Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Clinical evaluation of the 3M Littmann Electronic Stethoscope Model 3200 in 150 cats

Detection of murmurs and gallops may help to identify cats with heart disease. However, auscultatory findings may be subject to clinically relevant observer variation. The objective of this study was to evaluate an electronic stethoscope (ES) in cats. We hypothesized that the ES would perform at least as well as a conventional stethoscope (CS) in the detection of abnormal heart sounds. One hundred and fifty consecutive cats undergoing echocardiography were enrolled prospectively. Cats were ausculted with a CS (WA Tycos Harvey Elite) by two observers, and heart sounds were recorded digitally using an ES (3M Littmann Stethoscope Model 3200) for off-line analysis. Echocardiography was used as the clinical standard method for validation of auscultatory findings. Additionally, digital recordings (DRs) were assessed by eight independent observers with various levels of expertise, and compared using interclass correlation and Cohen’s weighted kappa analyses. Using the CS, a heart murmur (n = 88 cats) or gallop sound (n = 17) was identified in 105 cats, whereas 45 cats lacked abnormal heart sounds. There was good total agreement (83–90%) between the two observers using the CS. In contrast, there was only moderate agreement (P <0.001) between results from the CS and the DRs for murmurs, and poor agreement for gallops. The CS was more sensitive compared with the DRs with regard to murmurs and gallops. Agreement among the eight observers was good-to-excellent for murmur detection (81%). In conclusion, DRs made with the ES are less sensitive but comparably specific to a CS at detecting abnormal heart sounds in cats.
Role of ENPP1 on Adipocyte Maturation

Background It is recognized that the ability of adipose tissue to expand in response to energy excess, i.e. adipocyte maturation, is important in determining systemic abnormalities in glucose and lipid metabolism. Ectonucleotide pyrophosphatase phosphodiesterase 1 (ENPP1, also known as PC-1) has been recently reported to be involved in the pathogenesis of insulin resistance and related diseases. However, its role on adipose tissue physiology as a mechanism of systemic insulin resistance is not understood. This study was performed to evaluate whether ENPP1 is regulated during adipogenesis and whether over-expression in adipocytes can affect adipocyte maturation, a potential novel mechanism of ENPP1-related insulin resistance. Methodology/Principal Findings ENPP1 expression was found down-regulated during 3T3-L1 maturation, and over-expression of human ENPP1 in 3T3-L1 (pQCXIP-ENPP1 vector) resulted in adipocyte insulin resistance and in defective adipocyte maturation. Adipocyte maturation was more efficient in mesenchymal embryonal cells from ENPP1 knockout mice than from wild-type. Conclusions We identify ENPP1 as a novel mechanism of defective adipocyte maturation. This mechanism could contribute to the pathogenesis of insulin resistance in absence of obesity.
Factors Predicting Employees' Approval of Lean Production

A number of influential studies advocate the adoption of a lean production system (LPS) in order to improve quality and efficiency in Western automotive plants. Critics argue that such systems place excessive demands upon employees. Very little survey data, however, is available on employees' attitudes toward lean production since companies are frequently reluctant to grant such access. Our survey of 200 employees in a Japanese-owned automotive plant in Australia using lean production found that commitment to the company, speed of work and, in special circumstances, age were predictors of employees' approval of the LPS. Employees' perceived levels of stress and Japanese management techniques, such as consultation and a teamwork orientation, were not predictors of approval of the LPS, a finding that contradicts earlier research in this field. Other variables in the analysis, including employee demographics, had no predictive value. We use the results to comment on the wider debate about the transfer of Japanese manufacturing practices to Western countries.
THE IMPACT OF P-GLYCOPROTEIN ON THE DISPOSITION OF DRUGS TARGETED FOR INDICATIONS OF THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM: EVALUATION USING THE MDR1A/1B KNOCKOUT MOUSE MODEL

