Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of Gene Expression Profiling in Pressure and Volume Overload–Induced Myocardial Hypertrophies in Rats

Gene expression profiling has been conducted in rat hearts subjected to pressure overload (PO). However, pressure and volume overload produce morphologically and functionally distinct forms of cardiac hypertrophy. Surprisingly, gene expression profiling has not been reported for in an animal model of volume overload (VO). We therefore compared the gene expression profiles in the hypertrophied myocardium of rats subjected to PO and VO using DNA chip technology (Affymetrix U34A). Constriction of the abdominal aorta and abdominal aortocaval shunting were used to induce PO and VO, respectively. The gene expression profiles of the left ventricle (LV) 4 weeks after the procedure were analyzed by DNA chips. There were comparable increases in the left ventricular weight/body weight ratio in rats subjected to PO and VO. Echocardiography revealed concentric hypertrophy in the PO animals, but eccentric hypertrophy in the rats subjected to VO. The expressions of many genes were altered in VO, PO, or both. Among the genes that were upregulated in both forms of hypertrophy, greatly increased expressions of B-type natriuretic peptide, lysyl oxidase–like protein 1 and metallothionein-1 (MT) were confirmed by real-time reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Because free radicals are increased in the hypertrophied heart and may contribute to apoptosis, we examined the role of MT, a free radical scavenger, in apoptosis. The overexpression of MT in H9c2 cells inhibited norepinephrine-induced apoptosis, suggesting that MT may act as an anti-apoptotic molecule in cardiac hypertrophy. In conclusion, we found that many genes were regulated in VO, PO, or both. In addition, a novel role of MT in the hypertrophied myocardium was suggested.
An approach to phenotypic analysis and environmental variability. The examples of the genera Dianthus L. and Lotus L. in the north of Portugal

The analysis of the correlation between phenotypic plasticity and environmental variability has been very useful to describe the morphologic responses of individuals to environmental factors affecting them (in the present contribution the altitudinal variation), from a genecological perpective. However, the literature shows that the studies in this area have had a monospecific or monogeneric use. As a consequence, intergeneric comparative descriptions have not been possible. In the present work we propose an analytical method to compare the morphological expressivity of individuals included in the genera Dianthus and Lotus from the north of Portugal by means of a contingency matrix. This matrix was elaborated on the basis of amplitude parameters, in order to describe the variability present in the basic matrix of each genus studied. The results pointed out the existence of opposite phenotypic behaviours dependent on the altitudinal variation, thus indicating the importance of the analysis between different groups of taxa as a reference for the comparison of their morphological expressivities.
Construction of Trusted Computing Platform Based on Android System

With the widespread use of Android mobile phones, the problems of security of phone become increasingly prominent. The Java technology architecture for trusted computing is a trend to solve the above problems. Through the analysis of the current Java platform trusted computing architecture and the security of Android operating system, the trusted platform architecture based on Android and Java is proposed. The mobile trusted modules are implemented by combining the trusted chip and related software such as protocol and algorithm, trusted chip API, computing library API, and computing function library. In this architecture, by analyzing the feasibility of each module, the mobile platform to be verified is trusted.
The inadequacy of musculoskeletal knowledge in graduating medical students in the United Kingdom.

BACKGROUND Musculoskeletal symptoms are common reasons for patients seeking medical attention. Basic competency in musculoskeletal medicine is therefore essential for all clinicians. To our knowledge, this is the first assessment of the competency in musculoskeletal medicine of medical students in the United Kingdom. METHODS Medical students were enrolled after passing final university examinations and being awarded degrees of Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) or Medicinae Baccalaureus, Baccalaureus Chirurgiae (MBChB) in 2013 and were assessed with use of the Freedman and Bernstein musculoskeletal cognitive examination tool. RESULTS Two hundred and thirty students were recruited, of whom 210 were suitable for inclusion. Only 21% (forty-four students) passed the assessment. Mandatory exposure to musculoskeletal medicine during medical school consisted of orthopaedics for 100% of participants for a mean duration of 2.65 weeks, rheumatology for 96% of participants for a mean duration of 2.5 weeks, and sports medicine for 1% of participants for a mean duration of two weeks. There was a significant difference (p = 0.002) in scores between those with career interests in musculoskeletal specialties (69.3%) and the rest of the cohort (54.9%). There was also a significant difference (p = 0.001) in scores between participants with career interests in general practice (42%) and the rest of the cohort (56%). Only 40% of participants considered themselves competent in musculoskeletal medicine. Fifty-five percent thought that musculoskeletal conditions would be an important component of their future practice. CONCLUSIONS Our findings suggest that medical schools may be currently failing to ensure that medical students have a basic competence in musculoskeletal medicine. Further investigation is warranted to fully assess the current training provided by U.K. medical schools in musculoskeletal medicine, and appropriate steps must be taken to improve the quantity and quality of training in musculoskeletal medicine in the United Kingdom.
Comment on growth hormone therapy and retinal changes mimicking diabetic retinopathy.

