever method is less than 6 g (100 mmol)/day.
Recombinant type 1 transforming growth factor beta precursor produced in Chinese hamster ovary cells is glycosylated and phosphorylated

Analyses of cDNA clones coding for simian type 1 transforming growth factor beta (TGF-beta 1) suggest that there are three potential sites for N-linked glycosylation located in the amino terminus of the precursor region. Analysis of [3H]glucosamine-labeled serum-free supernatants from a line of Chinese hamster ovary cells which secrete high levels of recombinant TGF-beta 1 indicate that the TGF-beta 1 precursor, but not the mature form, is glycosylated. Digestion with neuraminidase resulted in a shift in migration of the two TGF-beta 1 precursor bands, which suggests that they contain sialic acid residues. Endoglycosidase H had no noticeable effect. Treatment with N-glycanase produced two faster-migrating sharp bands, the largest of which had a molecular weight of 39 kilodaltons. TGF-beta 1-specific transcripts produced by SP6 polymerase programmed the synthesis of a 42-kilodalton polypeptide which, we suggest, is the unmodified protein backbone of the precursor. Labeling with 32Pi showed that the TGF-beta 1 precursor was phosphorylated in the amino portion of the molecule.
Professional Learning and Development of Postdoctoral Scholars: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Increasing numbers of postdoctoral scholars are pursuing diverse career paths that require broad skill sets to ensure success. However, most postdoctoral professional learning and development initiatives are designed for academic careers and rarely include professional skills needed to flourish in nonacademic settings. The purpose of this systematic review was to comprehensively examine and synthesize evidence of professional learning and development pertaining to postdoctoral scholars. The systematic search resulted in 7,571 citations, of which 162 full-text papers were reviewed and 28 studies met our inclusion criteria and were included in this review. This paper synthesizes and classifies studies exploring professional learning and development of postdoctoral scholars. The findings may be used to inform the objectives of professional learning and development initiatives for postdoctoral scholars and contribute to a more rigorous approach to studying professional learning and development.