Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of clinical outcomes after drug-eluting balloon and drug-eluting stent use for in-stent restenosis related acute myocardial infarction: a retrospective study

Background Good results of drug-eluting balloon (DEB) use are achieved in in-stent restenosis (ISR) lesions, small vessel disease, long lesions, and bifurcations. However, few reports exist about DEB use in acute myocardial infarction (AMI) with ISR. This study’s aim was to evaluate the efficacy of DEB for AMI with ISR. Methods Between November 2011 and December 2015, 117 consecutive patients experienced AMI including ST-segment elevation MI, and non-ST-segment elevation MI due to ISR, and received percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). We divided our patients into two groups: (1) PCI with further DEB, and (2) PCI with further drug-eluting stent (DES). Clinical outcomes such as target lesion revascularization, target vessel revascularization, recurrent MI, stroke, cardiovascular mortality, and all-cause mortality were analyzed. Results The patients’ average age was 68.37 ± 11.41 years; 69.2% were male. A total of 75 patients were enrolled in the DEB group, and 42 patients were enrolled in the DES group. The baseline characteristics between the two groups were the same without statistical differences except for gender. Peak levels of cardiac biomarker, pre- and post-PCI cardiac function were similar between two groups. The major adverse cardiac cerebral events rate (34.0% vs. 35.7%; p = 0.688) and cardiovascular mortality rate (11.7% vs. 12.8%; p = 1.000) were similar in both groups. Conclusions DEB is a reasonable strategy for AMI with ISR. Compared with DES, DEB is an alternative strategy which yielded acceptable short-term outcomes and similar 1-year clinical outcomes.
An investigation of environmental influence on the benefits of adaptation mechanisms in evolutionary swarm robotics

A robotic swarm that is required to operate for long periods in a potentially unknown environment can use both evolution and individual learning methods in order to adapt. However, the role played by the environment in influencing the effectiveness of each type of learning is not well understood. In this paper, we address this question by analysing the performance of a swarm in a range of simulated, dynamic environments where a distributed evolutionary algorithm for evolving a controller is augmented with a number of different individual learning mechanisms. The learning mechanisms themselves are defined by parameters which can be either fixed or inherited. We conduct experiments in a range of dynamic environments whose characteristics are varied so as to present different opportunities for learning. Results enable us to map environmental characteristics to the most effective learning algorithm.
Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS) Analysis of Calcium and Phosphor Minerals Elements on Bone After Insertion Immediate Implant on Socket Filled with Extract Aloe vera

Objective: To examine the effect of aloe vera that containing bioactive materials on the levels of calcium (Ca) and phosphorus (P) minerals and their ratios around the immediate implanted in alveolar bone. Material and Methods: Research method by conducting experimental test on experimental animals: 9 male mongrel dogs are divided into 3 groups each 3 tails. In each animal was pulled the second premolar teeth on right side and left side, and immediately inserted titanium implant (3mm x 10mm diameter) after the socket filled with 10% aloevera extract on the right side and control on the left side. Analysis of calcium and phosphorus minerals content formed by examination of Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS) on Scanning Electron Microscope on implant and around bone tissue was done on days 14, 28 and 56. The result of statistical analysis using repeated ANOVA with independent t test. The level of significance was set at 5%. Results: There was a significant difference on calcium level between control and treatment groups on days 14, 28 and 56 (p 0.05). The ratio of Ca / P in both control and treatment groups was also significantly different in every observation day (p<0.05). Conclusion: The addition of aloe vera extract that containing bioactive materials has an effect on increasing levels of mineral elements calcium and calcium-phosphorus ratio after immediate implant insertion.
The role of State Forest Enterprises in the payments for Forest Environmental Services Programme in Vietnam

To promote pro-poor payments for environmental services, it is necessary to identify institutional options that reduce transaction costs and organisational problems associated with establishing and maintaining contracts with small-scale environmental service providers. This study examined the dual functionality of state forest enterprises (SFEs) in the implementation of the Payments for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) Program in Vietnam. We considered whether SFEs’ involvement in the programme could reduce transaction costs and organisational problems. Data were collected from Tu Ly SFE in Hoa Binh province, northern Vietnam and from implementing agencies at various institutional levels. A survey of households participating in the SFE loan programme, and two stakeholder workshops were executed in 2014. The results revealed that Tu Ly SFE plays an important role in the livelihood of many farmers. A SWOT analysis exhibited SFEs’ advantage over other state agencies in implementing national forest management programmes as there are fewer parties involved with greater autonomy and outreach in the district. This study proposes the acknowledgment of SFEs as environmental service providers in their own forestlands and to use SFEs as intermediaries in the Payments for Forest Environmental Services Programme activities.
Carbon-based hybrid materials: growth, characterization and investigation of properties

