Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Troponins in pericarditis : implications for diagnosis and management of chest pain patients

pacing-induced atrial fibrillation. Eur Heart J 1999; 20 (Abstr Suppl): 226 (abstr.). [10] Levy S, Breithardt G, Campbell RWF et al. On behalf of the Working Group on Arrhythmias of the European Society of Cardiology. Atrial fibrillation: current knowledge and recommendations for management. Eur Heart J 1998; 19: 1294– 1320. [11] Roijer A, Eskilsson J, Olsson B. Transoesophageal echocardiography-guided cardioversion of atrial fibrillation or flutter; selection of a low-risk group for immediate cardioversion. Eur Heart J 2000; 21: 837–47. [12] Kamp O, Verhorst PMJ, Welling RC, Visser CA. Importance of left atrial appendage flow as a predictor of thromboembolic events in patients with atrial fibrillation. Eur Heart J 1999; 20: 979–85. [13] Castello R, Pearson AC, Labovitz AJ. Prevalence and clinical implications of atrial spontaneous contrast in patients undergoing transesophageal echocardiography. Am J Cardiol 1990; 65: 1149–53. [14] Klein AL, Grimm RA, Black IW et al. Cardioversion guided by transesophageal echocardiography: the ACUTE Pilot Study. A randomized, controlled trial. Ann Intern Med 1997; 126: 200–9. [15] Harenberg J, Huhle G, Piazolo L, Giese C, Heene DL. Long-term anticoagulation of outpatients with adverse events to oral anticoagulants using low-molecular weight heparin. Semin Thromb Hemost 1997; 23: 167–72. [16] Lanzarotti CJ, Olshansky B. Thromboembolism in chronic atrial flutter: is the risk underestimated? J Am Coll Cardiol 1997; 30: 1506–11. [17] Grimm RA, Stewart WJ, Arheart K, Thomas JD, Klein AL. Left atrial appendage ‘stunning’ after electrical cardioversion of atrial flutter: an attenuated response compared with atrial fibrillation as the mechanism for lower susceptibility to thromboembolic events. J Am Coll Cardiol 1997; 29: 582–9. [18] Stoddard MF, Dawkins PR, Prince CR, Ammash NM. Left atrial appendage thrombus is not uncommon in patients with acute atrial fibrillation and a recent embolic event: a transesophageal echocardiographic study. J Am Coll Cardiol 1995; 25: 452–9.
The effect of pharmaceutical intervention on lipid profile in polycystic ovary syndrome

The polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a prevalent endocrinopathy of women, has been associated with a clustering of adverse metabolic features, which co‐exist with reproductive dysfunction. Lipid abnormalities are very common in lean as well as obese women with PCOS and should be cautiously considered in the therapeutic management of the syndrome. Clinicians should also critically assess the lipidemic effect of pharmaceutical intervention, primarily aimed at hyperandrogenism, anovulation or insulin resistance. Because dyslipidemia may contribute to long‐term cardiometabolic and reproductive sequelae in PCOS, it should be considered as an additional therapeutic target when these patients are assigned to appropriate pharmaceutical treatment.
Using previously genotyped controls in genome-wide association studies (GWAS): application to the Stroke Genetics Network (SiGN)

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) are widely applied to identify susceptibility loci for a variety of diseases using genotyping arrays that interrogate known polymorphisms throughout the genome. A particular strength of GWAS is that it is unbiased with respect to specific genomic elements (e.g., coding or regulatory regions of genes), and it has revealed important associations that would have never been suspected based on prior knowledge or assumptions. To date, the discovered SNPs associated with complex human traits tend to have small effect sizes, requiring very large sample sizes to achieve robust statistical power. To address these issues, a number of efficient strategies have emerged for conducting GWAS, including combining study results across multiple studies using meta-analysis, collecting cases through electronic health records, and using samples collected from other studies as controls that have already been genotyped and made publicly available (e.g., through deposition of de-identified data into dbGaP or EGA). In certain scenarios, it may be attractive to use already genotyped controls and divert resources to standardized collection, phenotyping, and genotyping of cases only. This strategy, however, requires that careful attention be paid to the choice of “public controls” and to the comparability of genetic data between cases and the public controls to ensure that any allele frequency differences observed between groups is attributable to locus-specific effects rather than to a systematic bias due to poor matching (population stratification) or differential genotype calling (batch effects). The goal of this paper is to describe some of the potential pitfalls in using previously genotyped control data. We focus on considerations related to the choice of control groups, the use of different genotyping platforms, and approaches to deal with population stratification when cases and controls are genotyped across different platforms.
Mediation in the Singapore Family Court

