Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
PII: S1010-7940(02)00656-5

Objective: Internal thoracic artery (ITA) flow competition is a diversion of graft flow through intact ITA branches with a net decrease in perfusion to the grafted coronary. Although a widely acknowledged phenomenon, the conditions under which flow competition occurs have not been established. This is examined in a canine H-graft model. Methods: Eight dogs had a right ITA segment interposed (H-graft) between their in situ left ITA (LITA) and the snared left anterior descending (LAD) coronary artery. Proximal LITA and H-graft flows were measured at baseline and during pacing-induced tachycardia, phenylephrine-induced hypertension, and nitroprusside-induced hypotension. Flows were measured with the distal LITA open and occluded. Two additional animals were subjected to eight separate 2-min periods of LAD ischemia, after which post-ischemic H-graft flow measurements were obtained with and without distal LIMA occlusion. Results: During baseline conditions, proximal LITA flow was greater when the distal LITA was open rather than occluded (46 ^ 15 versus 35 ^ 12 ml/min, respectively; P 1⁄4 0:002), but H-graft flow did not change significantly (32 ^ 18 versus 35 ^ 18 ml/min, respectively; P 1⁄4 0:21). Similarly, occlusion of the distal LITA had no impact on H-graft flow during tachycardia, hypertension, or hypotension. Only in animals subjected to transient LAD ischemia did H-graft flow increase with distal LITA occlusion, albeit marginally (65 ^ 7–70 ^ 9 ml/min, occluded versus open, respectively; P 1⁄4 0:04). Conclusions: Mild diversion of flow from the LAD was demonstrated during immediate post-ischemic coronary reperfusion only, and could not be elicited under any other physiologic condition. These data suggest that flow competition is unlikely to constitute a clinically significant limitation to the use of H-grafts or other modalities that leave ITA branches patent. q 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Physical and Chemical Modifications of Plant Fibres for Reinforcement in Cementitious Composites

This paper highlights the physical and chemical surface modifications of plant fibre (PF) for attaining suitable properties as reinforcements in cementitious composites. Untreated PF faces insufficient adhesion between the fibres and matrix due to high levels of moisture absorption and poor wettability. These conditions accelerate degradation of the fibre in the composite. It is also essential to reduce the risk of hydrophilic PF conditions with surface modification, to enhance the mechanical properties of the fibres. Fibres that undergo chemical and physical modifications had been proven to exhibit improved fibre-matrix interfacial adhesion in the composite and contribute to better composite mechanical properties. This paper also gives some recommendations for future research on chemical and physical modifications of PF.
Anatomic Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction Using Hamstring Tendons Restores Quantitative Pivot Shift

Background: It is still uncertain how surgical reconstruction of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is able to restore rotatory laxity of the involved joint. The desired amount of restraint applied by the ACL graft, as compared with the healthy knee, has not been fully clarified. Purpose: To quantify the ability of single-bundle anatomic ACL reconstruction using hamstring tendons in reducing the pivot-shift phenomenon immediately after surgery under anesthesia. Study Design: Case series; Level of evidence, 4. Methods: An inertial sensor and image analysis were used at 4 international centers to measure tibial acceleration and lateral compartment translation of the knee, respectively. The standardized pivot-shift test was quantified in terms of the side-to-side difference in laxity both preoperatively and postoperatively with the patient under anesthesia. The reduction in both tibial acceleration and lateral compartment translation after surgery and the side-to-side difference were evaluated using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Alpha was set at P < . 05. Results: A total of 107 patients were recruited for the study, and data were available for 89 patients. There was a statistically significant reduction in quantitative rotatory knee laxity between preoperatively (inertial sensor, 2.55 ± 4.00 m/s 2 ; image analysis, 2.04 ± 2.02 mm) and postoperatively (inertial sensor, –0.54 ± 1.25 m/s 2 ; image analysis, –0.10 ± 1.04 mm) between the involved and healthy joints, as measured by the 2 devices ( P < .001 for both). Postoperatively, both devices detected a lower rotatory laxity value in the involved joint compared with the healthy joint (inertial sensor, 2.45 ± 0.89 vs 2.99 ± 1.10 m/s 2 , respectively [ P < .001]; image analysis, 0.99 ± 0.83 vs 1.09 ± 0.92 mm, respectively [ P ¼ .38]). Conclusion: The data from this study indicated a significant reduction in the pivot shift when compared side to side. Both the inertial sensor and image analysis used for the quantitative assessment of the pivot-shift test could successfully detect restoration of the pivot shift after anatomic single-bundle ACL reconstruction. Future research will examine how pivot-shift control is main-tained over time and correlation of the pivot shift with return to full activity in patients with an ACL injury. patients with an ACL injury, single-bundle anatomic ACL reconstruction using hamstring tendons can significantly reduce the pivot-shift phenomenon. Future research may better elucidate the persistence of the reduction in dynamic laxity at a longer time of follow-up after surgery.
Social edia ining for ostpartum epression rediction