We read with interest the paper of Koller et al. (1) suggesting that GH therapy could play a role in inducing retinal changes, mimicking diabetic retinopathy in two nondiabetic patients (one adult and one child). There have also been several studies postulating the possible role of GH in the pathogenesis of diabetic retinopathy. We are currently involved in a long-term study, the aim of which is to improve the final height of GH-deficient children, by using higher doses of GH (30 U/m/weekly). Following the publication of the above mentioned paper, we felt it was important to look for any retinal changes in our pediatric population. All our patients (48 males, 37 females), age 10.4 6 2.6 yr, treated for a mean period of 6.4 6 2.9 yr were affected by isolated GH deficiency. None of them complained of any visual disturbances during GH treatment. They all underwent a funduscopic examination during a routine follow-up visit, which was performed by the same observer (M.L.). No signs of neovascularization or any other retinal changes were found in any of the patients. We, therefore, think that our observations are reassuring, since even with high GH doses, as commonly used in Turner’s syndrome, no retinal changes were seen. It would be, however, interesting to see whether this could be confirmed by a similar study in adults.
Effect of hemodilution on tissue perfusion and blood coagulation during radical hysterectomy.

OBJECTIVE The goal of this study was to evaluate the safety of hemodilution on global and splanchnic perfusion and blood coagulation during radical hysterectomy. METHODS A pulmonary artery catheter and a gastric tonometry catheter were placed in 16 patients with cervical carcinoma. Global perfusion indices, splanchnic perfusion index, and coagulation tests were obtained. Blood was removed to achieve a hemoglobin measurement of 8-9 9 g/dL. Three more measurements were repeated after hemodilution, at the end of surgery, and after the retransfusion of blood. Analysis of variance was used to determine statistical significance. RESULTS Sixteen patients with cervical carcinoma had 1.0 +/- 0.3 L (mean +/- SD) of blood removed and had a blood loss of 0.8 +/- 0.7 L. Hemodiluted preoperative hemoglobin was 8.7 +/- 1 g/dL. All of the global perfusion indices, except for arterial pH and oxygen consumption, decreased after hemodilution and recovered with the retransfusion of blood (P < or = 0.004). Splanchnic perfusion and coagulation tests were unchanged (P > or = 0.1). Major complication was pulmonary edema in one patient. CONCLUSION Hemodilution during radical hysterectomy, in this select group of patients, does not appear to compromise tissue perfusion or coagulation.
Autophagy in airway diseases: a new frontier in human asthma?

The study of autophagy (‘self‐eating’), a fundamental cell fate pathway involved in physiological and pathological subcellular processes, opens a new frontier in the continuous search for novel therapies for human asthma. Asthma is a complex syndrome with different disease phenotypes. Autophagy plays a central role in cell physiology, energy and metabolism, and cell survival. Autophagy's hallmark is the formation of double‐membrane autophagic autophagosomes, and this process is operational in airway epithelial and mesenchymal cells in asthma. Genetic associations between autophagy genes and asthma have been observed including single nucleotide polymorphisms in Atg5 which correlate with reduced lung function. Immune mechanisms important in asthma such as Th2 cells and eosinophils also manifest autophagy. Lastly, we address the role of autophagy in extracellular matrix deposition and fibrosis in asthmatic airways remodeling, a pathologic process still without effective therapy, and discuss potential pharmacologic inhibitors. We end by offering two opposing but plausible hypotheses as to how autophagy may be directly involved in airway fibrosis.
Web service discovery among large service pools utilising semantic similarity and clustering

ABSTRACT With the rapid development of electronic business, Web services have attracted much attention in recent years. Enterprises can combine individual Web services to provide new value-added services. An emerging challenge is the timely discovery of close matches to service requests among large service pools. In this study, we first define a new semantic similarity measure combining functional similarity and process similarity. We then present a service discovery mechanism that utilises the new semantic similarity measure for service matching. All the published Web services are pre-grouped into functional clusters prior to the matching process. For a user’s service request, the discovery mechanism first identifies matching services clusters and then identifies the best matching Web services within these matching clusters. Experimental results show that the proposed semantic discovery mechanism performs better than a conventional lexical similarity-based mechanism.
Capillary electrophoretic techniques toward the metabolome analysis