This article attempts to trace the development of the Singapore Family Court and [analyzes] the reasons for its reception of mediation as the principal method of dispute resolution. In the course of this process, attempts will be made to highlight concerns over mediator standards, identify the mediation model used in negotiations and critically comment on reports of recent success rates. An important objective of this article is to assess the general suitability of family court mediation for Singapore family matters.
Bad Data Detection Using Linear WLS and Sampled Values in Digital Substations

Smart Grids employ intelligent control applications that require high quality data: fast, secure, and error free. Several researchers have focused on providing techniques for low latency and secured data links for these applications. Bad data detection is however generally provided only at the central level due to limitations in legacy technologies employed in many substations. With the introduction of IEC61850 data sharing within the substation becomes more flexible and transparent allowing more sophisticated management of data quality. Hence, this paper proposes a substation level bad data detection algorithm to facilitate also these types of requirements from applications. The algorithm is based on automatically detecting the substation topology by parsing standard substation description files and online state of circuit breakers and disconnectors. By applying linear weighted least square based state estimation algorithm, bad data from failing current transformers (CT) can be detected. By conducting the verification of different types of bad data, the results show the output of bad data detection algorithm provides higher accuracy than output from both measurement and protective CT in both static and faulty situations.
American College of Sports Medicine roundtable. The physiological and health effects of oral creatine supplementation.

Creatine (Cr) supplementation has become a common practice among professional, elite, collegiate, amateur, and recreational athletes with the expectation of enhancing exercise performance. Research indicates that Cr supplementation can increase muscle phosphocreatine (PCr) content, but not in all individuals. A high dose of 20 g x d(-1) that is common to many research studies is not necessary, as 3 g x d(-1) will achieve the same increase in PCr given time. Coincident ingestion of carbohydrate with Cr may increase muscle uptake; however, the procedure requires a large amount of carbohydrate. Exercise performance involving short periods of extremely powerful activity can be enhanced, especially during repeated bouts of activity. This is in keeping with the theoretical importance of an elevated PCr content in skeletal muscle. Cr supplementation does not increase maximal isometric strength, the rate of maximal force production, nor aerobic exercise performance. Most of the evidence has been obtained from healthy young adult male subjects with mixed athletic ability and training status. Less research information is available related to the alterations due to age and gender. Cr supplementation leads to weight gain within the first few days, likely due to water retention related to Cr uptake in the muscle. Cr supplementation is associated with an enhanced accrual of strength in strength-training programs, a response not independent from the initial weight gain, but may be related to a greater volume and intensity of training that can be achieved. There is no definitive evidence that Cr supplementation causes gastrointestinal, renal, and/or muscle cramping complications. The potential acute effects of high-dose Cr supplementation on body fluid balance has not been fully investigated, and ingestion of Cr before or during exercise is not recommended. There is evidence that medical use of Cr supplementation is warranted in certain patients (e.g. neuromuscular disease); future research may establish its potential usefulness in other medical applications. Although Cr supplementation exhibits small but significant physiological and performance changes, the increases in performance are realized during very specific exercise conditions. This suggests that the apparent high expectations for performance enhancement, evident by the extensive use of Cr supplementation, are inordinate.
The Development and Validation of the Exercise Dependence Questionnaire

The aim of the present study was to develop and validate the Exercise Dependence Questionnaire (EDQ). 86 statements, derived from semi structured questionnaires, were used to develop a self report rating scale which was completed by 449 subjects who exercised for more than 4 hours a week. Factor analysis was used and items not loading onto any factors (<0.6), that loaded onto more than one factor or intercorrelated greater than 0.6 were rejected from the analysis. The final EDQ consisted of 29 items and eight factors; interference with social / family / work life, positive reward, withdrawal symptoms, exercise for weight control, insight into problem, exercise for social reasons, exercise for health reasons and stereotyped behaviour. These factors were shown to have good internal reliability. The questionnaire was then partially validated against the Eating Attitudes Test, the Profile of Mood States factors; depression, anxiety, fatigue and vigour, perceptions of control over behaviour and characteristics.
Optimizing controller area network system for vehicular automation

The use of advanced electronic control unit (ECU) in automotive industry is growing. Information collection and processing in systems with many ECUs face interruptions. Various bus standards for vehicles, such as Controller Area Network (CAN), are introduced in order to improve the overall performance. Optimization of CAN-bus is a challenging issue because of the recent needs including electric propulsion or driver assistance that involves more stringent real-time constraints. In this paper, we present a method to optimize CAN-bus for vehicle automation through microcontroller based design. The `control system' and `comfort system' of a vehicle are modeled using CAN-bus. The proposed CAN-bus system is evaluated by analyzing the frame response time using RTaW-Sim (a CAN simulation tool). Experimental results from VisualSim simulation show that the proposed CAN system helps decrease the frame response time by more than 43% when compared with a traditional wired system used in vehicles.
A splice-site mutation in GABRG2 associated with childhood absence epilepsy and febrile convulsions.