This study investigated the feasibility of a postpartum depression predictor based on social media writings. The current broad use of social media networks generates a large amount of digital data, which, when coupled with artiﬁcial intelligence methods, have the potential to disclose signiﬁcant health related insights. In this paper we explore the use of machine learning for prediction of postpartum depression on a corpus created from Reddit posts.
Remote Control of Machine Vision Processing System

The authors address the need of splitting a visual navigation system for unmanned autonomous vehicles into components whose level of separation is based on their functionality. It was divided into the visual unit and the communication control unit which are implemented through the use of readily available open source solutions. The visual unit covers the image acquisition and processing functions. The control communications unit encompasses the execution of the necessary systems and transmission of data. The QGroundControl was set to send a command signal to activate/ deactivate the linux-based ARToolKit pattern marker detector through a MAVLink protocol-based program that was created specifically for the purpose. The resulting solution was successfully tested with very satisfactory performance as designed.
Competitive Algorithms for Online Data Placement on Uncapacitated Uniform Network

—In this paper, we study the iterated problem of placing copies of data objects in a network of storage servers in order to serve request demands with minimal delay. We show how to compute the optimal sequence of decisions for two variants: in general, using dynamic programming algorithm, which requires exponential time, and for uncapacitated uniform network, which requires only polynomial time. For the latter case, we study online algorithms, which return new placement immediately after a new element of input sequence becomes available. We prove that the comeptitive ratio of the problem is bounded by 2. The paper is summarized with computational study, which compares the 2-competitive online algorithm with dynamic programming. Online distributed storage management becomes increasingly important issue in large-scale Internet applications due to the widespread of Content Devlivery Networks, as well as cloud computing and content-aware paradigms.
An Example of Traditional Women's Work as a Mathematics Resource.

"Ex Ahica semper aliquid novi" Pliny is supposed to have written: "There is always something new from Africa " Part of the newness of Paulus Gerdes' work in Mozambique [Gerdes 1986a] is that he offers "non-standard problems", easily solved by many illiterate Mozarnbiquan artisans, to members of the international mathematics education communitywho cannot (at first) do them They have trouble in constructing angles of 90,60 and 45 degrees and regular hexagons out of strips of paper, problems which are no trouble at all to people for whom the intellectual and practical art of weaving is a necessary part of life Recently I have been offering to experienced teachers and teachers in training some of the "non-standard pwblems" that are easily solved by any woman brought up to make her or her family's clothes* Many of the male teachers are so unfamiliar with the construction and even shape and size of their own garments that they cannot at first perceive that all you need to make a sweater (apart from the technology and tools) is an understanding of ratio and that all you need to make a shirt is an understanding of right-angled and parallel lines, the idea of area, some symmetry, some optimisation and the ability to work from 2-dimensional plans to 3-dimensional forms What makes the problems non-standard is the viewpoint of those who set the standards Gerdes' work, and the work of others in the field of ethnomathematics offer a rather threatening confrontation to the traditional standard setters. Gerdes is up against a number of factors that until recently have tried to determine the education, or previous lack of it, in his country The freshness of his work is his illustration of the mathematics that already exists in Mozambiquan culture and how he is setting about "defrosting" it It is interesting to take Gerdes' analysis and his energy and commitment and to apply them worldwide and in the different context of women's culture There will be those who will maintain that "women" is too wide a term to allow of a single culture, but the "set of women who make and use textiles in home-making" would certainly seem to fit the definition of culture used by Wilder [1981] in his Mathematics as a cultural system In mathematical activity, women lose out in two ways Until very recently, in most histories of mathematics
Generation of induced pluripotent stem cells from the prairie

