Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Steal-prone coronary circulation in chronically instrumented dogs: isoflurane versus adenosine.

The influence of isoflurane and adenosine on left ventricular myocardial blood flow was investigated in dogs chronically instrumented for measurement of systemic and coronary hemodynamics, regional myocardial contractile function (with ultrasonic sonomicrometers), and myocardial perfusion (by the radioactive microsphere method). An Ameroid constrictor was implanted on the left circumflex coronary artery to produce a progressive stenosis that gradually reduced vascular reserve of the distal perfusion territory. The depletion of reserve was evaluated by daily monitoring of the hyperemic response to adenosine. A stenosis of moderate severity was considered present when left circumflex reserve was attenuated by approximately 60-70%. During left circumflex stenosis development, the left anterior descending coronary artery was totally occluded for 2 min each hour eight times daily with a hydraulic occluder to stimulate coronary collateral development over a period of 9-13 days. Contractile dysfunction during and flow debt repayment after each brief occlusion were used to monitor coronary collateral development. After stenosis and collateral development had occurred, the left anterior descending coronary artery was permanently occluded to simulate a condition of multivessel coronary artery disease with enhanced collateral development. In separate groups of experiments, hemodynamics and myocardial perfusion were measured before and after administration of adenosine (0.54 and 1.08 mg/min) or isoflurane (1.1 and 1.9%, end-tidal) and in the presence of either agent during adjustment of diastolic aortic pressure and heart rate to control levels. Total left anterior descending coronary artery occlusion in the presence of a moderate left circumflex stenosis produced an increase in mean arterial and left ventricular end diastolic pressures. Isoflurane decreased arterial pressure, left ventricular systolic pressure, and positive rate of increase of left ventricular pressure (dP/dt50) without altering heart rate. Administration of the high concentration of isoflurane reduced blood flow in normal areas and in regions distal to the partial (from 1.05 +/- 0.10 to 0.76 +/- 0.11 ml.min-1.g-1) or total coronary occlusion (from 0.64 +/- 0.10 to 0.41 +/- 0.11 ml.min-1.g-1). However, when arterial pressure and heart rate were restored to levels present in the conscious state, perfusion in all zones was maintained at control levels (1.06 +/- 0.11 for the stenotic and 0.69 +/- 0.12 ml.min-1.g-1 for the occluded region). Ratios of transmural blood flow between occluded and normal or occluded and stenotic zones were not different from the conscious state during a constant aortic pressure and heart rate. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Ecological networks : beyond food webs Ecological networks – beyond food webs

1 School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London E1 4NS, UK; 2 ICREA Complex Systems Lab, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Dr Aiguader 88, 08003 Barcelona, Spain; 3 Integrative Ecology Group, Estación Biológica de Doñana, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Apartado 1056, 41080 Sevilla, Spain; 4 Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology, Biozentrum, University of Würzburg, 97074 Würzburg, Germany; 5 School of Geography, University of Leeds, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK; 6 Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Department of Computational Landscape Ecology, Permoserstrasse 15, 04318 Leipzig, Germany;
Control of Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococci in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

Abstract Background and Objective: Multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs), such as vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), cause serious infections, especially among high-risk patients in NICUs. When VRE was introduced and transmitted in our NICU despite recommended infection control practices, we instituted active surveillance cultures to determine their efficacy in detecting and controlling spread of VRE among high-risk infants. Methods: Active surveillance cultures, other infection control measures, and a mandatory in-service education module on preventing MDRO transmission were implemented. Cultures were performed on NICU admission and then weekly during their stay. Molecular DNA fingerprinting of VRE isolates facilitated targeting efforts to eliminate clonal spread of VRE. Repetitive sequence PCR (rep-PCR)-based DNA fingerprinting was used to compare isolates recovered from patients with VRE infection or colonization. Environmental VRE cultures were performed around VRE-colonized or -infected patients. DNA fingerprints were prepared from the products of rep-PCR amplification and analyzed using software to determine strain genetic relatedness. Results: Active surveillance cultures identified 65 patients with VRE colonization or infection among 1,820 admitted to the NICU. Rep-PCR performed on 60 VRE isolates identified 3 clusters. Cluster 1 included isolates from 21 patients and 4 isolates from the environment of the index patient. Clusters 2 and 3 included isolates from 23 and 3 patients, respectively. Similarity coefficients among the members of each cluster were 95% or greater. Conclusions: Control of transmission of multi-clonal VRE strains was achieved. Active surveillance cultures, together with implementation of other infection control measures, combined with rep-PCR DNA fingerprinting were instrumental in controlling VRE transmission in our NICU. (Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 2005;26:646-649)
Implementing inflation targeting regimes: The case of Poland

This paper assesses the prospects for the new Polish monetary policy strategy of inflation targeting. Regarding the general requirements for implementing an inflation targeting strategy it appears that Poland has made sufficient progress in reducing fiscal dominance and hardening budget constraints. The paper also finds that the exchange rate has played a dominant role as a policy instrument, with the linkages between the short-term interest rate and inflation remaining unclear. Given this uncertainty, modification of some details of the strategy - such as widening the target range or lengthening the target horizon - might be helpful.
Unintended side effects of a spotless mind: theory and practice

ABSTRACT Forgetting can be either a source of great frustration or one of great relief, depending on whether the memories in question are relevant to one’s immediate goals. Adopting an appropriate strategy or memory mode can help achieve these goals. But do efforts to control memory engender unintended side effects? Presently, we expand on a theoretical perspective of memory control, wherein efforts to suppress episodic encoding or retrieval result in the systemic downregulation of the hippocampal memory system. We review evidence from multiple methodologies, highlighting a non-invasive means of inducing amnesia that casts a shadow over memory for unrelated events. By establishing the causes and consequences of the amnesic side effects associated with memory control, we argue it may be possible to harness hippocampal dynamics to promote more adaptive memory performance in the lab, clinic, and broader context of daily life.
Balancing opportunities and risks in teenagers’ use of the internet: the role of online skills and internet self-efficacy