CONTEXT Missense mutations in the GABRG2 gene, which encodes the gamma 2 subunit of central nervous gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)(A) receptors, have recently been described in 2 families with idiopathic epilepsy. In one of these families, the affected individuals predominantly exhibited childhood absence epilepsy and febrile convulsions. OBJECTIVE To assess the role of GABRG2 in the genetic predisposition to idiopathic absence epilepsies. DESIGN The GABRG2 gene was screened by single-strand conformation analysis for mutations. Furthermore, a population-based association study assessing a common exon 5 polymorphism (C588T) was carried out. PATIENTS The sample was composed of 135 patients with idiopathic absence epilepsy and 154 unrelated and ethnically matched controls. RESULTS A point mutation (IVS6 + 2T-->G) leading to a splice-donor site mutation in intron 6 was found. The mutation, which is predicted to lead to a nonfunctional protein, cosegregates with the disease status in a family with childhood absence epilepsy and febrile convulsions. The association study did not find any significant differences in the allele and genotype frequencies of the common exon 5 polymorphism (C588T) between patients with idiopathic absence epilepsy and controls (P>.35). CONCLUSIONS Our study identified a splice-donor-site mutation that was probably causing a nonfunctional GABRG2 subunit. This mutation occurred in heterozygosity in the affected members of a single nuclear family, exhibiting a phenotypic spectrum of childhood absence epilepsy and febrile convulsions. The GABRG2 gene seems to confer a rare rather than a frequent major susceptibility effect to common idiopathic absence epilepsy syndromes.
THE COMMUNICATION OF EMOTION

The ability to well communicate emotions is important for both the encoder, who would like to be understood, and the decoder, who strives to understand. The present paper focuses on the communication of emotions via facial expressions. In this context, the notion that emotional expressions also communicate information about the encoder’s view of the world, their perception of emotion antecedent events, as well as their behavioral intentions and even aspects of their personality such as affiliation and dominance will be discussed. Specifically, I will focus on the role of social emotion norms, which guide both the overt expression of emotions and the attribution of emotions to others based on nonverbal behaviors. These norms vary with such social aspects of the interaction partners as their gender, power, and culture and influence not only the encoding but also the decoding of emotional expressions. Evidence from our laboratory regarding the communication of emotions between members of different social groups will be discussed to illustrate this point.
What heavy quanta bounds could be inferred from a Higgs discovery

The Higgs-gauge bosons couplings ghVV(V = g, γ, W, Z) receive non-decoupling corrections due to heavy quanta, and deviations from the SM predictions can be used to test its presence. The possible Higgs signal recently reported at LEP, with mh = 115 GeV, severely constrains the presence of heavy quanta, such as a heavy fourth family. At Tevatron, the Higgs production by gluon fusion, followed by the decay h → WW*, can also be used to probe the existence of heavy colored particles, including additional standard or mirror families, chiral colored sextets and octet quarks. Within the MSSM, we also find that gluon fusion is a sensitive probe for the spectrum of squark masses.
Optimal communication algorithms for heterogeneous computing over ATM networks

We present efficient algorithms for designing optimal collective communication primitives for cluster-based heterogeneous computing across ATM networks. Specifically, we consider the following four collective communication problems that occur frequently in parallel computing: one- to- all broadcast, all-to-all broadcast, one-to-all scatter and one-to-all scatter. We formulate these problems as combinatorial optimization problems for finding a system of virtual path routes in the network, with the objectives of minimizing the path lengths, the link congestions and the node copy loads. We consider two cases of data sources, namely homogeneous and heterogeneous. For the case of homogeneous sources, we present polynomial-time algorithms for these problems by converting them to the maximum-flow problems. For the case of heterogeneous sources, we show that these problems are NP-complete. Finally, we present novel randomized algorithms for there problems, and show that with high probability there algorithms yield good solutions in the sense that the objective functions yield values close to the optimums. These randomized algorithms make use of linear programming and are easy to implement, which makes them a potential candidate for practical implementations, even for very large networks.
Assessment of Child Neurology Outpatients With Headache, Dizziness, and Fainting -