Thirty-two structurally diverse drugs used for the treatment of various conditions of the central nervous system (CNS), along with two active metabolites, and eight non-CNS drugs were measured in brain, plasma, and cerebrospinal fluid in the P-glycoprotein (P-gp) knockout mouse model after subcutaneous administration, and the data were compared with corresponding data obtained in wild-type mice. Total brain-to-plasma (B/P) ratios for the CNS agents ranged from 0.060 to 24. Of the 34 CNS-active agents, only 7 demonstrated B/P area under the plasma concentration curve ratios between P-gp knockout and wild-type mice that did not differ significantly from unity. Most of the remaining drugs demonstrated 1.1- to 2.6-fold greater B/P ratios in P-gp knockout mice versus wild-type mice. Three, risperidone, its active metabolite 9-hydroxyrisperidone, and metoclopramide, showed marked differences in B/P ratios between knockout and wild-type mice (6.6- to 17-fold). Differences in B/P ratios and cerebrospinal fluid/plasma ratios between wild-type and knockout animals were correlated. Through the use of this model, it appears that most CNS-active agents demonstrate at least some P-gp-mediated transport that can affect brain concentrations. However, the impact for the majority of agents is probably minor. The example of risperidone illustrates that even good P-gp substrates can still be clinically useful CNS-active agents. However, for such agents, unbound plasma concentrations may need to be greater than values projected using receptor affinity data to achieve adequate receptor occupancy for effect.
Participation as a matter of concern in participatory design

This article starts from the paradox that, although participation is a defining trait of participatory design (PD), there are few explicit discussions in the PD literature of what constitutes participation. Thus, from a point of departure in Actor-Network Theory (ANT), this article develops an analytical understanding of participation. It is argued that participation is a matter of concern, something inherently unsettled, to be investigated and explicated in every design project. Specifically, it is argued that (1) participation is an act overtaken by numerous others, rather than carried out by individuals and (2) that participation partially exists in all elements of a project. These traits are explicated in a design project called ‘Teledialogue’, where the participants are unfolded as networks of reports, government institutions, boyfriends, social workers and so on. The argument is synthesised as three challenges for PD: (1) participants are network configurations, (2) participation is an aspect of all project activities and (3) there is no gold standard for participation.
Raf Kinase Inhibitory Protein is Required for Cerebellar Long-Term Synaptic Depression by Mediating PKC-Dependent MAPK Activation

It was demonstrated previously that a positive feedback loop, including protein kinase C (PKC) and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK), is required for the gradual expression of cerebellar long-term depression (LTD). PKC and MAPK are mutually activated in this loop. MAPK-dependent PKC activation is likely to be mediated by phospholipase A2. On the other hand, it is not clear how PKC activates MAPK. Therefore, the entire picture of this loop was not fully understood. We here test the hypothesis that this loop is completed by the PKC substrate, Raf kinase inhibitory protein (RKIP). To test this hypothesis, we used a mutant form of RKIP that is not phosphorylated by PKC and thus constitutively inhibits Raf-1 and MEK, upstream kinases of MAPK. When this RKIP mutant was introduced into Purkinje cells of mouse cerebellar slices through patch-clamp electrodes, LTD was blocked, while wild-type (WT) RKIP had no effect on LTD. Physiological epistasis experiments demonstrated that RKIP works downstream of PKC and upstream of MAPK during LTD induction. Furthermore, biochemical analyses demonstrated that endogenous RKIP dissociates from Raf-1 and MEK during LTD induction in a PKC-dependent manner, suggesting that RKIP binding-dependent inhibition of Raf-1 and MEK is removed upon LTD induction. We therefore conclude that PKC-dependent regulation of RKIP leads to MAPK activation, with RKIP completing the positive feedback loop that is required for LTD.
Psychosomatic dermatology. Is it relevant?

