Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Psychological Effects of Halothane and Isoflurane Anesthesia

Psychological effects of halothane (16 subjects) and isoflurane (24 subjects) anesthesia on healthy young men were assessed prior to and 2,3,4,6,8, and 30 days after anesthesia. The results with each agent were compared with each other and with the results for 41 unanesthetized controls. Both agents altered psychological function. Changes in function were greatest 2 days after anesthesia; function had returned to near preanesthesia values 8 days after anesthesia. Only slight symptom and mood effects and no intellectual effect attributable to anesthesia remained 30 days after anesthesia. Halothane produced greater negative effects on moods and symptoms and tended to produce greater negative effects on intellectual function than did isoflurane. The differences between the two anesthetics are consistent with differences in their solubilities and metabolism.
Circular polarized textile antenna at 2.4 GHz

In this paper a circular polarized textile antenna at 2.45GHz is designed and simulated. The antenna used the fleece material as the substrate with permittivity of 1.3 and loss tangent of 0.024 with a thickness of 1 mm. The circular polarized (CP) antenna is achieved by using an inverted z slot asymmetrical structure at the center of radiating element. When the z slot is incorporated onto the square patch, two orthogonal components of electric field are excited with a 90° time phase difference. The proposed antenna has a dimension of 70 × 70 × 1 mm3. The simulated and measured results show that the antenna offers approximately 6.7% bandwidth (2.42GHz–2.59GHz) reflection coefficient, S11 is −32.16dB with impedance bandwidth of 167 MHz. The flexible antenna has axial ratio bandwidth of 80 MHz i.e 3.25% covering the frequency range of (2.42GHz–2.5GHz). The wearable antenna is suitable for application of wearable electronics, wireless monitoring communication system and wireless local area network (WLAN).
A modal logic framework for multi-agent belief fusion

This article provides a modal logic framework for reasoning about multi-agent belief and its fusion. We propose logics for reasoning about cautiously merged agent beliefs that have different degrees of reliability. These logics are obtained by combining the multi-agent epistemic logic and multi-source reasoning systems. The fusion is cautious in the sense that if an agent's belief is in conflict with those of higher priorities, then his belief is completely discarded from the merged result. We consider two strategies for the cautious merging of beliefs. In the first, called level cutting fusion, if inconsistency occurs at some level, then all beliefs at the lower levels are discarded simultaneously. In the second, called level skipping fusion, only the level at which the inconsistency occurs is skipped. We present the formal semantics and axiomatic systems for these two strategies and discuss some applications of the proposed logical systems. We also develop a tableau proof system for the logics and prove the complexity result for the satisfiability and validity problems of these logics.
Progressive brain volume changes and the clinical course of schizophrenia in men: a longitudinal magnetic resonance imaging study.

BACKGROUND We sought to determine whether the brain dysmorphology previously observed cross-sectionally in people with schizophrenia progresses over time and whether such progression is related to the severity of the illness course. SUBJECTS AND METHODS Men with chronic schizophrenia (n = 24) and control men (n = 25) received 2 brain magnetic resonance imaging scans, on average 4 years apart. Changes in brain volume were adjusted for head-repositioning error and expressed as slopes (cubic centimeters per year). Clinical course severity for the schizophrenic patients was assessed using the mean of time 1 and time 2 Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) scores and the percentage of time the patient was hospitalized during the interscan interval. RESULTS Schizophrenic patients exhibited faster volume decline than control subjects in right frontal gray matter and bilateral posterior superior temporal gray matter, as well as faster cerebrospinal fluid volume expansion in right frontal sulci, left lateral ventricle, and bilateral prefrontal and posterior superior temporal sulci. Faster rates of frontal sulcal expansion were related to greater BPRS total and positive symptom scores and longer time hospitalized. Prefrontal gray matter decline and sulcal expansion were associated with greater BPRS negative symptom scores and longer time hospitalized. Temporal lobe gray matter decline was associated with greater BPRS total and negative symptom scores. CONCLUSIONS This controlled study revealed that patients with chronic schizophrenia exhibited accelerated frontotemporal cortical gray matter decline and cortical sulcal and lateral ventricular expansion. Further, greater clinical severity was associated with faster rates of frontotemporal brain volume changes. These observations are consistent with a progressive pathophysiological process but need to be replicated in a larger sample.
CpG DNA Induces Self and Cross-Hyporesponsiveness of RAW264.7 Cells in Response to CpG DNA and Lipopolysaccharide: Alterations in IL-1 Receptor-Associated Kinase Expression1

