Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Perfusion heterogeneity does not explain excess muscle oxygen uptake during variable intensity exercise

The association between muscle oxygen uptake (VO2) and perfusion or perfusion heterogeneity (relative dispersion, RD) was studied in eight healthy male subjects during intermittent isometric (1 s on, 2 s off) one‐legged knee‐extension exercise at variable intensities using positron emission tomography and a‐v blood sampling. Resistance during the first 6 min of exercise was 50% of maximal isometric voluntary contraction force (MVC) (HI‐1), followed by 6 min at 10% MVC (LOW) and finishing with 6 min at 50% MVC (HI‐2). Muscle perfusion and O2 delivery during HI‐1 (26 ± 5 and 5·4 ± 1·0 ml 100 g−1 min−1) and HI‐2 (28 ± 4 and 5·8 ± 0·7 ml 100 g−1 min−1) were similar, but both were higher (P<0·01) than during LOW (15 ± 3 and 3·0 ± 0·6 ml 100 g−1 min−1). Muscle VO2 was also higher during both HI workloads (HI‐1 3·3 ± 0·4 and HI‐2 4·1 ± 0·6 ml 100 g−1 min−1) than LOW (1·4 ± 0·4 ml 100 g−1 min−1; P<0·01) and 25% higher during HI‐2 than HI‐1 (P<0·05). O2 extraction was higher during HI workloads (HI‐1 62 ± 7 and HI‐2 70 ± 7%) than LOW (45 ± 8%; P<0·01). O2 extraction tended to be higher (P = 0·08) during HI‐2 when compared to HI‐1. Perfusion was less heterogeneous (P<0·05) during HI workloads when compared to LOW with no difference between HI workloads. Thus, during one‐legged knee‐extension exercise at variable intensities, skeletal muscle perfusion and O2 delivery are unchanged between high‐intensity workloads, whereas muscle VO2 is increased during the second high‐intensity workload. Perfusion heterogeneity cannot explain this discrepancy between O2 delivery and uptake. We propose that the excess muscle VO2 during the second high‐intensity workload is derived from working muscle cells.
Multiangular Observation of Canopy Sun-Induced Chlorophyll Fluorescence by Combining Imaging Spectroscopy and Stereoscopy

The effect that the canopy structure and the viewing geometry have on the intensity and the spatial distribution of passively measured sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence at canopy scale is still not well understood. These uncertainties constrain the potential use of fluorescence to quantify photosynthesis at this level. Using a novel technique, we evaluated the diurnal changes in the spatial distribution of sun-induced fluorescence at 760 nm (F760) within the canopy as a consequence of the spatial disposition of the leaves and the viewing angle of the sensor. High resolution spectral and stereo images of a full sugar beet canopy were recorded simultaneously in the field to estimate maps of F760 and the surface angle distribution, respectively. A dedicated algorithm was used to align both maps in the post-processing and its accuracy was evaluated using a sensitivity test. The relative angle between sun and the leaf surfaces primarily determined the amount of incident Photosynthetic Active Radiation (PAR), which in turn was reflected in different values of F760, with the highest values occurring in leaf surfaces that are perpendicularly oriented to the sun. The viewing angle of the sensor also had an impact in the intensity of the recorded F760. Higher viewing angles generally resulted in higher values of F760. We attribute these changes to a direct effect of the vegetation directional reflectance response on fluorescence retrieval. Consequently, at leaf surface level, the spatio-temporal variations of F760 were mainly explained by the sun–leaf–sensor geometry rather than directionality of the fluorescence emission. At canopy scale, the diurnal patterns of F760 observed on the top-of-canopy were attributed to the complex interplay between the light penetration into the canopy as a function of the display of the various leaves and the fluorescence emission of each leaf which is modulated by the exposure of the individual leaf patch to the incoming light and the functional status of photosynthesis. We expect that forward modeling can help derive analytical simplified skeleton assumptions to scale canopy measurements to the leaf functional properties.
The meaning and the measure of health literacy

Health literacy is a complicated construct that depends on individual capacity to communicate and the demands posed by society and the health care system. More comprehensive tests are needed to understand the gap between capacities and current demands to help guide efforts to educate children and adults about health issues and to develop health-related information that more of the general public can understand. For research, new instruments are needed that will measure individuals reading fluency more precisely without posing an undue response burden. Computer-assisted testing, which selects items from a bank of possible items according to a baseline-predicted reading ability and responses to previous questions, should allow more accurate measurement of indiidual capacity without increasing the time required to complete testing. It remains unclear whether it is possible to develop an accurate, practical “screening” test to identify individuals with limited health literacy. Even if this goal is achieved, it remains unclear whether it is better to screen patients or to adopt “universal precautions” to avoid miscommunication by using plain language in all oral and written communication and confirming understanding with all patients by having them repeat back their understanding of their diagnosis and treatment plan. George Bernard Shaw said, “The main problem with communication is the assumption that it has occurred. ” This is a universal truth that transcends reading ability.
Building Large Scale Distributed Semantic Feature Sets with WordNet