It has long been recognized that psychosomatic factors play a role in dermatologic disease.1The past four decades have seen a marked progress in the understanding of the biologic basis of psychopathology and in the development of pharmacologic treatments for mental disorders. However, at present, psychosomatic dermatology is, at best, on the fringes of mainstream clinical dermatology. Do dermatologists need to familiarize themselves with psychiatric principles along with the principles of general internal medicine? How clinically relevant is the relation between the psyche and the skin? The following perspectives on some interfaces between psychiatry and dermatology may shed light on these questions. PSYCHONEUROIMMUNOLOGIC INTERRELATIONSHIPS There is evidence that central nervous system (CNS) processes modulate immune function and that the immune system in turn provides feedback to the brain.2-5Some of the many findings2-5that support the preceding statement include the following: hypothalamic lesions affect immune function; the
Sources of imprecision in formula cross-validated multiple correlations

Discussion sur la formule de validation croisee dans la regression multiple. L'auteur considere dans cet article que cette formule pose deux problemes; l'un des termes serait incorrectement specifie, et, le calcul d'un autre terme de la formule serait biaise par un faux postulat. L'effet de ces erreurs est evalue et une formule correcte est presentee
The Struggle for EUrope

Constitutions are often born out of tumultuous moments—after a war or in a moment of collective reconciliation. By contrast, the European Constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters last spring sought to translate half a century of peace into a formal political settlement. Although proponents of the constitution, especially within the European left, were dismayed by the No votes, some of them believe that it is possible to turn the rejection into an opportunity both for the left and for the European Union project as a whole.
Fuzzy clustering and relevance ranking of web search results with differentiating cluster label generation

This paper introduces a prototype web search results clustering engine that enhances search results by performing fuzzy clustering on web documents returned by conventional search engines, as well as ranking the results and labeling the resulting clusters. This is done using a fuzzy transduction-based clustering algorithm (FTCA), which employs a transduction-based relevance model (TRM) to generate document relevance values. These relevance values are used to cluster similar documents, rank them, and facilitate a term frequency based label generator. The membership degrees of documents to fuzzy clusters also facilitates effective detection and removal of overly similar clusters. FTCA is compared against two other established web document clustering algorithms: Suffix Tree Clustering (STC) and Lingo, which are provided by the free open source Carrot2 Document Clustering Workbench. To measure cluster quality, an extended version of the classic precision measurement is used to take into account relevance and fuzzy clustering, along with recall and F1 score. Results from testing on five different datasets show a considerable clustering quality and performance advantage over STC and Lingo in most cases.
STARD13-correlated ceRNA network inhibits EMT and metastasis of breast cancer

Competing endogenous RNAs (ceRNAs) network has been correlated with the initiation and development of cancer. Here, we identify CDH5, HOXD1, and HOXD10 as putative STARD13 ceRNAs and they display concordant patterns with STARD13 in different metastatic potential breast cancer cell lines and tissues. Notably, 3’UTRs of these genes suppress breast cancer metastasis via inhibiting epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in vitro and in vivo, which are activated through the crosstalk between STARD13 and its ceRNAs in 3’UTR- and miRNA-dependent manners. In addition, Kaplan-Meier survival analysis reveals that mRNA level of STARD13 and its ceRNAs is remarkably associated with survival of breast cancer patients. These results suggest that 3’UTRs of CDH5, HOXD1, and HOXD10 inhibit breast cancer metastasis via serving as STARD13 ceRNAs.
Social Transfers and the Health Status and Health-Care Utilization of Mothers in Norway and Canada