Exposure of macrophages to LPS induces a state of hyporesponsiveness to subsequent challenge with LPS. It has not been known whether previous exposure to CpG DNA induces a similar suppressive response to subsequent stimulation with CpG DNA. In the present study, we demonstrate that pretreatment with CpG DNA induces suppression of cytokine release in a murine macrophage-like cell RAW264.7 in response to subsequent challenge by CpG DNA. Additionally, CpG DNA-mediated activation of mitogen-activated protein kinases, including c-Jun NH2-terminal kinase, extracellular signal-regulated kinase, and p38, and activation of transcription factors AP-1, CREB, NF-κB, and STAT1 are greatly suppressed in the cells pre-exposed to CpG DNA. Pretreatment with CpG DNA also partially inhibited LPS-mediated production of cytokines and activation of mitogen-activated protein kinases and transcription factors. Neither LPS nor CpG DNA treatment inhibited Toll-like receptor 4, MD2, Toll-like receptor 9, myeloid differentiation factor 88, Toll/IL-1R domain-containing adaptor protein, Tollip, and TNF-α receptor-associated factor 6 expression. Interestingly, CpG DNA or LPS stimulation led to the inhibition of IL-1R-associated kinase expression. These results indicate that CpG DNA-induced refractory of RAW264.7 cells may be, at least in part, due to suppressed IL-1R-associated kinase expression.
Enhanced human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cell functions in novel 3D cartilage scaffolds with hydrogen treated multi-walled carbon nanotubes

Cartilage tissue is a nanostructured tissue which is notoriously hard to regenerate due to its extremely poor inherent regenerative capacity and complex stratified architecture. Current treatment methods are highly invasive and may have many complications. Thus, the goal of this work is to use nanomaterials and nano/microfabrication methods to create novel biologically inspired tissue engineered cartilage scaffolds to facilitate human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) chondrogenesis. To this end we utilized electrospinning to design and fabricate a series of novel 3D biomimetic nanostructured scaffolds based on hydrogen (H2) treated multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and biocompatible poly(L-lactic acid) (PLLA) polymers. Specifically, a series of electrospun fibrous PLLA scaffolds with controlled fiber dimension were fabricated in this study. In vitro MSC studies showed that stem cells prefer to attach in the scaffolds with smaller fiber diameter. More importantly, the MWCNT embedded scaffolds showed a drastic increase in mechanical strength and a compressive Young’s modulus matching to natural cartilage. Furthermore, our MSC differentiation results demonstrated that incorporation of the H2 treated carbon nanotubes and poly-L-lysine coating can induce more chondrogenic differentiations of MSCs than controls. After two weeks of culture, PLLA scaffolds with H2 treated MWCNTs and poly-L-lysine can achieve the highest glycosaminoglycan synthesis, making them promising for further exploration for cartilage regeneration.
An encryption scheme using DNA technology

The vast parallelism, exceptional energy efficiency and extraordinary information density inherent in DNA molecules are being explored for computing, data storage and cryptography. DNA cryptography is a new field of cryptography arising with the research of DNA computing in recent years. In this paper, an encryption scheme is designed by using the technologies of DNA synthesis, PCR amplification and DNA digital coding as well as the theory of traditional cryptography. By applying the special function of primers to PCR amplification, the primers and coding mode are used as the key of the scheme. The traditional encryption method and DNA digital coding are used to preprocess to the plaintext, which can effectively prevent attack from a possible word as PCR primers. Biological difficult issues and cryptography computing difficulties provide a double security safeguards for the scheme. And the security analysis shows that the encryption scheme has high confidential strength. To demonstrate the performance, we present an interesting example to encode and decode message just between specific two persons using the proposed scheme.
Substring compression problems