Abstract Metabolome analysis is a systematic chemical analysis of metabolites, which may be used to investigate the metabolic activity in the cell. Capillary electrophoresis (CE) is one of the most promising techniques for the metabolome analysis, because it gives high-resolution separations in a reasonable time and requires a minimum amount of samples. General characteristics of CE are discussed from the viewpoint of metabolome analysis. Micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC), a separation mode of CE, enables the separation of neutral analytes by using micelles as pseudostationary phases. MEKC is also powerful for the separation of ionic analytes to improve selectivity. To solve relatively poor concentration sensitivity with UV absorbance detection, on-line sample preconcentration techniques were developed resulting in up to few thousand-fold increases in sensitivity. Laser-induced fluorescence detection is another solution to increase concentration sensitivity, but most analytes are not natively fluorescent. Therefore, several derivatization reactions were performed to selectively detect a class of analytes with high sensitivity. Some preliminary results are shown with formic acid extracts of Bacillus subtilis.
A DC-link voltage control scheme for single-phase grid-connected PV inverters

A fast DC-link voltage controller is desirable to reduce the DC-link capacitor for PV inverters. This paper proposes a method for single-phase grid-connected PV inverters to remove the ripple component from the DC-link voltage signal and a scheme to regulate the DC-link voltage based on energy-balance analysis. The proposed scheme provides excellent dynamic performance as well as a function to prevent DC-link overvoltage by limiting the input power, which is verified by both simulation and experiments.
Vascular endothelial growth factor +936 C/T polymorphism is associated with an increased risk of endometriosis in a Japanese population

Background. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) concentration in endometriosis patients is higher than controls, in serum and ascites, suggesting that VEGF may play an important role in the pathogenesis of endometriosis. In this study, we investigated whether polymorphisms in the VEGF gene are associated with endometriosis in a Japanese population. Methods. Genotyping of VEGF −460 C/T, +405 G/C and +936 C/T polymorphisms were performed in 147 endometriosis cases diagnosed by laparotomy or laparoscopy at a university hospital, and 181 controls, by polymerase chain reaction‐restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis. We compared the genotype distribution and allele frequency of these 3 polymorphisms between endometriosis patients and controls. Results. No significant differences in the frequency and genotype distribution of VEGF −460 C/T, +405 G/C and +936 C/T polymorphisms were found between the endometriosis patients (all disease stages) and controls. However, a positive association was found between stage III–IV disease and the VEGF +936 T allele (p = 0.018). Conclusions. The VEGF +936 T allele is associated with an increased risk of stage III–IV endometriosis in a Japanese population.
A solution to atomic commitment based on an extended consensus protocol

Chandra and Toueg (1996) have proposed a new approach to overcome the impossibility of deterministically reaching consensus in asynchronous systems subject to crash failures. They augment the asynchronous model with unreliable failure detectors. We present an extension of an algorithm that they proposed to solve consensus using /spl square/S failure detectors. We argue that this extension is a simple and efficient building block which can be used to solve various agreement problems. We consider a particular agreement problem, namely the non-blocking atomic commitment problem and we show the advantages of our solution by comparing it to other classical approaches.
The Luck of the Draw: Using Random Case Assignment to Investigate Attorney Ability

One of the most challenging problems in legal scholarship is the measurement of attorney ability. Measuring attorney ability presents inherent challenges because the nonrandom pairing of attorney and client in most cases makes it difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between attorney ability and case selection. Las Vegas felony case data, provided by the Clark County Office of the Public Defender in Nevada, offer a unique opportunity to compare attorney performance. The office assigns its incoming felony cases randomly among its pool of attorneys, thereby creating a natural experiment free from selection bias. We find substantial heterogeneity in attorney performance that cannot be explained simply by differences in case characteristics, and this heterogeneity correlates with attorneys’ individual observable characteristics. Attorneys with longer tenure in the office achieve better outcomes for the client. We find that a veteran public defender with ten years of experience reduces the average length of incarceration by 17 percent relative to a public defender in her first year. While we find no statistical difference based on law school attended or gender, we find evidence that the public defender’s race correlates with sentence length, with Hispanic attorneys obtaining sentences that were up to 26 percent shorter on average than those obtained by black or white attorneys. We also find evidence suggesting that differences in sentencing may be driven partly by different plea bargaining behavior on the part of the public defenders.
Hospital Nurses' Intentions to Remain: Exploring a Northern Context