The vast majority of animals mate more or less promiscuously. A few mammals, including humans, utilize more restrained mating strategies that entail a longer term affiliation with a single mating partner. Such pair bonding mating strategies have been resistant to genetic analysis because of a lack of suitable model organisms. Prairie voles are small mouse-like rodents that form enduring pair bonds in the wild as well as in the laboratory, and consequently they have been used widely to study social bonding behavior. The lack of targeted genetic approaches in this species however has restricted the study of the molecular and neural circuit basis of pair bonds. As a first step in rendering the prairie vole amenable to reverse genetics, we have generated induced pluripotent stem cell (IPSC) lines from prairie vole fibroblasts using retroviral transduction of reprogramming factors. These IPSC lines display the cellular and molecular hallmarks of IPSC cells from other organisms, including mice and humans. Moreover, the prairie vole IPSC lines have pluripotent differentiation potential since they can give rise to all three germ layers in tissue culture and in vivo. These IPSC lines can now be used to develop conditions that facilitate homologous recombination and eventually the generation of prairie voles bearing targeted genetic modifications to study the molecular and neural basis of pair bond formation.
Some parametric inequalities on strongly regular graphs spectra

— In this work we deal with the problem of ﬁnding suitable admissibility conditions for the parameter sets of strongly regular graphs. To address this problem we analyze the regularity of these graphs through the introduction of a parameter and deduce some parametric admissibility conditions. Applying an asymptotic analysis, the conditions obtained enabled us to extract some spectral conclusions over the class of strongly regular graphs.
Screening for and Identiﬁcation of Starch-, Amylopectin-, and Pullulan-Degrading Activities in Biﬁdobacterial Strains

Forty-two biﬁdobacterial strains were screened for (cid:1) -amylase and/or pullulanase activity by investigating their capacities to utilize starch, amylopectin, or pullulan. Of the 42 biﬁdobacterial strains tested, 19 were capable of degrading potato starch. Of these 19 strains, 11 were able to degrade starch and amylopectin, as well as pullulan. These 11 strains, which were shown to produce extracellular starch-degrading activities, included 5 strains of Biﬁdobacterium breve , 1 B. dentium strain, 1 B. infantis strain, 3 strains of B. pseudolongum , and 1 strain of B. thermophilum . Quantitative and qualitative enzyme activities were determined by measuring the concentrations of released reducing sugars and by high-performance thin-layer chromatography, respectively. These analyses conﬁrmed both the inducible nature and the extracellular nature of the starch- and pullulan-degrading enzyme activities and showed that the ﬁve B. breve strains produced an activity that is consistent with type II pullulanase (amylopullulanase) activity, while the remaining six strains produced an activity with properties that resemble those of type III pullulan hydrolase.
Functional Interactions between Polydnavirus and Host Cellular Innexins (cid:1)

Polydnaviruses are double-stranded DNA viruses associated with some subfamilies of ichneumonoid para- sitoid wasps. Polydnavirus virions are delivered during wasp parasitization of a host, and virus gene expression in the host induces alterations of host physiology. Infection of susceptible host caterpillars by the polydnavirus Campoletis sonorensis ichnovirus (CsIV) leads to expression of virus genes, resulting in immune and developmental disruptions. CsIV carries four homologues of insect gap junction genes (innexins) termed vinnexins, which are expressed in multiple tissues of infected caterpillars. Previously, we demonstrated that two of these, VinnexinD and VinnexinG, form functional gap junctions in paired Xenopus oocytes. Here we show that VinnexinQ1 and VinnexinQ2, likewise, form junctions in this heterologous system. Moreover, we demonstrate that the vinnexins interact differentially with the Innexin2 orthologue of an ichnovirus host, Spodoptera frugiperda . Cell pairs coexpressing a vinnexin and Innexin2 or pairs in which one cell expresses a vinnexin and the neighboring cell Innexin2 assemble functional junctions with properties that differ from those of junctions composed of Innexin2 alone. These data suggest that altered gap junctional intercellular communication may underlie certain cellular pathologies associated with
Metrics for the Evaluation of Adaptivity Aspects in Software Systems