We initiate a new class of string matching problems called Substring Compression Problems. Given a string S that may be preprocessed, the problem is to quickly find the compressed representation or the compressed size of any query substring of S (Substring Compression Query or SCQ) or to find the length l substring of S whose compression is the least (Least Compressible Substring or LCS problem). Starting from the seminal paper of Lempel and Ziv over 25 years ago, many different methods have emerged for compressing entire strings. Determining substring compressibility is a natural variant that is combinatorially and algorithmically challenging, yet surprisingly has not been studied before. In addition, compressibility of strings is emerging as a tool to compare biological sequences and analyze their information content. However, typically, the compressibility of the entire sequence is not as informative as that of portions of the sequences. Thus substring compressibility may be a more suitable basis for sequence analysis.We present the first known, nearly optimal algorithms for substring compression problems---SCQ, LCS and their generalizations---that are exact or provably approximate. Our exact algorithms exploit the structure in strings via suffix trees and our approximate algorithms rely on new relationships we find between Lempel-Ziv compression and string parsings.
Targeting brain serotonin synthesis: insights into neurodevelopmental disorders with long-term outcomes related to negative emotionality, aggression and antisocial behaviour

Aggression, which comprises multi-faceted traits ranging from negative emotionality to antisocial behaviour, is influenced by an interaction of biological, psychological and social variables. Failure in social adjustment, aggressiveness and violence represent the most detrimental long-term outcome of neurodevelopmental disorders. With the exception of brain-specific tryptophan hydroxylase-2 (Tph2), which generates serotonin (5-HT) in raphe neurons, the contribution of gene variation to aggression-related behaviour in genetically modified mouse models has been previously appraised (Lesch 2005 Novartis Found Symp. 268, 111–140; Lesch & Merschdorf 2000 Behav. Sci. Law 18, 581–604). Genetic inactivation of Tph2 function in mice led to the identification of phenotypic changes, ranging from growth retardation and late-onset obesity, to enhanced conditioned fear response, increased aggression and depression-like behaviour. This spectrum of consequences, which are amplified by stress-related epigenetic interactions, are attributable to deficient brain 5-HT synthesis during development and adulthood. Human data relating altered TPH2 function to personality traits of negative emotionality and neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by deficits in cognitive control and emotion regulation are based on genetic association and are therefore not as robust as the experimental mouse results. Mouse models in conjunction with approaches focusing on TPH2 variants in humans provide unexpected views of 5-HT's role in brain development and in disorders related to negative emotionality, aggression and antisocial behaviour.
Effect of forage inclusion and particle size in diets of neonatal lambs on performance and rumen development.

A slaughter experiment was conducted to determine the effects of alfalfa particle size on rumen morphology and performance of lambs. Twenty-four Balouchi lambs aged 21 days (9.1 ± 1.1 kg) were randomly fed control (diet without alfalfa hay; CON) and mixed rations containing 15% finely ground (FINE; 2 mm) and 15% coarsely chopped alfalfa hay (LONG; 3 to 4 cm). After a 63 days feeding period, nine animals (three per treatment) were slaughtered to obtain ruminal tissue samples for morphological analyses. Alfalfa particle size did not affect (p > 0.05) papillae density, height, width, epithelium depth and surface area. Coarse alfalfa decreased the stratum corneum and increased (p < 0.05) muscle depth compared with fine and control diets. Neither DNA content and nor RNA concentration of rumen tissue was affected by feeding different diets. Forage particle size did not affect the blood concentration of glucose, urea nitrogen (BUN), beta-hydroxybutyric acid (BHBA) and non-esterified fatty acids (NEFA). Dry matter intake and feed conversion ratio were higher for control diet; however, there were no significant differences between treatments for average daily gain. These data suggest that coarse alfalfa significantly reduces the stratum corneum and increases muscularity of rumen wall and tended to better feed conversion ratio.
AUX/LAX family of auxin influx carriers—an overview