An algorithm is described for using the WordNet (Miller, 1990) online semantic database to generate semantic features for English monosyllables for use in connectionist modeling. The desired features of such a method are first described. Then the method of creating features is detailed. This document concludes with analyses of the characteristics of the resulting representations.
3D printed substrate integrated waveguide filters with locally controlled dielectric permittivity

This paper presents, for the first time, the implementation of SIW filters by 3D printing manufacturing technique. The possibility of locally modifying the effective dielectric permittivity by changing the infill factor of the printing process is exploited and demonstrated. This allows adopting a single filament material to obtain different permittivity values in the various portions of a microwave component. Moreover, the variation of the infill factor allows reducing the dielectric loss tangent of the material: this permits increasing the quality factor of cavity filters even by using the same material. These features are illustrated through the design and experimental verification of two SIW filters, with identical frequency response but fabricated with different infill factor of the printing process, via fused deposition modeling (FDM).
Fellowship of the snow. WTA 2014 Presidential Address.

W ell, that is a WTA (Western Trauma Association) moment! Classic Western Trauma! That would make the perfect WTA abstract! These phrases are a unique part of our lexicon and mythology. I do not think I have ever heard of an AAST (American Association for the Surgery of Trauma) moment and definitely not an SUS or American Surgical moment. There is no doubt that this is a special and unique organization such that being your president is the pinnacle of my professional career. When I thought about the most memorable addresses I have heard in this forum during the past 2 decades, they have been personal and have come from the heart. They also most commonly could not have been given as presidential addresses to any other ‘‘professional’’ organization. Thus, they were the true embodiment of a ‘‘WTA moment. ’’ I surely have no idea where medicine is going or how to best teach the next generation. My own research, which you have heard mentioned, is fairly eclectic, and while I consider it interesting, it likely holds minimal interest for many. Sort of like porcupines making love, fascinating as a concept, but not something you really want to see. No, what I kept coming back to is what the WTA represents, why this is the perfect meeting, and why we actually need the WTA in our lives, maybe even more now than when it was founded. More importantly, it is what the WTA might be able to teach you about balance in your professional life; how some of these concepts might sustain you for the 51 weeks we are not together; and just how did a bunch of orthopods on a ski boondoggle get it so right or, if they did not, how the wisdom of those who followed did. To accomplish this, I am going to go through a bit about our society and especially the structure of our annual meetingVhow
Regulation of sleep and naps on an irregular schedule.

For many occupational groups there is an implicit requirement that sleep be taken according to very irregular schedules. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of an irregular sleep schedule on sleep and to determine if such effects could be attributed to the timing of sleep. Eight subjects slept in an isolation unit according to an irregular schedule comprising four 8-hour sleep periods, 12 6-hour sleep periods and 12 1-hour naps. The schedule was designed to give normal amounts of time (1/3 of total) in bed. Large variations in mean sleep efficiency (100-46%) were observed, which in individual cases frequently involved a complete absence of sleep. In 6-hour sleep periods the loss was due to an inability to maintain sleep, whereas in naps the loss was due to an inability to initiate sleep. The major causes of reduced sleep were short prior time awake and bedtime close to the circadian acrophase of rectal temperature (i.e. late afternoon). These two components accounted for 46% of the intraindividual variance of total sleep time (TST). TST increased by 9.2 minutes for each hour of prior time awake and by 10 minutes for each hour of deviation from the circadian acrophase of rectal temperature. Prior time awake also exerted a strong influence on slow-wave sleep (SWS), and circadian phase exerted a similar influence on rapid eye movement sleep. We concluded that irregular sleep patterns strongly affect sleep and that circadian and homeostatic influences are clearly discernible despite the irregularity. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Exopolysaccharide Expression in Lactococcus lactis subspecies 1 cremoris Ropy 352 : Evidence for Novel Gene Organization 2

Eric Knoshaug is currently at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, National Bioenergy Center, Golden, CO 80401 Jeff Ahlgren is currently at Wyatt Technology Corporation, Santa Barbara, CA 93117 AC CE PT ED Copyright © 2006, American Society for Microbiology and/or the Listed Authors/Institutions. All Rights Reserved. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. doi:10.1128/AEM.01945-06 AEM Accepts, published online ahead of print on 22 November 2006
SIMULATION OF OPTIMAL SPEED CONTROL FOR A DC MOTOR USING LINEAR QUADRATIC REGULATOR (LQR)

This paper describes DC motor speed control based on optimal Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) technique. Controller's objective is to maintain the speed of rotation of the motor shaft with a particular step response.The controller is modeled in MATLAB environment, the simulation results show that the proposed controller gives better performance and less settling time when compared with the traditional PID controller.
Comorbidities in amputation: a systematic review of hemiplegia and lower limb amputation

