Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prophylactic steroids for paediatric open‐heart surgery: a systematic review

Background The immune response to cardiopulmonary bypass in infants and children can lead to a series of post‐operative morbidities and mortality, that is, hemodynamic instability, increased infection and tachyarrhythmias. Administration of prophylactic doses of corticosteroids is sometimes used to try and ameliorate this pro‐inflammatory response. However, the clinical benefits and harms of this type of intervention in the paediatric patient remain unclear. Objectives To systematically review the beneficial and harmful effects of the prophylactic administration of corticosteroids, compared with placebo, in paediatric open‐heart surgery. Search strategy The trials registry of the Cochrane Heart Group, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials in The Cochrane Library (Issue 4, 2006), MEDLINE (1966 to January 2007), EMBASE (1980 to January 2007) were searched. An additional hand‐search of the EMRO database for Arabic literature was performed. Grey literature was searched, and experts in the field were contacted for any unpublished material. No language restrictions were applied. Selection criteria All randomised and quasi‐randomised controlled trials of open‐heart surgery in the paediatric population that received corticosteroids pre‐, peri‐ or post‐operatively, with reported clinical outcomes in terms of morbidity and mortality. Data collection and analysis Eligible studies were abstracted and evaluated by two independent reviewers. All meta‐analyses were completed using RevMan4.2. 8. Weighted mean difference (WMD) was the primary summary statistic with data pooled using a random‐effects model. Main results All cause mortality could not be assessed as the data reports were incomplete. There was weak evidence in favour of prophylactic corticosteroid administration for reducing intensive care unit stay, peak core temperature and duration of ventilation (WMD (95% confidence intervals) ‐0.50 h (‐1.41 to 0.41); ‐0.20°C (‐1.16 to 0.77) and ‐0.63 h (‐4.02 to 2.75) respectively).
Cisplatin neurotoxicity in the treatment of metastatic germ cell tumour: time course and prognosis

In order to ascertain the incidence and prognosis of cisplatin-induced neurotoxicity in testis cancer patients undergoing combination chemotherapy, 29 patients with metastatic disease were studied prospectively. Assessments included enquiry into neurological symptoms, measurement of sural nerve sensory action potential and conduction velocity, and vibration threshold in the left big toe. At the end of chemotherapy (3 to 4 cycles) only 3 out of 26 (11%) patients had paraesthesiae, but 3 months later the proportion rose to 65%. Resolution occurred in the majority over the ensuing 12 months so that only 17% had persistent symptoms. None of the 11 patients treated with 3 cycles of chemotherapy had persisting symptoms. Vibration thresholds showed a significant deterioration during chemotherapy (P = 0.032), further deterioration in the 3 months following chemotherapy (P = 0.009) and significant improvement between 3 and 12 months after chemotherapy (P = 0.038). Sural nerve sensory action potentials and conduction velocities were unhelpful. © 2001 Cancer Research Campaign http://www.bjcancer. com
Effect of water temperature on dermal exposure to chloroform.

We have developed and applied a new measurement methodology to investigate dermal absorption of chloroform while bathing. Ten subjects bathed in chlorinated water while breathing pure air through a face mask. Their exhaled breath was delivered to a glow discharge source/ion trap mass spectrometer for continuous real-time measurement of chloroform in the breath. This new method provides abundant data compared to previous discrete time-integrated breath sampling methods. The method is particularly well suited to studying dermal exposure because the full face mask eliminates exposure to contaminated air. Seven of the 10 subjects bathed in water at two or three different temperatures between 30 degrees C and 40 degrees C. Subjects at the highest temperatures exhaled about 30 times more chloroform than the same subjects at the lowest temperatures. This probably results from a decline in blood flow to the skin at the lower temperatures as the body seeks to conserve heat forcing the chloroform to diffuse over a much greater path length before encountering the blood. These results suggest that pharmacokinetic models need to employ temperature-dependent parameters. Two existing models predict quite different times of about 12 min and 29 min for chloroform flux through the stratum corneum to reach equilibrium. At 40 degrees C, the time for the flux to reach a near steady-state value is 6-9 min. Although uptake and decay processes involve several body compartments, the complicating effect of the stratum corneum lag time made it difficult to fit multiexponential curves to the data; however, a single-compartment model gave a satisfactory fit. ImagesFigure 1Figure 2Figure 3Figure 4Figure 5Figure 6
Finite horizon linear quadratic optimal control