Auxin regulates several aspects of plant growth and development. Auxin is unique among plant hormones for exhibiting polar transport. Indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), the major form of auxin in higher plants, is a weak acid and its intercellular movement is facilitated by auxin influx and efflux carriers. Polarity of auxin movement is provided by asymmetric localization of auxin carriers (mainly PIN efflux carriers). PIN-FORMED (PIN) and P-GLYCOPROTEIN (PGP) family of proteins are major auxin efflux carriers whereas AUXIN1/LIKE-AUX1 (AUX/LAX) are major auxin influx carriers. Genetic and biochemical evidence show that each member of the AUX/LAX family is a functional auxin influx carrier and mediate auxin related developmental programmes in different organs and tissues. Of the four AUX/LAX genes, AUX1 regulates root gravitropism, root hair development and leaf phyllotaxy whereas LAX2 regulates vascular development in cotyledons. Both AUX1 and LAX3 have been implicated in lateral root (LR) development as well as apical hook formation whereas both AUX1 and LAX1 and possibly LAX2 are required for leaf phyllotactic patterning.
Geographies of the information society

This article presents the Varenius perspective on the societal dimensions of geographical information technologies and the geographical dimensions of information technologies in general, and puts them in the context of the research literature of the last ten years. The central themes examined are: theoretical perspectives on the societal implications of geographical information technologies; the changing significance of key geographical concepts in the information age; and societal aspects of the practical application of geographical information technologies. The relationships between these themes and three NCGIA Varenius research initiatives on geographies of the information society are summarized, and some directions for future research in this broad area are outlined.
Characterizations of Electron Beam Evaporated Silicon Thin Films on Plastic Substrates for Solar Cells Applications

Samples of thin film silicon (Si) on low cost polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic substrates were prepared by electron beam (e-beam) evaporation technique. Five samples of different thicknesses were deposited. Structural, optical, surface morphology and electrical characterizations were then carried out on these samples by energy dispersion X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy, high resolution X-ray diffraction (HR-XRD), UV spectrophotometer, atomic force microscopy (AFM) and four-probe meter. EDX spectra for these as-evaporated Si thin films on PET showed that the peak at 1.7398 eV belongs to Si atom which confirms the existence of the Si thin film layer. HR-XRD result showed that the chosen sample was highly amorphous. The transmission and reflection were carried out from wavelength 200 nm to 2000 nm and the optical band gap of the samples was calculated by Taucs relations. The root mean square (RMS) of surface roughness was low (smooth morphology) and found to be independent to the thickness of the film. The films were found to be highly resistive due to their intrinsic nature (no doping applied during the deposition). The effects of the properties towards thin film solar cells fabrication were subsequently discussed.
Characterization of Pseudomonas sp. BCNU 171 tolerant to organic solvents

An organic solvent‐tolerant bacterium, designated as Pseudomonas sp. BCNU 171, was isolated from industrial wastewater in Korea, on the basis of its ability to survive in the presence of benzene, toluene, propylbenzene and xylenes. Its tolerance limits were 8 mM in phenol, 20 mM in benzene and 60 M in toluene. The log P value of phenol was approximately 1.5, which indicates that Pseudomonas sp. BCNU 171 exhibits the highest tolerance to organic solvents. Pseudomonas sp. BCNU 171, a relative of P. putida, P. mosselii and P. moteillii based on phylogenetic analyses using 16S rRNA sequences, was designated as a new sp. that is tolerant to a wide spectrum of organic solvents, especially xylene isomers. These findings may facilitate the understanding of organic solvent tolerance in bacterial cells. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
Research in Fracture Healing and Its Clinical Applications in the Veterinary Practice