Purpose: The purpose of this review of the scientific literature was to investigate the incidence and prevalence of hemiplegia with lower limb amputation, and to identify outcomes following the dual disability of hemiplegia and amputation. Methods: Electronic searching of the literature identified major studies examining the effects of hemiplegia on rehabilitation following amputation. Data were extracted and levels of evidence assigned for each subtopic area. Results: The summary conclusions are Level 4 evidence. The prevalence of amputation and hemiplegia is 8–18% and amputation and hemiplegia occur most often in the same leg. Once individuals with hemiplegia and lower limb amputation are selected for prosthetic rehabilitation, rate of successful functional ambulation is greater than 58%. In general there is a lower rate of prosthetic success and independence with hemiplegia than without. Predictive factors associated with success include less severe hemiplegia, laterality of hemiplegia (ipsilateral and right side), transtibial level of amputation and absence of impaired mental function. There is wide variation in length of hospital stay, but a specialty multidisciplinary team reduces length of stay. Conclusions: Patients with dual disability of hemiplegia and amputation generally benefit from a prosthetic rehabilitation program. Further study on predictive factors for outcome would be beneficial. Implications for Rehabilitation The prevalence of hemiplegia with lower limb amputation ranges from 8 to 18%, most frequently affecting the same leg. The majority of patients attain successful functional levels of ambulation with prosthetic rehabilitation, although lower rates than nonhemiplegic patients. Predictive factors associated with greater success include less severe hemiplegia, ipsilateral hemiplegia, transtibial level of amputation and absence of impaired mental function.
Need to clarify Thrombolysis In Myocardial Ischemia (TIMI) scale scoring method in the Penumbra Pivotal Stroke Trial.

To the Editor: We congratulate the Penumbra Investigators on the successful completion of the Penumbra Pivotal Stroke Trial.1 The addition of the Penumbra System to the therapeutic armamentarium is an important advance in acute stroke care. A major defect of the report is the investigators do not specify how they measured the primary trial outcome, angiographic revascularization. They state without further elaboration that the core laboratory used the Thrombolysis In Myocardial Ischemia (TIMI) scale to assess revascularization. However, the TIMI scale was developed for the myocardial circulation and cannot be applied in the more complex cervicocephalic arterial tree without the creation of additional operational rules. A recent review found no fewer than 7 different operationalized versions of the TIMI scale being used across different stroke trials.2 The Stroke Therapy Academic Industry Roundtable (STAIR) has for this reason recommended abandonment of the TIMI in future cerebral revascularization clinical trials and use of one or more of the more transparent …
Immuno‐MALDI‐TOF MS: New perspectives for clinical applications of mass spectrometry

The discovery of novel biomarkers by means of advanced detection tools based on proteomic analysis technologies necessitates the development of improved diagnostic methods for application in clinical routine. On the basis of three different application examples, this review presents the limitations of conventional routine diagnostic assays and illustrates the advantages of immunoaffinity enrichment combined with MALDI‐TOF MS. Applying this approach increases the specificity of the analysis supporting a better diagnostic recognition, sensitivity, and differentiation of certain diseases. The use of MALDI‐TOF MS as detection method facilitates the identification of modified peptides and proteins providing additional information. Further, employing respective internal standard peptides allows for relative and absolute quantitation which is mandatory in the clinical context. Although MALDI‐TOF MS is not yet established for clinical routine diagnostics this technology has a high potential for improvement of clinical diagnostics and monitoring therapeutic efficacy.
Wrinkling Instability of Graphene on Substrate-Supported Nanoparticles

Wrinkles in graphene with desirable morphology have practical significance for electronic applications. Here we carry out a systematic molecular dynamics study of the wrinkling instability of graphene on substrate-supported nanoparticles (NPs). At a large NP dispersion distance, a monolayer graphene adheres to the substrate and bulges out locally to wrap around individual NPs, forming isolated dome-shaped protrusions. At a small NP dispersion distance, tunneling wrinkles form in graphene to bridge the NP-induced protrusions. A critical NP dispersion distance for the onset of tunneling wrinkle instability of graphene is determined as a function of the NP size. The prediction from the modeling study agrees well with recent experimental observations. Results from the present study offer further insights into the formation of desirable wrinkles in graphene deposited on a substrate with engineered protrusions and, thus, can potentially enable novel design of graphene-based electronics.
Corpus-based Malay text-to-speech synthesis system

