Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cardio renal syndromes 2015: Is there a silver lining to the dark clouds?

Kidneys have a pivotal role in maintaining our homeostasis. Kidneys and heart work in tandem to maintain volume homeostasis. Heart failure impacts renal function in many ways including renal hypo perfusion but also due to increased venous pressure along with stimulation of various neuro-humoral responses. Renal failure induces cardiac damage and dysfunction by causing volume overload, inflammation and cardiomyocyte fibrosis. Concomitant comorbidities like Hypertension and Diabetes also play important role resulting in Cardiorenal Syndrome (CRS). Acute Dialysis Quality Initiative, 2007 recognized the bidirectional nature and different manifestations of CRS in acute and chronic settings. Diuretics are the most common drugs to treat the most common symptoms of CRS i.e., peripheral edema and pulmonary congestion. Diuretics could nevertheless contribute to worsening renal function (WRF). Initially it was accepted that WRF during the course of treatment of acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF) uniformly resulted in worse prognosis. However, in view of a few recent studies, the significance of WRF early in response to treatment of ADHF is being debated. The optimal dose and method of delivery of diuretics is still undecided. Isolated ultrafiltration does not improve renal function in patients with CRS despite the early promise. A large, multicentre trial ruled out any survival benefits with Recombinant Brain Natriuretic Peptide (Nesiritide). Despite good physiological basis and early promise with smaller studies, many drugs like Dobutamine, Rolofylline and Tolvaptan failed to show survival benefit in larger studies. However, two recent studies involving Relaxin and Neprilysin have shown good survival advantage. There had been little progress in treatment of CRS until studies involving Relaxin and Neprilysin inhibitor combination with ARB were published. There may after all, be a glimmer of hope in the field of CRS bogged by multiple negative studies. Keywords: Acute Decompensated Heart Failure (ADHF), Acute Dialysis Quality Initiative (ADQI), Anemia, Cardiorenal anemia, Atrial Natriuretic Peptide (ANP), Blood Urea Nitrogen (BUN), Brain-type Natriuretic Peptide (BNP), Cardio Renal Syndrome (CRS), Central Venous Pressure (CVP), Congestive Heart Failure (CHF), Diuretic Resistance (DR), Estimated Glomerular Filtration Rate (eGFR), Heart Failure (HF), Intra-abdominal Pressure (IAP), Juxta glomerular (JG) apparatus, Left Atrium (LA), Left Ventricular Ejection Fraction (LVEF), Neprilysin inhibitor, Neprilysin, Relaxin, Renin-Angiotensin- Aldosterone System (RAAS), Sacubitril, Serelaxin, Sympathetic Nervous System(SNS), Ultrafiltration (UF), Worsening Renal Function (WRF).
Using Crowdsourced Trajectories for Automated OSM Data Entry Approach

The concept of crowdsourcing is nowadays extensively used to refer to the collection of data and the generation of information by large groups of users/contributors. OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a very successful example of a crowd-sourced geospatial data project. Unfortunately, it is often the case that OSM contributor inputs (including geometry and attribute data inserts, deletions and updates) have been found to be inaccurate, incomplete, inconsistent or vague. This is due to several reasons which include: (1) many contributors with little experience or training in mapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS); (2) not enough contributors familiar with the areas being mapped; (3) contributors having different interpretations of the attributes (tags) for specific features; (4) different levels of enthusiasm between mappers resulting in different number of tags for similar features and (5) the user-friendliness of the online user-interface where the underlying map can be viewed and edited. This paper suggests an automatic mechanism, which uses raw spatial data (trajectories of movements contributed by contributors to OSM) to minimise the uncertainty and impact of the above-mentioned issues. This approach takes the raw trajectory datasets as input and analyses them using data mining techniques. In addition, we extract some patterns and rules about the geometry and attributes of the recognised features for the purpose of insertion or editing of features in the OSM database. The underlying idea is that certain characteristics of user trajectories are directly linked to the geometry and the attributes of geographic features. Using these rules successfully results in the generation of new features with higher spatial quality which are subsequently automatically inserted into the OSM database.
Psychiatry and Criminal Culpability

CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY: THE INSANITY DEFENSE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. The M'Naghten and Other Rules of Criminal Responsibility. Analysis of Criminal Responsibility. The Meaning of "Mental Illness" in Criminal Responsibility. The Causal Nexus Between Mental Illness and Impairment of Cognition or Control. Burden of Proof and Psychiatric Testimony on Insanity. Diminished Capacity. Disposition of the Insanity Acquittee. PSYCHIATRIC TESTIMONY UNDER A NOT GUILTY PLEA. Psychiatric Testimony on Character and the Inconsistent Personality Defense. Syndrome Evidence. PSYCHIATRIC TESTIMONY IN CRITIQUE. The Attacks on Psychiatric Testimony. Psychiatric Postdicting. Psychiatric Testimony on Credibility. SIN OR SICKNESS? Whatever Happended to Sin? Epilogue. Endnotes. Table of Cases. Indexes.
Lattice Indexing for Spoken Term Detection

This paper considers the problem of constructing an efficient inverted index for the spoken term detection (STD) task. More specifically, we construct a deterministic weighted finite-state transducer storing soft-hits in the form of (utterance ID, start time, end time, posterior score) quadruplets. We propose a generalized factor transducer structure which retains the time information necessary for performing STD. The required information is embedded into the path weights of the factor transducer without disrupting the inherent optimality. We also describe how to index all substrings seen in a collection of raw automatic speech recognition lattices using the proposed structure. Our STD indexing/search implementation is built upon the OpenFst Library and is designed to scale well to large problems. Experiments on Turkish and English data sets corroborate our claims.
Mesoporous MnCo2O4 with a flake-like structure as advanced electrode materials for lithium-ion batteries and supercapacitors.

A mesoporous flake-like manganese-cobalt composite oxide (MnCo2O4) is synthesized successfully through the hydrothermal method. The crystalline phase and morphology of the materials are characterized by X-ray diffraction, field-emission scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller methods. The flake-like MnCo2O4 is evaluated as the anode material for lithium-ion batteries. Owing to its mesoporous nature, it exhibits a high reversible capacity of 1066 mA h g(-1), good rate capability, and superior cycling stability. As an electrode material for supercapacitors, the flake-like MnCo2O4 also demonstrates a high supercapacitance of 1487 F g(-1) at a current density of 1 A g(-1), and an exceptional cycling performance over 2000 charge/discharge cycles.
BioCconvert: A Conversion Tool Between BioC and PubAnnotation

BioC is a simple XML data format for text, annotations, and relations. PubAnnotation is a repository of text annotations focused on the life science literature. A conversion tool between BioC XML and the JSON import / export format of PubAnnotation has been developed, BioCconvert. As a demonstration, the Ab3P gold standard abbreviation annotations are being made available through PubAnnotation. Keywords—BioC, PubAnnotation, interoperability, biomedical annotations
La educación superior en españa y las redes sociales: Instituciones públicas versus privadas

The aim of this paper is to analyze the social capital importance in higher education institutions, public and private. For this purpose, we studied the importance of the main Spanish universities, according to the Ranking Web of Spanish Universities-Webometrics-(3 public and 3 private) in Facebook. Although the importance of Facebook in education has been demonstrated, there is little research using it as a media. The results reveal a professionalization of the use of these tools by public universities, creating new opportunities, while private universities fail to achieve this level.
Coordinated Adenine Nucleotide Phosphohydrolysis and Nucleoside Signaling in Posthypoxic Endothelium