—Runtime adaptivity is related to the ability of the information systems to perform changes by themselves and on themselves during their execution. The engineering of runtime adaptivity is one of the most challenging issues to address in today’s information systems. This is due to the fact that runtime adaptivity requires additional elements at the architectural or structural levels. Moreover, it increases the dimension and computation of a system. Its advantages are mostly related to the improvement of performances, enhancement of the functionalities’ quality and automation of administrative tasks. In this paper we propose a set of metrics for the description and evaluation of adaptive properties of the information systems and of the frameworks which provide support for the development of adaptive systems. They aim to provide a concrete mechanism to analyze the quality of the design of adaptive systems, to determine the type of adaptivity of a system or to compare the adaptive features of different systems. Metrics are grouped into six categories: architectural, structural, performance, interaction, documentation, and miscellaneous. They have been identified and specified by analyzing several case studies which address runtime adaptivity issues through different approaches with different objectives in various application domains and several frameworks for the design and implementation of adaptive systems.
CD40-CD40 Ligand Interactions Promote Trafﬁcking of CD8 (cid:1) T Cells into the Brain and Protection against West Nile Virus Encephalitis (cid:1)

Recent studies have established a protective role for T cells during primary West Nile virus (WNV) infection. Binding of CD40 by CD40 ligand (CD40L) on activated CD4 (cid:1) T cells provides an important costimulatory signal for immunoglobulin class switching, antibody afﬁnity maturation, and priming of CD8 (cid:1) T-cell responses. We examined here the function of CD40-dependent interactions in limiting primary WNV infection. Compared to congenic wild-type mice, CD40 (cid:2) / (cid:2) mice uniformly succumbed to WNV infection. Although CD40 (cid:2) / (cid:2) mice produced low levels of WNV-speciﬁc immunoglobulin M (IgM) and IgG, viral clearance from the spleen and serum was not altered, and CD8 (cid:1) T-cell priming in peripheral lymphoid tissues was normal. Unexpectedly, CD8 (cid:1) T-cell trafﬁcking to the central nervous system (CNS) was markedly impaired in CD40 (cid:2) / (cid:2) mice, and this correlated with elevated WNV titers in the CNS and death. In the brains of CD40 (cid:2) / (cid:2) mice, T cells were retained in the perivascular space and did not migrate into the parenchyma, the predominant site of WNV infection. In contrast, in wild-type mice, T cells trafﬁcked to the site of infection in neurons. Beside its role in maturation of antibody responses, our experiments suggest a novel function of CD40-CD40L interactions: to facilitate T-cell migration across the blood-brain barrier to control WNV infection.
QTL for shape, weight, in the spring wheat cross