The goal of this paper is to investigate the health status and health care utilization consequences of social transfers for the health of mothers, in particular lone mothers, in Canada and Norway. Studies from Europe and the US and a recent Canadian work suggest that married individuals are likely to be healthier than single or divorced individuals. Studies that focus specifically on the health status of mothers suggest that the unconditional health status of lone mothers is worse than that of married mothers. However, lone mothers, on average, have lower socio-economic status as well. Since socioeconomic status is an important determinant of health, the health status difference between married mothers and lone mothers often disappears in multivariate analysis which appropriately controls for socioeconomic status. According to microdata from the 1994 National Population Health Survey, in Canada the unconditional health status of lone mothers is significantly lower and rates of health care utilization are significantly higher than is true for married mothers. However, microdata from the 1995 Statistics Norway Health Survey indicate that this same health status/health care utilization difference between married and lone mothers is not apparent. It is also true that in Canada, lone mothers are dramatically more likely to be poor than married mothers, but the same is not true for Norway. Since the literature suggests that socioeconomic status is an important reason for differences in health status, and since social transfers appear to play a central role in alleviating the poverty of lone mothers in Norway, this paper examines the hypothesis that one reason the health status of lone mothers in Norway is relatively better than the health status of lone mothers in Canada is that the state provides more support in the form of transfers in Norway.
Physical Characteristics, Physical Fitness, and Lifestyles of Senior Olympic Athletes and Independently Living Cohorts

The primary purpose of this paper, one of the first physiological studies of Senior Olympic athletes, was to determine the physical fitness level of Senior Olympic participants 50 to 86 years of age. It was hypothesized that Senior Olympic athletes would be more physically fit than healthy older adults not classified as Senior Olympic athletes. The athletes’ screening questionnaire (PAR-Q) results showed a 43% positive rate, making maximal testing and underwater testing impractical and possibly unsafe. However, all subjects were allowed to perform the AAHPERD functional fitness test battery. Senior Olympic athletes did not perform better (p < .05) on any of the AAHPERD functional fitness tests than a group of nonathletes who lived independently. Furthermore, questionnaire results suggested that some athletes were competing with little or no training. These results indicated that researchers and events managers should not assume that all Senior Olympic athletes are exceptionally healthy or physically fit.
Protecting the privacy of passive RFID tags

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is an emerging wireless technology with many potential applications, including supply chain management, personnel tracking and point of sale checkout. Its wide spread adoption raises concerns about known security and privacy vulnerabilities, including the ability of rogue RFID readers to access the unique identifier and data of RFID tags. To prevent the eavesdropping of tag through communication channel, methods like one-way hashing, cryptography and one-time pads have been used; however they do not prevent the clandestine tracking of tags using their unique identifier. We describe a novel scheme to protect the identity of tags, and prevent them from being clandestinely tracked and inventoried. Our approach uses inexpensive passive RFID tags, an RFID reader, an authenticating agent, and a local entity that can dynamically reprogram tags to protect their identity. We ensure visibility of goods to authorized RFID readers at any point in the transit of RFID tagged goods from one location to another, while denying information to unauthorized readers. The approach protects the identity of the RFID tags without significant changes to the existing infrastructure and obviates the need for expensive active RFID tags. We present our scheme in the context of a transit vehicle like a truck which carries RFID tagged goods from one place to another.
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE COGNITIVE BASIS FOR THE SELECTIVITY OF AGE-RELATED MEMORY IMPAIRMENT