Limited oxygen delivery to tissues (hypoxia) is common in a variety of disease states. A number of parallels exist between hypoxia and acute inflammation, including the observation that both influence vascular permeability. As such, we compared the functional influence of activated polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMN) on normoxic and posthypoxic endothelial cells. Initial studies indicated that activated PMN preferentially promote endothelial barrier function in posthypoxic endothelial cells (>60% increase over normoxia). Extension of these findings identified at least one soluble mediator as extracellular adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Subsequent studies revealed that ATP is coordinately hydrolyzed to adenosine at the endothelial cell surface by hypoxia-induced CD39 and CD73 (>20-and >12-fold increase in mRNA, respectively). Studies in vitro and in cd39-null mice identified these surface ecto-enzymes as critical control points for posthypoxia-associated protection of vascular permeability. Furthermore, insight gained through microarray analysis revealed that the adenosine A2B receptor (AdoRA2B) is selectively up-regulated by hypoxia (>5-fold increase in mRNA), and that AdoRA2B antagonists effectively neutralize ATP-mediated changes in posthypoxic endothelial permeability. Taken together, these results demonstrate transcription coordination of adenine nucleotide and nucleoside signaling at the vascular interface during hypoxia.
1 Tb/s WDM-OFDM-PON power budget extension techniques

In this paper we demonstrate different techniques for 1 Tb/s QPSK-WDM-OFDM-PON optical power budget extension. Our simulation results show that EDFA outperforms SOA and yields more access budget. We present our simulation results for 64 customers with 0.625/40 Gb/s/λ guaranteed/peak bit rate downstream scenario.
Architectural design and support for knowledge sharing across heterogeneous MAST systems

A novel approach for the sharing of knowledge between widely heterogeneous robotic agents is presented, drawing upon Gardenfors Conceptual Spaces approach [4]. The target microrobotic platforms considered are computationally, power, sensor, and communications impoverished compared to more traditional robotics platforms due to their small size. This produces novel challenges for the system to converge on an interpretation of events within the world, in this case specifically focusing on the task of recognizing the concept of a biohazard in an indoor setting.
A Hybrid Authenticated Group Key Agreement Protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks are a modern and advanced technology whose applications are fast developing in recent years. Despite being a fascinating topic with various visions of a more intelligent world, there still exist security issues to be resolved in order to make WSNs fully adoptable. Due to the resource constraints of sensor nodes, it is infeasible to use traditional key establishment techniques that find use in fixed communication systems. In this paper, the design of a new hybrid Authenticated Group Key Agreement (AGKA) protocol is described for WSNs. The AGKA protocol reduces the high cost public-key operations at the sensor side and replaces them with efficient symmetric-key based operations. The proposed AGKA protocol is not only efficient but also meets strong security requirements. In order to demonstrate the protocol is verifiably secure and trustworthy, a formal verification of the AGKA protocol is carried out. Furthermore, several experiments are conducted on MICAz and TelosB platforms in order to evaluate the performance of the proposed protocol. The evaluation results show that the AGKA protocol is well suited for use with resource-constrained sensor nodes.
Pharmacotherapy for adults with alcohol use disorders in outpatient settings: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