Kernel morphology characteristics of wheat are complex and quantitatively inherited. A dou-bled haploid (DH) population of the cross RL4452/‘AC Domain’ was used to study the genetic basis of seed shape. Quantitative trait loci (QTL) analyses were conducted on a total of 18 traits: 14 grain shape traits, flour yield (Fyd), and three agronomic traits (Plant height [Plht], 1000 Grain weight [Gwt], Test weight [Twt]), using data from trial locations at Glenlea, Brandon, and Morden in Manitoba, Canada, between 1999 and 2004. Kernel shape was studied through digital image analysis with an Acurum ® grain analyzer. Plht, Gwt, Twt, Fyd, and grain shape QTL were correlated with each other and QTL analysis revealed that QTL for these traits often mapped to the same genetic locations. The most significant QTL for the grain shape traits were located on chromosomes 4B and 4D, each accounting for up to 24.4% and 53.3% of the total phenotypic variation, respectively. In addition, the most significant QTL for Plht, Gwt, and Twt were all detected on chromosome 4D at the Rht-D1 locus. Rht-D1b decreased Plht, Gwt, Twt, and kernel width relative to the Rht-D1a allele. A narrow genetic interval on chromosome 4B contained significant QTL for grain shape, Gwt, and Plht. The ‘AC Domain’ allele reduced Plht, Gwt, kernel length and width traits, but had no detectable effect on Twt. The data indicated that this variation was incon-sistent with segregation at Rht-B1 . Numerous QTL were identified that control these traits in this population.
University of Birmingham TIA and minor stroke

Background: Transient ischaemic attack (TIA) and minor stroke are often considered transient events; however, many patients experience residual problems and reduced quality of life. Current follow-up healthcare focuses on stroke prevention and care for other long-term problems is not routinely provided. We aimed to explore patient and healthcare provider (HCP) experiences of residual problems post-TIA/minor stroke, the impact of TIA/minor stroke on patients ’ lives, and current follow-up care and sources of support. Methods: This qualitative study recruited participants from three TIA clinics, seven general practices and one community care trust in the West Midlands, England. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 TIA/minor stroke patients and 24 HCPs from primary, secondary and community care. Data was analysed using framework analysis. Results: A diverse range of residual problems were reported post-TIA/minor stroke, including psychological, cognitive and physical impairments. Consultants and general practitioners generally lacked awareness of these long-term problems; however, there was better recognition among nurses and allied HCPs. Residual problems significantly affected patients ’ lives, including return to work, social activities, and relationships with family and friends. Follow-up care was variable and medically focused. While HCPs prioritised medical investigations and stroke prevention medication, patients emphasised the importance of understanding their diagnosis, individualised support regarding stroke risk, and addressing residual problems. Conclusion: HCPs could better communicate information about TIA/minor stroke diagnosis and secondary stroke prevention using lay language, and improve their identification of and response to important residual impairments affecting patients. signposting from a Two minor stroke patients had therapist support through the hospital or their workplace.
New models of primary care: an analysis of the introduction of new professional roles for advanced practices nurses and medical practice assistants in Swiss primary care

Background: Increasing chronic conditions and multimorbidity is placing growing service pressures on health care, especially primary care services. This comes at a time when GP workforce shortages are starting to be felt across Switzerland, placing a threat on the sustainability of good access to primary care. By establishing multiprofessional teams in primary care, service capacity is increased and the pressures on the GP workforce can be alleviated. The roles of non-medical health professions in primary care are not established so far in Switzerland and the personnel composition of primary care group practices is not known. Therefore this study aims to provide insights into the current composition, educational background and autonomy of the these new professional roles in primary care. Methods: For this descriptive exploratory study a web-based online survey methodology was used. Group practices were defined as being a medical practice with any specialisation where at least three physicians work together in a team. Based on this restriction 240 eligible group practices were identified in Switzerland. The following four tertiary-level health professions were included in the study: nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and dietitians. Additionally medical practice assistants with couselling competencies were included. Results: A total of 102 practices answered the questionnaire which is equivalent to an answer rate of 43%. The sample included data from 17 cantons. 46.1% of the practices employed non-physician health professionals. Among the tertiary-level health professions, physiotherapists were the most frequent profession with a total of 78 physiotherapists over all group practices, followed by nurses (43), dietitians (34) and occupational therapists (3). In practices which employ those professionals their average number per practice was 3.4. 25.5% of the practices had health professionals employed with advanced roles and competencies. Conclusion: The results from this study demonstrate that while nearly 50% of groups practices have established non-physician professionals, only 25% of practices integrate these professionals with advanced roles. Compared with other countries, there would appear to be significant scope to extent and broaden the uptake of non-physician professionals in primary care in Switzerland. Clear policy direction along with supporting regulation and financing arrangements are required.