The structural versatility of carbon allotropes offers a variety of opportunities to employ them in diverse applications both as a pristine material and as building block in composite materials. Carbon nanotubes, carbon nanofibers and graphene can serve to engineer the physical and chemical properties of carbon-based hybrid architectures and devices. These hybrid functional systems have a great potential to become the driving force of the technology of the future. The research work presented in this thesis had a focus on the synthesis of aligned and unaligned single-walled carbon nanotubes to understand the intertube interactions for opto-electronic device applications. Further, successful design, synthesis and characterization of functional composite materials based on carbon nanofibers and graphene has been achieved.
Three Experiments in Reliable Transaction Processing in RAID

This paper describes three studies that contribute towards the building of reliable distributed database systems. We measure the transaction processing times in the different phases of its execution in an operational database system called RAID. We find that response times of 300-500 milliseconds are achievable and much of it is due to the communications and commitment software. We have implemented and measured a concurrent checkpointing and rollback algorithm useful for dealing with failures of individual processes in the system. We find that the cost of synchronization for the coordinator process is of the order of the time required for taking a single checkpoint on the stable storage. We find that the concurrent execution does not reduce the message overhead or cpu usage but has the same communication delay as a single checkpoint instance. We show that much parallelism e. 'cists in such algorithms. Finally we present two more experiments that were done by implementing a partially replicated database system. They measured the effects of the degree of replication and of the threshold representing the minimum number of copies. We find that a low degree of replication (25%) and a high threshold can provide the same data availability as a fully replicated database but with lower response time. ·This research is-support,ed by NASA and AIRMICS under grant number NAG-1-676, UNISYS, and a David Ross fellowship.
DIAGNOSIS OF LEGIONELLA INFECTION

DIAGNOSIS OF LEGIONELLA INFECTION [Murdoch DR. CID 2003;36:64] The author reviews diagnostic testing for Legionella. Emphasis is placed on the following observations: 1) specialized tests are required; 2) there are substantial differences between performance by research laboratories and service laboratories; 3) there is no “gold standard”; 4) the specific recommendations should be influenced by local Legionella epidemiology which shows that L. pneumophila serogroup one dominates in most areas of the world, but L. longbeachae is the major cause in Australia and New Zealand. Table 1 summarizes the available information about these tests.
An evidence-based review of unoprostone isopropyl ophthalmic solution 0.15% for glaucoma: place in therapy

Glaucoma is a progressive, neurodegenerative optic nerve disease that can cause significant visual morbidity and affects over 60 million people worldwide. The only known modifiable risk factor for glaucoma at this time is elevated intraocular pressure (IOP), which may be treated with medications, laser therapy, and/or incisional surgery. Topical ocular medications are commonly used as first-line therapy for glaucoma, although side effects may limit their use. Unoprostone is a novel 22-carbon ocular hypotensive agent that may be advantageous in treating some patients with open angle glaucoma or ocular hypertension. Unlike the 20-carbon prostanoids, such as latanoprost, that lower IOP primarily through an increase in uveoscleral outflow, unoprostone may lower IOP through increased aqueous outflow via the conventional trabecular meshwork pathway. Although not as efficacious as other prostanoids, unoprostone is effective for IOP reduction both as monotherapy and adjunctive therapy with timolol. Unoprostone has decreased affinity for the prostaglandin F2α receptor, which may explain its well tolerated ocular and systemic side effect profile compared with other prostanoids.
An incremental clustering method based on the boundary profile

Many important applications continuously generate data, such as financial transaction administration, satellite monitoring, network flow monitoring, and web information processing. The data mining results are always evolving with the newly generated data. Obviously, for the clustering task, it is better to incrementally update the new clustering results based on the old data rather than to recluster all of the data from scratch. The incremental clustering approach is an essential way to solve the problem of clustering with growing Big Data. This paper proposes a boundary-profile-based incremental clustering (BPIC) method to find arbitrarily shaped clusters with dynamically growing datasets. This method represents the existing clustering results with a collection of boundary profiles and discards the inner points of clusters rather than keep all data. It greatly saves both time and space storage costs. To identify the boundary profile, this paper presents a boundary-vector-based boundary point detection (BV-BPD) algorithm that summarizes the structure of the existing clusters. The BPIC method processes each new point in an online fashion and updates the clustering results in a batch mode. When a new point arrives, the BPIC method either immediately labels it or temporarily puts it into a bucket according to the relationship between the new data and the boundary profiles. A bucket is employed to distinguish the noise from the potential seeds of new clusters and alleviate the effects of data order. When the bucket is full, the BPIC method will cluster the data within it and update the clustering results. Thus, the BPIC method is insensitive to noise and the order of new data, which is critical for the robustness of the incremental clustering process. In the experiments, the performance of the boundary point detection algorithm BV-BPD is compared with the state-of-the-art method. The results show that the BV-BPD is better than the state-of-the-art method. Additionally, the performance of BPIC and other two incremental clustering methods are investigated in terms of clustering quality, time and space efficiency. The experimental results indicate that the BPIC method is able to get a qualified clustering result on a large dataset with higher time and space efficiency.
Consumer-product attachment: Measurement and design implications