IMPORTANCE Alcohol use disorders cause substantial morbidity and early mortality yet remain greatly undertreated. Medications are considerably underused. OBJECTIVE To conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of the benefits and harms of medications (US FDA-approved and others) for adults with alcohol use disorders. DATA SOURCES PubMed, Cochrane Library, PsycINFO, CINAHL, EMBASE, FDA website, and clinical trials registries (January 1, 1970, to March 1, 2014). STUDY SELECTION Two reviewers selected randomized clinical trials (RCTs) with at least 12 weeks' duration that reported eligible outcomes and head-to-head prospective cohort studies reporting health outcomes or harms. DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS We conducted meta-analyses using random-effects models and calculated numbers needed to treat for benefit (NNTs) or harm (NNHs). MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Alcohol consumption, motor vehicle crashes, injuries, quality of life, function, mortality, and harms. RESULTS We included 122 RCTs and 1 cohort study (total 22,803 participants). Most assessed acamprosate (27 studies, n = 7519), naltrexone (53 studies, n = 9140), or both. The NNT to prevent return to any drinking for acamprosate was 12 (95% CI, 8 to 26; risk difference [RD], -0.09; 95% CI, -0.14 to -0.04) and was 20 (95% CI, 11 to 500; RD, -0.05; 95% CI, -0.10 to -0.002) for oral naltrexone (50 mg/d). The NNT to prevent return to heavy drinking was 12 (95% CI, 8 to 26; RD -0.09; 95% CI, -0.13 to -0.04) for oral naltrexone (50 mg/d). Meta-analyses of trials comparing acamprosate to naltrexone found no statistically significant difference between them for return to any drinking (RD, 0.02; 95% CI, -0.03 to 0.08) or heavy drinking (RD, 0.01; 95% CI, -0.05 to 0.06). For injectable naltrexone, meta-analyses found no association with return to any drinking (RD, -0.04; 95% CI, -0.10 to 0.03) or heavy drinking (RD, -0.01; 95% CI, -0.14 to 0.13) but found an association with reduction in heavy drinking days (weighted mean difference [WMD], -4.6%; 95% CI, -8.5% to -0.56%). Among medications used off-label, moderate evidence supports an association with improvement in some consumption outcomes for nalmefene (heavy drinking days per month: WMD, -2.0; 95% CI, -3.0 to -1.0; drinks per drinking day: WMD, -1.02; 95% CI, -1.77 to -0.28) and topiramate (% heavy drinking days: WMD, -9.0%; 95% CI, -15.3% to -2.7%; drinks per drinking day: WMD, -1.0; 95% CI, -1.6 to -0.48). For naltrexone and nalmefene, NNHs for withdrawal from trials due to adverse events were 48 (95% CI, 30 to 112) and 12 (95% CI, 7 to 50), respectively; risk was not significantly increased for acamprosate or topiramate. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE Both acamprosate and oral naltrexone were associated with reduction in return to drinking. When directly compared with one another, no significant differences were found between acamprosate and naltrexone for controlling alcohol consumption. Factors such as dosing frequency, potential adverse events, and availability of treatments may guide medication choice.
Gut stem cells, a story of snails, flies and mice

Intestinal stem cells (ISCs) replenish and regenerate several types of cells in the gut, both during normal homeostasis and in response to various insults such as infections. Although gut structure and complexity vary across phyla, two functional categories of differentiated cell types are always present: absorptive cells and those of the secretory lineage. A series of studies in Drosophila and mouse published in The EMBO Journal, including one in this issue, identifies conserved roles for the Snail family of zinc finger transcription factors in regulating self‐renewal and differentiation of ISCs (Korzelius et al, 2014; Loza‐Coll et al, 2014; Horvay et al, 2015).
Cardiac chymase converts rat proAngiotensin-12 (PA12) to angiotensin II: effects of PA12 upon cardiac haemodynamics.

AIMS The aim of this study was to observe the direct physiological and biochemical cardiac effects in response to a newly identified putative component of the renin-angiotensin system, proangiotensin-12 (PA12); and investigate whether PA12 can serve as a substrate for Angiotensin II (AngII) generation. METHODS AND RESULTS The direct cardiac actions of PA12 and its role as a substrate for chymase-dependent AngII generation were investigated in Sprague-Dawley rats using an isolated heart model of cardiac ischaemia-reperfusion injury. PA12 potently constricted coronary arteries with no significant effect on left-ventricular contractility. PA12 impaired recovery from global ischaemia, maintaining coronary constriction and markedly increasing release of creatine kinase and troponin I (TnI), indicating greater myocardial injury. Analysis of perfusate collected after transcardiac passage revealed a marked increase in AngII production from hearts infused with PA12. Cardiac AngII production was not blocked by angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, whereas inhibition of chymase with chymostatin significantly reduced AngII production and attenuated PA12-induced vasoconstriction and myocardial damage following ischaemia. Furthermore, Angiotensin II type 1 receptor (AT(1)R) blockade abolished PA12 activity. In vitro, PA12 was efficiently and precisely converted to AngII as assessed on reverse phase-high performance liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry. This conversion was blocked by chymostatin. CONCLUSION PA12 may act as a circulating substrate for cardiac chymase-mediated AngII production, in contrast to ACE-mediated AngII production from AngI.
A Qualitative Study Exploring Moral Distress in the ICU Team: The Importance of Unit Functionality and Intrateam Dynamics*

