Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Measuring central blood pressure in youth: calibration issues.

role in homeostatic control of the cardiovascular system [8]. Short-term excessive sympathetic nervous system activity is recognized during stressful situations and further this may have a pathophysiologic role in development of hypertension [9], with microneurographic studies showing these sympathetic bursts higher not only in individuals with a family history of hypertension but also in those with white-coat and masked hypertension – all conditions in which patients have a markedly greater risk of progressing to true hypertension [8]. An attractive hypothesis is that overdrive depends on an excessive adrenergic response to environmental stimuli, leading initially to greater BP variability and later to a sustained hypertensive state [8]. Furthermore, older hypertensive and borderline hypertensive patients are known to have a greater hypertensive response to stress than control (nonhypertensive) patients [9]. However, our cohorts’ hypertensive response was equal in both known hypertensive patients and nonhypertensive patients introducing the plausible influence of other factors such as drug effect. Anti-VEGF agents are measurable in the systemic circulation, one mechanism being the neonatal Fc receptor that facilitates the transport of Fc-containing molecules (aflibercept and bevacizumab) from the vitreous into the retinal bloodstream [10]. The movement of aflibercept and bevacizumab into the bloodstream and the associated reduction in plasma free VEGF are very rapid, seen at 3-h posttreatment and lasting for days to weeks (depending on drug half-life) [10]. A possible systemic drug effect might be supported by our own study’s trend towards a greater percentage of patients having hypertensive urgency at random BP measurement compared with baseline. This may indicate a prolonged effect of the drug on long-term BP, although the overall rate of hypertension is the same in the random BP measurement and baseline groups. Recent research has identified an increased incidence of hospitalization for ischaemic stroke in patients undergoing intravitreal ranibizumab injections in the month after their treatment [4]. Although it is difficult to ascertain from our data if the hypertensive urgency seen on the day of the procedure relates to anxiety or drug effect, the hypertensive response is a potential contributor to cerebrovascular events in this cohort of patients and warrants greater awareness given many of these patients are undergoing the procedure monthly. Further research is needed to determine more clearly the risk of acute hypertension associated with anti-VEGF agents delivered via the intravitreal route; however, from our research it appears that in most cases hypertensive urgency is due to anxiety related to the procedure. When weighing up the benefits and risks associated with intravitreal injections, the incidence of hypertensive urgency should be considered, given the comorbidities frequently seen in these patients. This is relevant to all clinicians involved in the care of these patients.
A Novel EMG Interface for Individuals With Tetraplegia to Pilot Robot Hand Grasping

This paper introduces a new human-machine interface for individuals with tetraplegia. We investigated the feasibility of piloting an assistive device by processing supra-lesional muscle responses online. The ability to voluntarily contract a set of selected muscles was assessed in five spinal cord-injured subjects through electromyographic (EMG) analysis. Two subjects were also asked to use the EMG interface to control palmar and lateral grasping of a robot hand. The use of different muscles and control modalities was also assessed. These preliminary results open the way to new interface solutions for high-level spinal cord-injured patients.
Inhibition of gonadotropin secretion induced by cholecystokinin implants in the medial preoptic area by the dopamine receptor blocker, pimozide, in the rat.

We have shown that the implantation of cholecystokinin octapeptide sulfated form (CCK-8-S) or dopamine (DA) in the medial preoptic area (MPO) in ovariectomized estrogen-primed rats induced an enhancement of the afternoon rise in LH secretion. The present study was done to examine the possible functional interaction of both substances in the brain. Two groups of ovariectomized estradiol (5 micrograms, s.c.)-primed rats were administered intraperitoneally either pimozide (1 mg/kg BW; pimozide-treated group) or 0.1 M tartaric acid as the control solution (pimozide-untreated group). CCK-8-S or DA was implanted in the MPO through chronically implanted guide cannulae and the effects on serum LH and FSH concentrations were compared between both groups. An empty cannula was used as the control. Implantation of either CCK-8-S or DA in the pimozide-untreated group induced marked enhancements of afternoon rises in LH and FSH levels, which normally occurred, but with a lesser magnitude in the animals with the empty cannula. In the pimozide-treated group, however, neither CCK-8-S nor DA induced changes in the LH and FSH levels. It was evident that both effects of CCK-8-S and DA on LH and FSH secretion were blocked by pretreatment with the DA receptor blocker. These data indicate that DA receptors are required to be intact when CCK-8-S implants manifest their action in stimulating gonadotropin secretion.
Influence of Hollow Electrode Ar-CO2 Injection on Temperature in Ladle Furnace