In this article, we investigate the finite horizon linear quadratic optimal control problem. The aim is to find the input u(t) that corresponds to the minimum of a quadratic cost functional. Uniqueness and existence of a solution to the differential Riccati equation, which is intimately tied to the solution of the optimal control problem, is proved by showing that the equation satisfies a global Lipschitz condition. Transforming the cost functional into a simpler form using the Riccati equation then solves the optimal control problem. A linear feedback law is derived as solution to this problem.
Acquistion of Pine Cone Stripping Behaviour in Black Rats (Rattus rattus)

Black rats (Rattus rattus) have begun occupying a new habitat in recent years —the Jerusalem pine (Pinus halepensis) forests in Israel. In this, otherwise almost sterile habitat, the sole source of nourishment for the rats is the pine seems that can only be extracted from the cones through a complex feeding technique. Adult black rats unfamiliar with the technique (termed naive ) were unable to attain it either through trial and error or through observational learning when housed with experienced rats (termed strippers ). In contrast, black rat pups raised by stripper mothers did learn the pine cone opening behaviour. In addition to the presence of a stripper model, however, the clues of the pine seeds themselves, as well as partially open cones, may also play a role in the acquisition of the technique. The state of the cone itself, when encountered by the rat pups, may be an important factor. Three groups of experimental animals were used: 25 pups born to naive mothers and reared on rat chow without exposure to either stripping mothers or partially opened cones; 25 pups born to naive mothers and exposed to pine cones in various stages of opening; 55 pups born to stripper mothers and exposed both to pine cones and to the presence of their mothers actively involved in stripping the cones and feeding on the seeds. We found that pine cone stripping behaviour is learned through two stages of a local enhancement effect: First, the pups are directed to the pine cones as a food resource, and then to the cone's proximal end as a starting point. The development of the stripping technique is acquired individually, with accumulating experience.
What Positive Psychologists and Mormons Can Learn From Each Other

Positive psychologists work to identify cultural practices from across the world that contribute to the good life (Peterson, 2006). Research frequently finds that religious engagement is positively correlated to well-being. The mechanisms by which religion influences well-being, however, are not fully understood and may vary widely by faith. This paper focuses on members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (“Latterday Saints" or "Mormons") who report particularly high well-being—some of the highest well-being of any religious group in America (Newport, Witters, & Agrawal, 2012a). Through the lens of positive psychology, I explore how Latter-day Saint (LDS) practices and teachings may foster well-being. By analyzing similarities between well-being theories and LDS doctrine and behavior, I identify five possible mechanisms through which Mormonism might increase well-being, including fostering prosocial behavior, a focus on family, purpose and meaning, autonomy and agency, and physical health. I also identify areas in which Latter-day Saints struggle and how they might use well-being research to improve their level of flourishing. This investigation suggests that studying Latter-day Saints can (1) provide insight about the benefits and possible harm of certain well-being interventions in real-life application and (2) offer new practical well-being interventions that could be empirically tested. In sum, I propose that the study of Latter-day Saints could increase our understanding of how religion influences well-being and how well-being is cultivated. Keywords Mormons, Latter Day Saints, Well-being, wellbeing, Religion, Spirituality, Depression, Culture, Happiness, Happy, Health, Positive Psychology, Family, Pro-social behavior, service, purpose, autonomy, fasting, tithing, Flourishing Disciplines Child Psychology | Christian Denominations and Sects | Christianity | Community Psychology | Developmental Psychology | Family, Life Course, and Society | Industrial and Organizational Psychology | Missions and World Christianity | Multicultural Psychology | New Religious Movements | Other Psychology | Other Religion | Practical Theology | Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion | Social Psychology Comments Nearly 300 references. The appendices for this capstone are available for download as an additional file. This thesis or dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn. edu/mapp_capstone/75 Running Head: MORMONS AND WELL-BEING 1
Numerical investigation of layered convection in a three‐dimensional shell with application to planetary mantles