Bone healing is a complex process consisting of multiple sequential phases needing the coordinated interaction of various cells, growth factors, cytokines and mechanical conditions. However, bone healing is one of the rare regenerative processes resulting in complete restoration of form and function. Fracture treatment aims towards a swift return to functional use of the injured limb. Therefore stabilization is a key requisite. In the veterinary clinic difficult fracture cases often require a unique stabilization by custom made external fixation. While this fixation technique harbors risk factors it offers a high flexibility essentially needed to successfully treat small animal fracture patients. Here we draw the connection between the up-to-date knowledge in bone healing and case reports of external fixation techniques from the small animal practice with respect to benefits and risk factors.
Higgsino dark matter in partly supersymmetric models

Models where supersymmetry (SUSY) is manifest only in a sector of the low-energy spectrum have been recently proposed as an alternative to the MSSM. In these models the electroweak scale is explained by a fine-tuning between different Higgs mass contributions (split-SUSY models), or by the localization of the Higgs sector in a point of an extra dimension where all the mass parameters are suppressed by the metric (partly-SUSY models). Therefore, the presence of a good dark matter candidate becomes the main motivation for (partial) low-energy SUSY. We study this issue in minimal frameworks where the higgsinos are the only light supersymmetric particles. Whereas in split-SUSY models the higgsino should have a mass around $1$ TeV, we show that in partly-SUSY models the lightest higgsino could also be found below ${M}_{W}$.
Automated endotoxin testing program for high-risk-level compounded sterile preparations at an institutional compounding pharmacy.

PURPOSE An endotoxin testing program for high-risk-level compounded sterile preparations (CSPs) was verified for compliance with finished-preparation release test requirements of United States Pharmacopeia chapter 797 and implemented at an institutional compounding pharmacy. SUMMARY An efficient bacterial endotoxins test (BET) was sought for finished-preparation testing of high-risk-level CSPs prepared in batches of > or =25 units. An automated photometric BET was selected that utilized dried, pre-calibrated Limulus amebocyte lysate cartridges rather than liquid reagents and standards. Endotoxin testing began after verifying test conditions for each CSP and approving a standard procedure for training BET analysts and maintaining uniform methodology. A pharmacopeial endotoxin limit and limit dilution were determined for each CSP. The majority of CSPs included patient-controlled analgesia solutions, epidural analgesia solutions, and cardioplegia solutions. BET conditions were verified by measuring the recovery of endotoxin positive controls in sterile water dilutions for each CSP. Cardioplegia solutions met an endotoxin limit of 0.5 EU/mL, and epidural bags had an intrathecal endotoxin limit of 0.05 EU/mL. All other CSPs had detection limits well within compendial requirements. All test results collected during the first year of implementation were pyrogen free, which provided compelling evidence of appropriate application of aseptic technique, appropriate selection of equipment and methods, and the nonpyrogenic quality of powders used in compounding at the pharmacy. CONCLUSION A photometric endotoxins test that met all requirements of the BET was verified and implemented for high-risk-level CSPs prepared in an institutional pharmacy.
Increase of Metabolic Syndrome Score is an Independent Determinant of Increasing Pulse Pressure

Purpose The objective of this study was to determine whether the progressive increase of metabolic syndrome (MetS) score, the number of components of MetS, is correlated significantly with increasing pulse pressure (PP). Materials and Methods 4,034 subjects were enrolled from the Cardiovascular Genome Center of Yonsei University (M : F = 2344 : 1690, 55.2 ± 10.5). Most of the study population were recruited from hypertension clinics, controlled with medications according to JNC7 guidelines. The Asian modified criteria of MetS were applied and MetS score was estimated. The HOMA index for insulin resistance, cholesterol profiles, and anthropometric measurements were assessed. Results Among 4034 participants, 1690 (41.9%) were classified as MetS. Progressive increase in PP was demonstrated for increasing components of the MetS score. Multiple linear regression analysis with PP as the dependent variable showed that age (β = 0.311, p < 0.001), MetS score (β = 0.226, p < 0.001), male gender (β = -0.093, p < 0.001) and HOMA index IR (β = 0.033, p = 0.03) are significantly associated with PP (R2 = 0.207, p < 0.001). Conclusion The present results from this study demonstrate that increasing MetS score is an independent determinant of increasing PP. The results also demonstrate the independent role of MetS in increasing arterial stiffness and PP.