The argon and carbon dioxide co-injection tests were carried out with low carbon steel melts of 100 kg in a multi-function direct current ladle furnace (DC-LF) equipped with a hollow graphite electrode. It is shown that, the heating rates of the heats with argon or Ar-CO2 injection are higher than that of the normal solid graphite electrode heat. The average heating rate of the heat with argon injection is 1.59 times than that of the normal solid graphite electrode heat. The minimal average heating rate of the heat with Ar-CO2 co-injection is 3 times than that of the latter, and the maximum is 5.51 times. When argon or Ar-CO2 is injected into LF, the electric current isn’t change, but the voltage is lower.
Thermal, electrical, and mechanical properties of hexagonal boron nitride–reinforced epoxy composites

Flaky hexagonal boron nitride particles-reinforced epoxy composites were prepared. The investigation on the thermal, electrical, and mechanical properties of hexagonal boron nitride/epoxy composites indicated that the incorporation of silane coupling agent-treated hexagonal boron nitride into epoxy slightly improved the glass transition temperature and the thermal stability of the composites; the epoxy containing silane treated hexagonal boron nitride exhibited higher thermal conductivity compared to the untreated ones. The dielectric permittivity increased slowly with an increase in hexagonal boron nitride content, as well as with a decrease in frequency. The obtained 50 wt% hexagonal boron nitride–filled epoxy composite had a low dielectric permittivity (less than 5.4) and dielectric loss (less than 0.02) in all frequencies ranging from 10−1 to 107 Hz, a high volume resistivity of 6.3 × 1014 Ω·cm, and a high dielectric strength of 16 kV/mm, together with moderate mechanical properties, which are of great significance for practical electrical materials applications.
Unstirred Water Layer Effects on Biodegradable Microspheres

This study explores the mechanistic aspects of in vitro release from biodegradable microspheres with the objective of understanding the effect of the unstirred water layer on polymer degradation and drug release. In vitro drug release experiments on Leuprolide PLGA microspheres were performed under “static” and “continuous” agitation conditions using the “sample and separate” method. At specified time intervals, polymer degradation, mass loss, and drug release were assessed. While molecular weight and molecular number profiles for “static” and “continuous” samples were indistinct, mass loss occurred at a faster rate in “continuous” samples than under “static” conditions. In vitro results describe a fourfold difference in drug release rates between the “continuous” and “static” samples, ascribed to the acceleration of various processes governing release, including elimination of the boundary layer. The findings were confirmed by the fourfold increase in drug release rate when “static” samples were subjected to “continuous” agitation after 11 days. A schema was proposed to describe the complex in vitro release process from biodegradable polymer-drug dosage forms. These experiments highlight the manner in which the unstirred water layer influences drug release from biodegradable microspheres and stress the importance of selecting appropriate conditions for agitation during an in vitro release study.
Inhibition of B cell activating factor (BAFF) in the management of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE)

ABSTRACT Introduction: The anti-BAFF monoclonal antibody, belimumab, was approved 5+ years ago by the US Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of adult SLE patients. Although BAFF is now a proven therapeutic target in SLE, the limited clinical efficacy both in the clinical trials setting and in ‘real-life’ experience begs for further therapeutic improvement. Areas covered: In addition to belimumab, three other BAFF antagonists (atacicept, blisibimod, tabalumab) that biologically differ from belimumab are being or have been evaluated in SLE late-stage clinical trials. Literature search was performed using the search words/phrases, ‘BAFF’, ‘BLyS’, ‘APRIL’, ‘BCMA’, ‘TACI’, ‘BR3’, ‘belimumab’, ‘atacicept’, ‘blisibimod’, ‘tabalumab’, ‘lupus clinical trial’ along with papers from the author’s personal library. Expert commentary: The reasons underlying current lack of enthusiasm among clinicians for BAFF antagonism are discussed, and speculation if offered regarding the use of a BAFF antagonist as part of sequential therapy and regarding the utility of individual or pairs of BAFF receptors as therapeutic targets.
The Val158Met polymorphism in COMT gene and cancer risk: role of endogenous and exogenous catechols

Abstract Catechol-O-methyltransferase, COMT, is an important phase II enzyme catalyzing the transfer of a methyl-group from S-adenosylmethionine to a catechol-containing substrate molecule. A genetic variant Val158Met in the COMT gene leads to a several-fold decrease in the enzymatic activity giving rise to the accumulation of potentially carcinogenic endogenous catechol estrogens and their reactive intermediates and increasing thus the risk of tumorigenesis. However, numerous association studies between the COMT genotype and susceptibility to various malignancies have shown inconsistent and controversial findings indicating that additional gene–gene and gene–environment interactions might be crucial in modulating the physiological role of the COMT. In this review article, the important contribution of dietary catechol-containing flavonoids to modification of the relationships between the COMT genotype and cancer risk is discussed. Whereas, the diverse anticancer activities of common phytochemicals, such as green tea polyphenols, quercetin, fisetin or luteolin, can be markedly changed (both decreased or increased) by the COMT-mediated O-methylation of these exogenous substrates, flavonoids can also behave as potent inhibitors of the COMT enzyme slowing detoxification of endogenous catechol estrogens. Such a many-featured functioning of the COMT and its complex regulation by several different genetic and environmental factors, including plant-based food ingredients, emphasizes the necessity to further stratify the association studies between the COMT genotype and tumor risk by consumption of catechol-containing dietary flavonoids. Currently, it can be only speculated that some of the possible associations might be masked by the regular intake of specific food polyphenols, taking effect in certain communities or populations.
Postheparin plasma diamine oxidase in subjects with small bowel disease. Diagnostic efficiency of a simplified test.