Due to differences in the attachment consumers experience towards the durable products they own, they hang on to certain products whereas they easily dispose of others. From the viewpoint of sustainability, it may be worthwhile to lengthen the life span of many durable consumer products. Hence, there is a challenge for designers to strengthen the bond between consumers and their products through the product design process. In the present study, we develop a scale to measure consumer-product attachment, and we identify and measure seven possible determinants of attachment: enjoyment, memories to persons, places, and events, support of self-identity, life vision, utility, reliability, and market value. Only memories and enjoyment contribute positively to the degree of attachment. The highest levels of attachment are registered for recently acquired products (<1 year) and for products owned for more than 20 years. For new products, enjoyment may be the main driver of attachment, whereas for old products memories may be more important.
Inflammation and Vasomotricity During Reperfusion

Restoration of perfusion and reoxygenation of ischemic tissues restores aerobic metabo‐ lism and supports postischemic functional recovery but also generates significant dam‐ age related to the ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) phenomenon. At the level of a blood vessel, lesions of I/R are mainly characterized by the perturbation of vasomotion and endothe‐ lial dysfunction. Moreover, despite the fact that ischemia occurs in a sterile environment, reperfusion induces a significant activation of innate and adaptive immune responses: massive reactive oxygen species (ROS) production; activation of pattern-recognition re‐ ceptors or toll-like receptors (TLRs); activation of complement, coagulation, cytokine and chemokine production; and inflammatory cell trafficking into the diseased organ.1 I/R ac‐ tivates different programs of cell death (necrosis, apoptosis or autophagy-associated cell death) and generates a systemic inflammatory response that lasts several days and that can lead, in some cases, to multi-organ failure and death. [2-4]
Light as stress factor to plant roots – case of root halotropism

Despite growing underground, largely in darkness, roots emerge to be very sensitive to light. Recently, several important papers have been published which reveal that plant roots not only express all known light receptors but also that their growth, physiology and adaptive stress responses are light-sensitive. In Arabidopsis, illumination of roots speeds-up root growth via reactive oxygen species-mediated and F-actin dependent process. On the other hand, keeping Arabidopsis roots in darkness alters F-actin distribution, polar localization of PIN proteins as well as polar transport of auxin. Several signaling components activated by phytohormones are overlapping with light-related signaling cascade. We demonstrated that the sensitivity of roots to salinity is altered in the light-grown Arabidopsis roots. Particularly, light-exposed roots are less effective in their salt-avoidance behavior known as root halotropism. Here we discuss these new aspects of light-mediated root behavior from cellular, physiological and evolutionary perspectives.
A Quantitative Understanding of Moisture Induced Flow Variability and Triboelectric Charging in Pharmaceutical Powders

The prevalence of solid dosage formulation in pharmaceutical industry necessitates a comprehensive understanding of the intricate details of the complex interactions mediating particle dynamics to optimize the overall processing and manufacturing techniques. The present research employs experimentally validated modeling tools (Discrete Element Method) and systematic statistical formalism to address the potential variations in the dynamics of pharmaceutical powders due to friction mediated static charging (t ribocharging) and that of moisture induced cohesion. The present work explores to process model triboelectrification during hopper discharge and hopper-chute flow, investigate the mechanisms of charge transfer in identical materials, implement statistical tools to analyze charge transfer in pharmaceutical mixtures, determine the flow variability in pharmaceutical powders due to moisture induced cohesion at different humidity conditions and finally develop a cumulative modelling approach to assimilate experimental data with DEM and statistical models to unfold the cohesion mediated interactions between different pharmaceutical excipients due to variations in moisture contents. The results achieved from the experimentally validated multi -scale models, render a quantitative perspective of the various physical parameters altering particle dynamics, those might be potential to Raj Mukherjee University of Connecticut, 2018 significantly reduce the experimental efforts, save resource s and costs, decrease the number of rejected batches during scale -up, thereby ensuring the quality of the manufactured product.
Air-Pollutant-Philic Plants for Air Remediation