Stratified stable layered mantle convection in a three‐dimensional (3‐D) spherical shell is investigated for a range of depth of layer, intrinsic density contrast between the layers (Δρ), and heating mode. Three heating modes are studied: internal heating, bottom heating across core‐mantle boundary, and both combined. For each heating mode, layers were investigated centered at depths from 500 km to 2500 km in 500 km steps and with Δρ from 1 to 5% in 1% steps. We did not find stable layering for Δρ of 1%. Cases with no bottom heating were stable with Δρ of 2%, but Δρ of at least 3% were required by cases with a component of bottom heating. All cases with Δρ of 4% or more were stable. We found that the stability of the layer is strongly dependent on the buoyancy ratio B (B = Δρ ÷ ραΔT, where Δρ is the chemical density increase across the boundary, ρ is the density in the upper layer, α is the thermal expansivity and ΔT is the radial temperature difference across the whole system) with a dense layer becoming unstable B ≈ 0.5. We characterize the height and length scale of the undulations and the area of the interface. Deformations of the interface are largest for cases in which interface is in the midmantle and for cases with small density contrasts. We find that the heating mode does not affect the thermal structure of the layered system, which can be explained with energy balance considerations. The amplitude of the interfacial deformation is found to be unaffected by the heating mode and can be predicted using B. Our results suggest the interfacial thermal boundary layers require large temperature contrasts; therefore the lack of evidence for thermal boundary layers in global seismology studies between 500 and 2500 km depth suggests interfaces at these depths are unlikely.
A new algorithm for small-large table outer joins in parallel DBMS

Large enterprises have been relying on parallel database management systems (PDBMS) to process their ever-increasing data volume and complex queries. Business intelligence tools used by enterprises frequently generate a large number of outer joins and require high performance from the underlying database systems. A common type of outer joins in business applications is the small-large table outer join studied in this paper where one table is relatively small and the other is large. We present an efficient and easy to implement algorithm called DER (Duplication and Efficient Redistribution) for small and large table outer joins. Our experimental results show that the DER algorithm significantly speeds up query elapsed time and scales linearly.
Underrepresentation of Elderly People in Randomised Controlled Trials. The Example of Trials of 4 Widely Prescribed Drugs

Background We aimed to determine the representation of elderly people in published reports of randomized controlled trials (RCTs). We focused on trials of 4 medications—pioglitazone, rosuvastatin, risedronate, and valsartan—frequently used by elderly patients with chronic medical conditions. Methods and Findings We selected all reports of RCTs indexed in PubMed from 1966 to April 2008 evaluating one of the 4 medications of interest. Estimates of the community-based “on-treatment” population were from a national health insurance database (SNIIR-AM) covering approximately 86% of the population in France. From this database, we evaluated data claims from January 2006 to December 2007 for 1,958,716 patients who received one of the medications of interest for more than 6 months. Of the 155 RCT reports selected, only 3 studies were exclusively of elderly patients (2 assessing valsartan; 1 risedronate). In only 4 of 37 reports (10.8%) for pioglitazone, 4 of 22 (18.2%) for risedronate, 3 of 29 (10.3%) for rosuvastatine and 9 of 67 (13.4%) for valsartan, the proportion of patients aged 65 or older was within or above that treated in clinical practice. In 62.2% of the reports for pioglitazone, 40.9% for risedronate, 37.9% for rosuvastatine, and 70.2% for valsartan, the proportion of patients aged 65 or older was lower than half that in the treated population. The representation of elderly people did not differ by publication date or sample size. Conclusions Elderly patients are poorly represented in RCTs of drugs they are likely to receive.
BMCArmor: A Hardware Protection Scheme for Bare-Metal Clouds