Diamine oxidase (DAO) is an enzyme located almost exclusively in the villus tip enterocytes of mammals. Its plasma activity, normally very low, is enhanced by intravenous heparin that releases the enzyme from the enterocytes into the blood. Postheparin plasma DAO (PHD) values have been shown to be significantly reduced in patients with malabsorption and villus atrophy and in patients with Crohn's disease, thus suggesting that this test explores the mucosal integrity. The execution of the PHD test requires 8 blood samples over a period of 120 min after an intravenous injection of 15,000 IU of heparin, and then the calculation of the area under the curve. The aim of this study was to simplify the test and make it more acceptable by choosing only one of the eight curve points required for the calculation of the area under the curve and then assessing its discriminant power in different small bowel diseases. To this end, a discriminant analysis was performed on PHD curves of 16 normal subjects, 25 patients with celiac disease, 14 patients with treated celiac disease, 5 patients with diffuse primary small bowel lymphoma, 4 patients with small bowel lymphoma during treatment, and 55 patients with small bowel Crohn's disease. Plasma DAO values assayed 1 h (T60) after the injection of 15,000 IU of heparin proved to be the best discriminator curve point and the use of the T60 point alone may be usefully employed instead of the area under the 120-min curve. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Proteome analysis of human serum proteins adsorbed onto different titanium surfaces used in dental implants

Abstract Titanium dental implants are commonly used due to their biocompatibility and biochemical properties; blasted acid-etched Ti is used more frequently than smooth Ti surfaces. In this study, physico-chemical characterisation revealed important differences in roughness, chemical composition and hydrophilicity, but no differences were found in cellular in vitro studies (proliferation and mineralization). However, the deposition of proteins onto the implant surface might affect in vivo osseointegration. To test that hypothesis, protein layers formed on discs of both surface type after incubation with human serum were analysed. Using mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS), 218 proteins were identified, 30 of which were associated with bone metabolism. Interestingly, Apo E, antithrombin and protein C adsorbed mostly onto blasted and acid-etched Ti, whereas the proteins of the complement system (C3) were found predominantly on smooth Ti surfaces. These results suggest that physico-chemical characteristics could be responsible for the differences observed in the adsorbed protein layer.
Cracks in Magnetoelectroelastic Solids under Impact Loading

In this paper, transient dynamic crack analysis in two-dimensional, linear magnetoelectroelastic solids is presented. For this purpose, a time-domain boundary element method (BEM) is developed and the elastodynamic fundamental solutions for linear magnetoelectroelastic and anisotropic materials are derived. The spatial discretization of the boundary integral equations is performed by a Galerkin-method while a collocation method is implemented for the temporal discretization of the arising convolution integrals. An explicit time-stepping scheme is developed to compute the discrete boundary data and the generalized crack-opening-displacements. To show the effects of the coupled fields and the different dynamic loading conditions on the dynamic intensity factors, numerical examples will be presented and discussed.
How Safe Are Our Large, Lightly Reinforced Concrete Beams, Slabs, and Footings?

The current American Concrete Institute (ACI) shear design procedures can be very unconservative if applied to large, lightly reinforced members because these procedures do not recognize that as the size of such members increases, the shear stress required to cause failure decreases. This paper describes an extensive experimental investigation aimed at evaluating the significant parameters that influence the magnitude of this size effect in shear. It was found that the reduction in shear stress at failure was related more directly to the maximum spacing between the layers of longitudinal reinforcement rather than the overall member depth. High-strength concrete members displayed a more significant size effect in shear than normal strength concrete members. Some simple modifications to the ACI shear design procedures are suggested that will result in a more consistent level of safety across the possible range of concrete strengths and member sizes.
Expander: Lock-Free Cache for a Concurrent Data Structure