In this communication, we review our work over two decades on air-pollutant-philic plants that can grow with air pollutants as the sole nutrient source. We believe that such plants are instrumental in mitigating air pollution. Our target air pollutant has been atmospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and our work on this subject has consisted of three parts: Variation in plants’ abilities to mitigate air pollutants among naturally occurring plants, genetic improvement of plants’ abilities to mitigate air pollutants, and the plant vitalization effect of NO2. So far, an estimation of the half-life of nitrogen derived from NO2 uptake in plants belonging to the 217 taxa studied to date has shown no plants to be naturally occurring air-pollutant-philic. However, we found that an enormous difference exists in plants’ ability to uptake and assimilate atmospheric NO2. Future studies on the causes of this process may provide an important clue to aid the genetic production of plants that are effectively air-pollutant-philic. Both genetic engineering of the genes involved in the primary nitrate metabolism and genetic modification by ion-beam irradiation failed to make plants air-pollutant-philic, but mutants obtained in these studies will prove useful in revealing those genes critical in doing so. During our study on air-pollutant-philic plants, we unexpectedly discovered that prolonged exposure of plants to a sufficient level of NO2 activates the uptake and metabolism of nutrients that fuel plant growth and development. We named this phenomenon “the plant vitalization effect of NO2” (PVEON). Investigations into the mechanisms and genes involved in PVEON will provide an important clue to making plants air-pollutant-philic in the future.
Open Peer Review

Abstract In this issue of Serials Review, the Balance Point column delves into issues surrounding peer review, paying particular attention to open peer review. Beginning with some discussion of the history and development of peer review, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of traditional peer review, the column addresses open peer review (OPR) processes and the pros and cons of OPR. Topics such as the mechanisms of open peer review, faculty credit for peer review, as well as open peer review in the Library and Information Science (LIS) field are also touched on.
The Relationship between Diabetes and Obesity across Different Ethnicities

The relationship between diabetes and obesity, major contributors to cardiovascular disease, varies with ethnicity; however, only limited information is available regarding Aboriginal and South Asian populations. Objective: This investigation aimed to identify and compare the relationship between diabetes and dysglycemia, and obesity across several ethnicities. Methods: White (n=3593), Aboriginal (n=999), East Asian (n=448), and South Asian (n=222) adults were measured directly for body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference. Individuals were identified for diabetes and dysglycemia through reported diagnosis, measured random blood glucose and A1C values. The risk ratios of diabetes and dysglycemia were compared across measures of BMI and waist circumference. Results: Across all ethnic groups, individuals with greater BMI and waist circumference demonstrated greater risk ratios for diabetes and dysglycemia. Aboriginal and South Asian individuals demonstrated greater risks for diabetes relative to White adults regardless of age, gender, physical activity and body composition. Risks for dysglycemia were greater among East and South Asian adults regardless of covariates, while the increased risk among Aboriginal adults appears to be mediated by waist circumference. Conclusions: Overall, increased risks of diabetes and dysglycemia were observed across all ethnic groups with increased body composition measures.
Photopolarimetry of planetary atmospheres: what observational data are essential for a unique retrieval of aerosol microphysics?

We analyse the results of computations of the intensity and degree of linear polarization of diffusely reflected sunlight for the centre of a planetary disc in the phase-angle range 0 ◦ <α< 90 ◦ . The computations are performed using numerically exact T-matrix and vector radiativetransfer codes for several alternative models of the Jovian cloud layer derived previously from ground-based spectropolarimetric observations at phase angles α< 11 ◦ . Our results show that although these models reproduce the existing observational data equally well, they start to show significant polarization differences at phase angles α 12 ◦ . Thus, using Jupiter as a ‘proving ground’, we conclude that only polarimetric data obtained over a wide range of phase angles (i.e. from spacecraft) may provide definitive constraints on aerosol shape and, as a consequence, ameliorate the ill-posed nature of the inverse remote-sensing problem.
Tragedy of the commons as a result of root competition

1 We develop and test a game‐theoretic model for considering the effects of intra‐ and interplant competition on root proliferation and reproductive yield. 2 We predict that if space and resources per individual are held constant, plants should produce more roots per individual and less reproductive yield per individual as the number of plants sharing the combined space increases. 3 We tested the predictions using soybean plants (Glycine max) cultivated in the glasshouse either as owners or as two individuals sharing twice the space and nutrients. 4 Sharing individuals produced 85% more root mass than owners. Owners, however, produced 30% more reproductive yield per plant (dry mass of seeds), as a result of significantly more seed pods (8.70 vs. 7.66), more seeds per pod (1.87 vs. 1.72) and larger seeds (0.205 vs. 0.195 g seed−1), than did sharing individuals. 5 Total plant biomass did not differ between owners and sharing individuals, but owners had significantly higher shoot to root ratios, produced significantly more seeds per unit root mass, and allocated a significantly higher percentage of total biomass production to seeds. 6 Possession of an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) of root competition suggests that different roots and parts of a plant assess and respond to opportunities in a manner that maximizes the good of the whole plant. Thus, plants may be more sophisticated and share more in common with animals in their non‐cognitive behaviours than previously thought. A plant operating as a co‐ordinated whole should, all else being equal, first proliferate roots in unoccupied soil, then in soil occupied by a conspecific competitor, and lastly in soil already occupied by its own roots.