Traditional infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) clouds provide virtual machines as servers. However, virtualization incurs a performance overhead and prevents maximum utilization of hardware functions, so several IaaS vendors have started new services called bare-metal clouds that provide physical rather than virtual machines, allowing users to have direct access to physical hardware in the cloud. Unfortunately, exposing physical hardware to users causes a hardware protection issue for cloud vendors. Since physical hardware uses non-volatile memory (NVM) to store firmware code and configuration data, this is also exposed to users. If the NVM is modified by malicious users, the hardware could be permanently corrupted or infected by malware without being noticed. This is difficult for cloud vendors to prevent because bare-metal clouds have no virtualization layer to protect their hardware. In this paper, we describe the types of attacks that are possible for bare-metal clouds and propose BMCArmor, a hardware protection scheme for baremetal clouds. BMCArmor uses a thin hypervisor that does not virtualize the hardware, just preventing access to NVM. Our experiments show that BMCArmor can successfully protect hardware while incurring little performance overhead.
Expression of myelin genes: Comparative analysis of Oli‐neu and N20.1 oligodendroglial cell lines

The use of immortalized cells has been instrumental as a tool with which to study gene regulation. However, it is crucial to understand the status of a given cell line, especially when investigating the regulation of genes whose expression is developmentally regulated. Several immortalized cell lines have been derived from primary cultures of mouse oligodendrocytes. Two such cell lines, N20.1 and Oli‐neu, were characterized here in terms of their relative expression of myelin genes at both the mRNA level and the protein level. Analysis of the splice isoforms expressed by the myelin proteolipid protein (Plp1), myelin basic protein (Mbp), and 2′,3′‐cyclic nucleotide 3′‐phosphodiesterase (Cnp) genes, along with the relative amount of protein expressed by these genes, suggests that the cell lines are representative of immature oligodendrocytes, although Oli‐neu cells appear to be farther along the differentiation pathway compared with N20.1 cells. Previous studies have shown that the developmental increase in Plp1 gene expression that occurs during the active myelination period is governed by transcription regulatory elements present within the first intron. The responsiveness of one of these elements, the so‐called antisilencer/enhancer (ASE), was investigated in both cell lines. Results presented here suggest that the ASE has a much more potent effect in Oli‐neu cells. Thus, the two cell lines appear to be at different stages and will be useful as a means to study transcription regulatory elements whose influence changes during development. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Prediction of the three-dimensional structure of aflatoxin of Aspergillus flavus by homology modelling

Aflatoxins are polyketide-derived secondary metabolites produced by Aspergillus spp. The toxic effects of aflatoxins have adverse consequences for human health and agricultural economics. The aflR gene, a regulatory gene for aflatoxin biosynthesis, encodes a protein containing a zinc-finger DNA-binding motif. AFLR-Protein three-dimensional model was generated using Robetta server. The modeled AFLR-Protein was further optimization and validation using Rampage. In the simulations, we monitored the backbone atoms and the C-α-helix of the modeled protein. The low RMSD and the simulation time indicate that, as expected, the 3D structural model of AFLR-protein represents a stable folding conformation. This study paves the way for generating computer molecular models for proteins whose crystal structures are not available and which would aid in detailed molecular mechanism of inhibition of aflatoxin.
Discovering group interaction patterns in a teachers professional community

Managers and group leaders of a community may not have enough information to help them direct the community development. In this paper, we adopt social network analysis, graph theory and data mining techniques to analyze groups in a community at their different project periods. Each group is presented by several attributes that are computed from social network analysis and graph theory to represent various interactions of the group members. The evolution of these attributes enables the discovery of the interaction patterns of different groups in their life cycles. With these discoveries, team leaders can obtain concise information about their teams' performance, and community managers can cluster groups to capture stereotypes of virtual teams in the community. Such knowledge will benefit group development in a community.
Distinguishing between Presynaptic and Postsynaptic Mechanisms of Short-Term Depression during Action Potential Trains