The main problem with current Malay text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis system is the poor quality of the generated speech sound. This poor quality is resulted from the inability of traditional TTS system to provide multiple choices of unit for generating more accurate synthesized speech. Most of the current available Malay TTS systems are utilizing diphone concatenation that only support a single unit for each existing diphone, thus it cannot provide more accurate selection of speech unit for concatenation. This project has implemented a variable length unit selection Malay text to speech system that is capable of providing more natural and accurate unit selection for synthesized speech. This paper proposes a method of combining both linguistic context and feature distance cost for selecting the best match unit. A set of digitized Malay word has been collected from Malay Internet news for Malay word frequency count. 381 sentences have been designed which cover around 70 percent of high frequency words from 10 million digitized word obtained from Malay Internet news. Then a unit selection method has been implemented to provide the capability of selecting a speech unit not only limited to phoneme, diphone or triphone but also a string of phonemes that can be matched directly to the database. A set of listening test namely modify rhythm test (MRT) has been carried out with 35 participants, which represented 86 percent of accuracy.
Improving patient participation in a challenging context: a 2‐year evaluation study of an implementation project

AIM To evaluate an implementation project on patient participation. BACKGROUND Patient participation is one of the cornerstones of person-centred care. A previous intervention study resulted in improved patient participation in a surgical department in a large university hospital in Sweden. A subsequent implementation project was guided by the PARiSH framework and included several strategies over 2 years. METHOD Patients (n = 198) in five units completed a questionnaire and nurse managers (n = 5) were interviewed. RESULTS Although the long-term implementation project did not improve patient participation in the units, the nurse managers described a changing culture in which staff grew to accept patients' involvement in their own care. Several barriers to change and sustainability were acknowledged. CONCLUSIONS Improving patient participation in a busy environment is challenging. The framework was useful in the different steps of the project. In the future, the interrelationship of the core elements needs to be analysed in an ongoing and deeper way to allow both prediction and prevention of barriers to improvement. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT A dedicated leadership together with skilled facilitators should encourage and support staff to reflect on their attitudes and ways of working to increase person-centred care.
Infection in solid-organ transplant recipients.

To the Editor: In his review of infections in recipients of solid-organ transplants, Fishman (Dec. 20 issue)1 discusses Clostridium difficile diarrhea in the immediate post-transplantation period. Although this infection has been reported previously in liver-transplant recipients,2 there is mounting evidence that gastric acid suppression may be implicated in this infection both in the community and in hospitalized patients,3,4 including patients with cirrhosis.5 In many institutions that perform transplantation, it is standard practice to prescribe proton-pump inhibitors in the immediate post-transplantation period in order to provide protection against stress ulceration and bleeding in the intensive care setting and subsequently as .
The detection and multiplication of influenza C virus in tissue culture.

Summary The study was designed to examine the use of various tissue cultures for their ability to support the growth of influenza C virus; and to seek a suitable erythrocyte for haemadsorption by this virus in tissue culture. Rat erythrocytes were found to have a strong affinity for influenza C virus, and their use demonstrated the superiority of rhesus monkey kidney cultures over several other cell cultures for the growth of this virus. Neutralization tests in rhesus monkey kidney cultures using rat erythrocyte haemadsorption proved to be a sensitive method to demonstrate antigenic cross relationships between strains of influenza C virus.
Seedling recruitment, survival and facilitation in alpine Pinus uncinata tree line ecotones. Implications and potential responses to climate warming

Aims Alpine tree line ecotones are harsh environments where low temperatures constrain tree regeneration and growth. However, the expected upward shift of tree line ecotones in response to climate warming has not been ubiquitous. The lack of coupling between tree line dynamics and climate warming might be explained by factors other than climate variation that determine seedling recruitment in these ecotones. We want to assess how the availability of suitable habitat for establishment and the effects of facilitation on seedling survival and growth affect tree recruitment within tree line ecotones and modulate their responses to climate. Location We evaluate the relevance of these factors for Pinus uncinata tree line ecotones in the Catalan Pyrenees (north-east Spain) and Andorra. Methods We analysed the microhabitat of naturally established seedlings in rectangular plots at the tree line ecotone, assessing the habitat type and the proximity to potentially protective elements that may improve microsite conditions. We tested whether krummholz individuals influence regeneration at the tree line by performing a transplantation field experiment to evaluate the extent of facilitation on seedling survival and growth in height. A total of 820 seedlings were transplanted at different distances and orientations (resulting in 12 positions) from krummholz mats and monitored over 2 years. Results Safe sites for P. uncinata recruits consisted of sparse vegetation covering bare soil, gravel or litter, and close to protective elements that may ameliorate microsite conditions. The field experiment showed that directional positive interactions enhance seedling survival and growth, altering the spatial patterns of recruit survivorship, especially during harsh winter conditions (shallow and irregular snowpack). Main conclusions Our results suggest that scarce availability of safe sites and uneven facilitation by krummholz control seedling recruitment patterns within alpine tree line ecotones. Such constraints may distort or counter the response of tree line ecotones to climate warming at local and regional scales.