Older adults have been found to have a selective impairment in certain types of episodic memory, although other types of memory are generally preserved. The goal of this research is to determine whether the selective age-related memory deficit is best explained by an impairment in perceptual processing, an impairment in the formation of associations between items and their contexts, or an impairment in controlled processing, which is presumed to be required for recollection. Three behavioral experiments were conducted which attempted to evaluate the relative merits of each of these three accounts of age-related memory impairment. To allow for a more meaningful comparison of the data from each experiment, the same participants completed all three behavioral experiments. In addition to the behavioral experiments, an event-related potential (ERP) experiment was conducted to provide further information regarding perceptual processing differences between older and younger adults. When relying solely on perceptual information, rather than semantic and perceptual information, older adults' memory performance was especially poor for perceptually impoverished stimuli (words), but less so for perceptually rich stimuli (pictures). Unlike young adults, older adults did not benefit from repeated presentations of pair information, suggesting that older adults do not form associative links between to-be-remembered stimuli. However, older adults did not show a recollection-specific impairment as the controlled processing hypothesis would have predicted. Older adults were equivalently impaired for both recollection and familiarity measures, suggesting that controlled processing is not specifically impaired in older adults. ERPs for older adults had much more individual variability than for young adults and the differences in ERP waveforms between age groups were observed more consistently in word conditions than in picture conditions, which is consistent with the behavioral results. Additionally, older adult ERPs to pictures were most similar to young adults, in accordance with the behavioral results. The behavioral data support the hypothesis that there is a deficit in perceptual processing which may help explain age-related memory impairments. The ERP data, though limited, lends some support to this explanation as it reveals perceptual and semantic processing differences between young and older adults. An associative deficit may be an additional source of memory impairment.
Function of Candida albicans Adhesin Hwp1 in Biofilm Formation

ABSTRACT Hwp1 is a well-characterized Candida albicans cell surface protein, expressed only on hyphae, that mediates tight binding to oral epithelial cells. Prior studies indicate that HWP1 expression is dependent upon Bcr1, a key regulator of biofilm formation. Here we test the hypothesis that Hwp1 is required for biofilm formation. In an in vitro model, the hwp1/hwp1 mutant produces a thin biofilm that lacks much of the hyphal mass found in the hwp1/HWP1 reconstituted strain. In a biofilm cell retention assay, we find that the hwp1/hwp1 mutant is defective in retention of nonadherent bcr1/bcr1 mutant cells. In an in vivo rat venous catheter model, the hwp1/hwp1 mutant has a severe biofilm defect, yielding only yeast microcolonies in the catheter lumen. These properties of the hwp1/hwp1 mutant are consistent with its role as a hypha-specific adhesin and indicate that it is required for normal biofilm formation. Overexpression of HWP1 in a bcr1/bcr1 mutant background improves adherence in the in vivo catheter model. This finding provides additional support for the model that Hwp1 is critical for biofilm adhesion. Hwp1 is the first cell surface protein known to be required for C. albicans biofilm formation in vivo and is thus an excellent therapeutic target.
The hypomanic attitudes and positive predictions inventory (HAPPI) : A pilot study to select cognitions that are elevated in individuals with bipolar disorder compared to non-clinical controls

The development in science and practice of cognitive therapy for psychological disorders has benefited from coherent models that specify the key cognitions that can be targeted in therapy. A scale is required to identify the cognitions that characterize bipolar affective disorder and that may influence the development of mania or hypomania. In this pilot study, 104 items were generated within five theory-driven categories: Self-activation, Response style, Other-positive, Other-negative, and Self-catastrophic. The mean score for all items, and for each category of items, was significantly elevated in a group of individuals with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder ( n = 22) relative to a group of non-clinical controls ( n = 22). An exploratory analysis revealed the items that were significantly elevated in the bipolar group. Theoretical and clinical implications, limitations and plans for future research are discussed.
Achieving Acculturation in Mergers and Acquisitions: An International Case Survey

Various explanations have been suggested concerning the causes of ‘cultural clashes’ and prescriptions for harmoniously integrating the beliefs and values of merging firms. Using a form of meta-analysis known as a case survey design, which combines the ideographic richness of case studies with the statistical generalizability of larger samples, and a sample consisting of 50 mergers and acquisitions (23 US domestic, 15 Swedish domestic and 12 Swedish cross-border), we found that acculturation is best achieved when the buying firms rely on social controls. That is, by participating in such activities as introduction programs, training, cross-visits, retreats, celebrations and similar socialization rituals, employees will create, of their own volition, a joint organizational culture regardless of expectations of synergies, the relative organization size and differences in nationalities and cultures. A post hoc analysis of a proposed integration control typology further suggests that social controls also indirectly influence acculturation by acting in concert with formal integrative efforts.