Neurologic symptoms such as headache, vertigo, dizziness, and fainting can create a diagnostic problem in pediatric neurology practice because they are also the most common presenting symptoms of psychiatric disorders. Children, especially adolescents, who are often admitted with such autonomic symptoms, are frequently misdiagnosed. In this study, we aimed to investigate the psychiatric morbidity and comorbidity rate in children and adolescents presenting with neurologic symptoms such as headache, vertigo, and syncope. We investigated 31 children who presented with these symptoms. All children were evaluated for their medical history and had a physical and neurologic examination. We attempted to rule out a possible organic etiology. All patients received a complete laboratory examination (blood count, electroencephalography), pediatric cardiology and otorhinolaryngology consultations, and a caloric test. All patients were assessed according to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV (DSM-IV) criteria. The majority of the patients (93.5%) received a psychiatric diagnosis according to the DSM-IV criteria. Most of these patients were adolescents and female. Psychosocial stressors such as academic problems, familial dysfunction, parental psychopathology, and child sexual abuse were associated with somatic symptoms. The results of this study demonstrated the importance of differential diagnosis and psychiatric comorbidity in a pediatric neurologic outpatient population. Treatment should be directed at biopsychosocial integrity, and a multidisciplinary treatment approach should be applied. (J Child Neurol 2004;19:332-336).
Glucuronidation of amines and other xenobiotics catalyzed by expressed human UDP-glucuronosyltransferase 1A3.

Glucuronide conjugation of xenobiotics containing a tertiary amine moiety represents a unique and important metabolic pathway for these compounds in humans. Previously, human UDP-glucuronosyltransferase (UGT) 1A4 was shown to be an important enzyme for the formation of quaternary ammonium-linked glucuronides. UGT1A3 is 93% identical to UGT1A4 in primary amino acid sequence. We show that human UGT1A3, transiently expressed in human embryonic kidney 293 cells, also catalyzes the N-glucuronidation of primary, secondary, and tertiary amine substrates, such as 4-aminobiphenyl, diphenylamine, and cyproheptadine. In contrast to expressed human UGT1A4, which catalyzes the glucuronidation of amines with high efficiency, glucuronidation of amines catalyzed by UGT1A3 exhibited low efficiency, suggesting that UGT1A3 makes only a limited contribution to the metabolic elimination of these compounds. The reactivity of expressed human UGT1A3 toward hydroxylated and carboxylic acid-containing compounds was also examined. In addition to amines, expressed human UGT1A3 catalyzed the glucuronidation of opioids (e.g. morphine and buprenorphine), coumarins, flavonoids (e.g. naringenin and quercetin), anthraquinones, and small phenolic compounds (e.g. 4-nitrophenol). Drugs containing a carboxylic acid moiety, such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agents (e.g. naproxen and ibuprofen) and fibrates (e.g. ciprofibrate), were substrates for human UGT1A3. In contrast, compounds containing an aliphatic hydroxyl group, such as sapogenins, monoterpenoid alcohols (e.g. menthol and borneol), and androgens, were not conjugated by expressed human UGT1A3. Of the compounds tested, scopoletin, naringenin, and norbuprenorphine appeared to be the best xenobiotic substrates for human UGT1A3.
Reliable Multicast for Publish/Subscribe Systems

Group-based reliable multicast is an important building block for distributed applications. For large systems, however, traditional approaches do not scale well due to centralized recovery mechanisms and excessive message overhead. In this paper, we present a reliable probabilistic multicast, rpbcast, that is a hybrid of the centralized and gossip-based approaches. In particular, rpbcast extends previous work by supporting high packet rates and many active senders. Rpbcast uses gossip as the primary retransmission mechanism and only contacts loggers if gossips fail. Large groups of active senders are supported using negative gossip which describes what a receiver lacks instead of what it has. Moreover, negative gossip allows pull based recovery and converges faster than push based recovery. Rpbcast also applies hashing techniques to reduce message overhead. Garbage collection in rpbcast is stability oriented. The approximate membership protocol in rpbcast exploits some garbage collection flexibilities to avoid expensive join/leave operations. Thesis Supervisor: Nancy Lynch Title: Professor Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Effects of 5-Aza-2 ' Deoxycytidine on Proliferation and Differentiation of Embryonic Chick Caudal Region Chondrocytes in Culture

DNA methylation is one of the epigenetic mechanisms which have been implicated in cellular differentiation, ageing and disease development. The effect of hypomethylating drug 5-aza-2´deoxycytidine (5-aza dC) on the biosynthetic profile of caudal region chondrocytes from chick sternum was studied in detail. The chondrocytes in culture were treated with varying doses of 5-aza dC for 48h and maintained subsequently without the treatment and harvested at selected time points for analysis of growth and differentiation status. 15µ g/ml of 5-aza dC showed optimum Concentration at which there was a significant increase in DNA synthesis and RNA synthesis as per cell basis. There was also a significant increase in total protein synthesis and collagen synthesis as per cell basis at this concentration. This optimal concentration also showed to up regulate the gene expression of Type X collagen and alkaline phosphatase, which are the marker of hypertrophic chondrocyte expression. These results further support the notion that methylation is the major epigenetic factor controlling the differentiation and maturation of chondrocytes.