Retaining nurses is of significant concern to all hospitals but even more of a concern to northern and rural hospital managers. This study provides insights into factors related to nurses' intentions to remain. A sample of 122 nurses from 13 northern hospitals in Western Canada participated in the study. The nurses completed questionnaires and participated in structured interviews. A model was proposed which suggested that work experiences (job and decision latitude, feedback, perceptions of how viewed and treated by others, fairness of policies, and safety of the job environment) would be related to job satisfaction and then affective commitment. Age and tenure, and ties to the community were proposed as predictors of continuance commitment. Both affective and continuance commitments were expected to be related to intention to remain in the hospital. The model was partially supported by regression analyses. Work experiences predicted job satisfaction and affective commitment. Affective commitment, continuance commitment, and ties to the community are related to nurses' intentions to remain. Supplemental analyses indicated that the strongest relationships were found for management's views and treatment of nurses, knowledge and ability utilization, safe environment, and fairness of organizational policies.
The Neural Consequences of Semantic Richness

Some concepts have richer semantic representations than others. That is, when considering the meaning of concepts, subjects generate more information (more features, more associates) for some concepts than for others. This variability in semantic richness influences responses in speeded tasks that involve semantic processing, such as lexical decision and semantic categorization tasks. It has been suggested that concepts with richer semantic representations build stronger attractors in semantic space, allowing faster settling of activation patterns and thus faster responding. Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined the neural activation associated with semantic richness by contrasting activation for words with high and low numbers of associates in a semantic categorization task. Results were consistent with faster semantic settling for words with richer representations: Words with a low number of semantic associates produced more activation than words with a high number of semantic associates in a number of regions, including left inferior frontal and inferior temporal gyri.
One fracture is enough!: Experience with a prospective and consecutive osteoporosis screening program with 239 fracture patients

Background Fracture and low bone mineral density both have strong predictive value for future fractures. The risk of future fractures can be reduced by medi-cal treatment if patients with osteoporosis are identified, for example by screening fracture patients for low bone mineral density. We suggest that these screening rou-tines be organized at orthopedics departments and we report our experience with such a screening system. Patients and methods We screened all patients between 50–75 years of age with a wrist, vertebral, prox-imal humerus, or hip fracture visiting our orthopedics department by measuring bone mineral density (BMD) using DEXA scans. After diagnosis, the patients were referred to their primary care physician for treatment. Results Between November 1, 2002, and October 31, 2003, 239 patients were investigated and only 13% had normal BMD values. 45% of the patients were diagnosed with osteopenia and 42% with osteoporosis. Interpretation Screening of fracture patients who visit an orthopedics department appears to be an effec-tive way of identifying individuals with low bone min-eral density. The screening routines can be organized as an osteoporosis team consisting of a doctor, a nurse and a secretary at each department. Today, these patients are largely undetected and untreated—at least in our region. In our series, only 13 patients had been DEXA-scanned and were treated by antiresorptive drugs at the time of fracture. ▪
A Simulation-Based Workflow to Assess Human-Centric Daylight Performance

This paper will present an annual simulation-based workflow for assessing human perceptual and non-visual responses to daylight across a series of view positions in an architectural case study. Through the integration of mathematical models used to predict visual interest and non-visual health potential, this paper will introduce an automated workflow to assess an array of view positions (located at eye level) under varied sky conditions and across multiple view directions to analyze the predicted impacts of daylight on perception and health in architecture. This approach allows for a spatial and occupant centric analysis of daylight using an integrated simulation-based approach.
Adolescent Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction: A Retrospective Analysis of Quadriceps Strength Recovery and Return to Full Activity After Surgery

Background This study was intended to provide quantitative assessment of quadriceps muscle recovery in adolescent athletes after anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction. Methods Quadriceps peak torque values from 55 athletes who underwent ACL reconstruction were analyzed. The mean age of the patients was 15.93±1.65 years (40 girls, 15 boys). Isokinetic data were obtained using the Biodex System 3. Quadriceps muscle recovery was defined as achieving ≥85% peak torque for side-to-side comparison. Results Time-to-quadriceps muscle recovery was as follows: 15% by the end of 3 months, 11% by 4 months, 13% by 5 months, and 20% by 6 months. Overall, 32 patients (59%) achieved ≥85% quadriceps strength within 6 months of their surgery date. Of those patients, 16 (50%) patients returned to full activity within 6 months of the date of surgery. Sex was not found to be a significant difference in regard to strength outcomes. Conclusions Quadriceps muscle recovery is one criterion considered when allowing return to unrestricted activities after ACL reconstruction. On the basis of results of this study, middle and high school age athletes have the ability to regain the necessary quadriceps muscle strength required to return to sport within 6 months. Significance Using objective measures of quadriceps muscle return after ACL reconstruction can pinpoint timing of recovery, aid in specific training of deficient muscle groups, and guide return-to-play recommendations for those treating athletes with ACL reconstruction. Level of Evidence Level IV—This is a retrospective cohort study of all patients who underwent ACL reconstruction.