Objective:Our study objectives were to determine the key sources of moral distress in diverse critical care professionals and how they manage it in the context of team-based models. Design:Qualitative case study methodology using three recently resolved clinical cases. Setting:A medical and surgical adult ICU in a 900-bed academic, tertiary Houston hospital. Subjects:Twenty-nine ICU team members of diverse professional backgrounds interviewed between March 2013 and July 2013. Interventions:None. Measurements and Main Results:All members of the ICU team reported experiencing moral distress. Intrateam discordance served as a key source of distress for all healthcare disciplines. Interviewees identified two situations where intrateam discordance creates moral distress: 1) situations involving initiation or maintenance of nonbeneficial life-sustaining treatments and 2) situations involving a lack of full disclosure about interventions. Healthcare professionals engaged in a variety of management techniques, which can be grouped according to maladaptive behaviors (pas-de-deux, “fighting,” and withdrawing) and constructive behaviors (venting, mentoring networks, and building team cohesion). Maladaptive behaviors were more common in the surgical ICU. Constructive behaviors were more prevalent in the medical ICU and typically used by nurses and ancillary staff members. Physicians report becoming detached as morally distressing cases unfold, whereas nurses report becoming more emotionally invested. Conclusions:This study identified the ways in which moral distress manifests across critical care disciplines in different ICU environments. Our results have potential implications for patient care. First, when clinicians alter the content of their goals-of-care conversations with patients or families to accommodate intrateam discordance (as part of the “pas-de-deux”), subsequent decisions regarding medical care may be compromised. Second, when different team members respond differently to the same case—with nurses becoming more emotionally invested and physicians becoming more withdrawn—communication gaps are likely to occur at critical moral distress junctures. Finally, our findings suggest that physicians and any healthcare professionals in surgical units might be susceptible to unmitigated moral distress because they report less engagement in constructive behaviors to recalibrate their distress.
Cerebrospinal Fluid Pressure Decreases with Older Age

Purpose Clinical studies implicate low cerebrospinal fluid pressure (CSFP) or a high translaminar pressure difference in the pathogenesis of primary open angle glaucoma (POAG) and normal tension glaucoma (NTG). This study was performed to examine the effect of age, sex, race and body mass index (BMI) on CSFP. Methods Electronic medical records from all patients who had a lumbar puncture (LP) performed at the Mayo Clinic from 1996–2009 were reviewed. Information including age, sex, race, height and weight, ocular and medical diagnoses, intraocular pressure (IOP) and LP opening pressure was obtained. Patients using medications or with medical diagnoses known to affect CSFP, and those who underwent neurosurgical procedures or where more than one LP was performed were excluded from analysis. Results Electronic medical records of 33,922 patients with a history of having an LP during a 13-year period (1996–2009) were extracted. Of these, 12,118 patients met all entry criteria. Relative to mean CSFP at age group 20–49 (mean 11.5±2.8 mmHg), mean CSFP declined steadily after age 50, with percent reduction of 2.5% for the 50–54 age group (mean 11.2±2.7 mmHg, p<0.002) to 26.9% for the 90–95 group (mean 8.4±2.4 mmHg, p<0.001). Females had lower CSFP than males throughout all age groups. BMI was positively and independently associated with CSFP within all age groups. Conclusion There is a sustained and significant reduction of CSFP with age that begins in the 6th decade. CSFP is consistently lower in females. BMI is positively and independently associated with CSFP in all age groups. The age where CSFP begins to decline coincides with the age where the prevalence of POAG increases. These data support the hypothesis that reduced CSFP may be a risk factor for POAG and may provide an explanation for the mechanism that underlies the age-related increase in the prevalence of POAG and NTG.