Parallel programming models and paradigms are increasingly becoming more expressive with a steady increase in the number of cores that can be placed on a single chip. Concurrent data structures for shared memory parallel pro- grams are now being used in operating systems, middle-ware, and device drivers. In such a shared memory model, processes communicate and synchronize by applying primitive operations on memory words. To implement concurrent data structures that are linearizable and possibly lock-free or wait-free, it is often necessary to add additional information to memory words in a data structure. This additional information can range from a single bit to multiple bits that typically represent thread ids, request ids, timestamps, and other application dependent fields. Since most processors can perform compare-And-Set (CAS) or load-link/store-conditional (LL/SC) operations on only 64 bits at a time, current approaches either use some bits in a memory word to pack additional information (packing), or use the bits to store a pointer to an object that contains additional information (redirection), and the original data item. The former approach restricts the number of bits for each additional field and this reduces the range of the field, and the latter approach is wasteful in terms of space. We propose a novel and universal method called a memory word expander in this paper. It caches information for a set of memory locations that need to be augmented with additional information. It supports traditional atomic get, set, and CAS operations, and tries to maintain state for a minimum number of entries. We experimentally demonstrate that it is possible to reduce the runtime memory footprint by 20-35% for algorithms that use redirection. For algorithms that use packing, the use of the EXPANDER can make them feasible. The performance overhead is within 2-13% for 32 threads. When we compare the performance of the EXPANDER based non-blocking algorithms with the version that uses locks, we have a performance gain of at least 10-100X.
Experimental study of 351-nm and 527-nm laser-initiated surface damage on fused silica surfaces due to typical contaminants

Optics damage under high-intensity illumination may be the direct result of laser light interaction with a contaminant on the surface. Contaminants of interest are small particles of the materials of construction of large laser systems and include aluminum, various absorbing glasses, and fused silica. In addition, once a damage site occurs and begins to grow, the ejecta from the growing damage site create contamination on nearby optic surfaces and may initiate damage on these surfaces via a process we call "fratricide. " We report on a number of experiments that we have performed on fused silica optics that were deliberately contaminated with materials of interest. The experiments were done using 527-nm light as well as 351-nm light. We have found that many of the contaminant particles are removed by the interaction with the laser and the likelihood of removal and/or damage is a function of both fluence and contaminant size. We have developed an empirical model for damage initiation in the presence of contaminants.
In Situ Time-Resolved Energy Dispersive X-Ray Diffraction Studies of Calcium Phosphate Based Bone Cements

In situ monitoring of structural changes, taking place upon calcium phosphate bone cements hardening process was carried out by means of the Energy Dispersive X-Ray Diffraction method. Two different cement systems were studied, one of them based on the octacalcium phosphate and another - on the dicalcium phosphate dehydrate. Both systems contained natural biopolymer chitosan and were soaked in Simulated Body Fluid. The obtained experimental results evidence that during the hardening of the cement containing octacalcium phosphate its partial transformation into hydroxyapatite takes place, whereas no significant changes were detected during the hardening process of cement containing the dicalcium phosphate dehydrate.
Understanding patient outcomes after acute respiratory distress syndrome: identifying subtypes of physical, cognitive and mental health outcomes

Purpose With improving short-term mortality in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), understanding survivors’ posthospitalisation outcomes is increasingly important. However, little is known regarding associations among physical, cognitive and mental health outcomes. Identification of outcome subtypes may advance understanding of post-ARDS morbidities. Methods We analysed baseline variables and 6-month health status for participants in the ARDS Network Long-Term Outcomes Study. After division into derivation and validation datasets, we used weighted network analysis to identify subtypes from predictors and outcomes in the derivation dataset. We then used recursive partitioning to develop a subtype classification rule and assessed adequacy of the classification rule using a kappa statistic with the validation dataset. Results Among 645 ARDS survivors, 430 were in the derivation and 215 in the validation datasets. Physical and mental health status, but not cognitive status, were closely associated. Four distinct subtypes were apparent (percentages in the derivation cohort): (1) mildly impaired physical and mental health (22% of patients), (2) moderately impaired physical and mental health (39%), (3) severely impaired physical health with moderately impaired mental health (15%) and (4) severely impaired physical and mental health (24%). The classification rule had high agreement (kappa=0.89 in validation dataset). Female Latino smokers had the poorest status, while male, non-Latino non-smokers had the best status. Conclusions We identified four post-ARDS outcome subtypes that were predicted by sex, ethnicity, pre-ARDS smoking status and other baseline factors. These subtypes may help develop tailored rehabilitation strategies, including investigation of combined physical and mental health interventions, and distinct interventions to improve cognitive outcomes.
Low-Complexity Symbol Detection for Generalized Spatial Modulation MIMO Systems

The generalized spatial modulation (GSM) is a new transmission technique that has a potential to reduce the RF complexity of the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transceiver. This paper presents an efficient symbol detection method targeting the GSM-MIMO systems. The proposed method modifies the cost metric used in the symbol detection in order to eliminate the unnecessary interference cancellation. Based on the modified cost metric, the detection process can be represented by a regular detection tree and the optimal solution can be found by applying the depth-first sphere decoding. When compared to the previous method, the proposed method reduces the tree visits by 67.1% in average for 5x5 64-QAM MIMO systems with three active antennas.