Short-term facilitation and depression have a profound influence on transmission at many glutamatergic synapses, particularly during trains of stimuli. A major component of these processes is postsynaptic receptor desensitization. Both presynaptic and postsynaptic mechanisms can contribute to synaptic efficacy, but it is often difficult to define their respective contributions. Blockers of desensitization such as cyclothiazide (CTZ) can be used, but many of these drugs have nonspecific effects on transmitter release, complicating attempts to define synaptic effectiveness under physiological conditions. We describe and validate a new method to minimize desensitization during trains of synaptic stimuli that is based on the low-affinity competitive glutamate receptor antagonists γ-d-glutamylglycine or kynurenic acid. A computational model of AMPA receptor kinetics shows that the mechanism can be accounted for by simple competitive antagonism of AMPA receptors, where the rapid off-rate of the antagonist permits re-equilibration between blocked and unblocked pools during the interstimulus interval. Our results at the calyx of Held show that desensitization makes little contribution to synaptic depression at frequencies below 10 Hz, but at higher frequencies it makes an important contribution, with accumulating desensitization masking short-term facilitation and causing an underestimation of quantal content. This novel method of protection from desensitization is compatible with physiological studies but cannot be used in conjunction with CTZ. Although presynaptic vesicle depletion makes the dominant contribution to short-term depression, our results show that AMPA receptor desensitization contributes to the depression at auditory synapses after hearing onset and in a frequency-dependent manner.
The Use of Blood Biomarkers to Predict Poor Outcome After Acute Transient Ischemic Attack or Ischemic Stroke

Background and Purpose— The prediction of death or disability (“poor outcome”) after stroke by validated clinical models might be improved by the addition of blood biomarker measurements. We investigated whether such measurements improved the classification of patients into 4 categories of predicted risk of poor outcome: very high, intermediate high, intermediate low, and very low. Methods— We prospectively recruited symptomatic patients within 24 hours of ischemic cerebrovascular events. We measured clinical prognostic variables in each patient. We drew blood soon after admission and measured markers of inflammation, thrombosis, cardiac strain, and cerebral damage. We assessed poor outcome at 3 months with the modified Rankin Scale and recovery of symptoms at 24 hours. We measured the association between blood marker levels and poor outcome after adjustment for stroke severity and age with multivariate logistic regression. Where these associations were statistically significant, we calculated the net reclassification index. Results— We recruited 270 patients with acute ischemic cerebrovascular events. At 3 months, 112 patients had a poor outcome. After adjustment for stroke severity and age, only interleukin-6 and N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide were significantly associated with poor outcome. The addition of either interleukin-6 or N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide to National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale and age did not improve the prediction of a poor outcome. Conclusions— Neither interleukin-6 nor N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide had sufficient predictive power to be of clinical use to predict poor outcome after stroke. The search for better markers to improve the classification of patients across clinically relevant boundaries of predicted probabilities of outcome events needs to continue.
Molecular Basis for Drug Resistance in HIV-1 Protease

HIV-1 protease is one of the major antiviral targets in the treatment of patients infected with HIV-1. The nine FDA approved HIV-1 protease inhibitors were developed with extensive use of structure-based drug design, thus the atomic details of how the inhibitors bind are well characterized. From this structural understanding the molecular basis for drug resistance in HIV-1 protease can be elucidated. Selected mutations in response to therapy and diversity between clades in HIV-1 protease have altered the shape of the active site, potentially altered the dynamics and even altered the sequence of the cleavage sites in the Gag polyprotein. All of these interdependent changes act in synergy to confer drug resistance while simultaneously maintaining the fitness of the virus. New strategies, such as incorporation of the substrate envelope constraint to design robust inhibitors that incorporate details of HIV-1 protease’s function and decrease the probability of drug resistance, are necessary to continue to effectively target this key protein in HIV-1 life cycle.