Many hopes exist regarding the opportunities that the internet can offer to young people as well as fears about the risks it may bring. Informed by research on media literacy, this article examines the role of selected measures of internet literacy in relation to teenagers’ online experiences. Data from a national survey of teenagers in the UK (N = 789) are analyzed to examine: first, the demographic factors that influence skills in using the internet; and, second (the main focus of the study), to ask whether these skills make a difference to online opportunities and online risks. Consistent with research on the digital divide, path analysis showed the direct influence of age and socioeconomic status on young people’s access, the direct influence of age and access on their use of online opportunities, and the direct influence of gender on online risks. The importance of online skills was evident insofar as online access, use and skills were found to mediate relations between demographic variables and young people’s experience of online opportunities and risks. Further, an unexpected positive relationship between online opportunities and risks was found, with implications for policy interventions aimed at reducing the risks of internet use.
The Reconstruction of Kinship from Archaeological Data: The Concepts, the Methods, and the Feasibility

Abstract Archaeologists have recently attempted to reconstruct the residence and descent systems of particular prehistoric communities. Based on a study of residence and descent theory and pertinent examples from the ethnographic literature, we conclude that unless extremely detailed historical data exists, the analysis of kinship is best left to the ethnographer. The paper was conceived of as an attempt by archaeologically oriented anthropologists to resolve some of the difficulties encountered by us in our review of the archaeological literature on kinship reconstruction. We have, therefore, limited the scope of this paper accordingly; that is, it has been written principally with the problems of the archaeologist not the ethnographer in mind. An abbreviated version of this paper was presented at the 64th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association.
Degree Reduction of Interval WB Curves

Wang-Ball (WB) curve is one of the generalized cubic Ball basis which was first put forward in CONSURF system by Ball. Wang extended it to arbitrary odd and even degrees. An algorithmic approach to degree reduction of interval Wang-Ball curve is presented in this paper. The four fixed Kharitonov's polynomials (four fixed WB curves) associated with the original interval WB curve are obtained. These four fixed WB curves are transformed into four fixed Bezier curves. The degree of the four fixed Bezier curves is reduced based on the matrix representations of the degree reduction process. The process of degree reductions times are applied to the four fixed Bezier curves of degree to obtain the four fixed Bezier curves of degree without changing their shapes. The four fixed reduced Bezier curves are converted into WB curves of the same degree. Finally the reduced interval WB control points are obtained from the four fixed reduced WB control points. An illustrative example is included in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Index Term— Image processing, CAGD, degree reduction, interval Wang-Ball (WB) curve, interval Bezier curve.
Peri-stent abluminal hematoma and pin-hole balloon rupture during treatment of calcified drug-eluting stent in-stent restenosis.

vascular ultrasound (IVUS) provided unique morphological insights and facilitated identification of the calcified underlying substrate of ISR. An 82-year-old man with a previous history of coronary surgery and interventions on the circumflex coronary (LCX) was admitted for prolonged angina, transient electrocardiographic changes on lateral leads and troponin elevation. He had a previous history of cigarette smoking, hypertension, dyslipidemia, arly results of coronary interventions for patients with in-stent restenosis (ISR) are largely satisfactory.1,2 In this setting lack of initial angiographic success or occurrence of procedural-related complications are exceedingly rare.1,2 We report a patient presenting with old calcified ISR who experienced a pin-hole balloon rupture and peri-stent abluminal intramural hematoma during a repeated coronary intervention. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) and intraE
Penning ionization of N2O molecules by He*(2(3,1)S) and Ne*(3P2,0) metastable atoms: a crossed beam study.

The energetics of [Rg. N2O]* autoionizing collision complexes (where Rg=He or Ne) and their dynamical evolution have been studied in a crossed beam apparatus, respectively, by Penning ionization electron spectroscopy (PIES) and by mass spectrometry (MS) techniques in the thermal energy range. The PIES spectra, detected by an electron energy analyzer, were recorded for both complexes at four different collision energies. Such spectra allowed the determination of the energy shifts for Penning electron energy distributions, and the branching ratios for the population of different electronic states and for the vibrational population in the molecular nascent ions. For the [Ne.N2O]* collision complex it was found, by MS, that the autoionization leads to the formation of N2O+, NO+, O+, and NeN2O+ product ions whose total and partial cross sections were measured in the collision energy range between 0.03 and 0.2 eV. The results are analyzed exploiting current models for the Penning ionization process: the observed collision energy dependence in the PIES spectra as well as in the cross sections are correlated with the nature of the N2O molecule orbitals involved in the ionization and are discussed in term of the Rg-N2O interaction potentials, which are estimated by using a semiempirical method developed in our laboratory.
Migration through resolution cell compensation in ISAR imaging

Range-Doppler (RD) processing is widely used in conventional inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging. The unwanted translational motion of moving targets is compensated by envelope alignment and autofocus. For existing ISAR imaging algorithms, the scatterers' migration through resolution cells (MTRC) caused by the rotational motion is usually ignored. With the improvement of resolution or the increase of target size, MTRC cannot be neglected. In this letter, the keystone formatting algorithm developed in SAR is used for the MTRC compensation in ISAR. Before the keystone formatting, coherent processing must be performed on the raw phase history data. An effective approach is proposed for this kind of coherent processing. Numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the performance of the proposed approach.
Nuclear dynamics of RAD52 group homologous recombination proteins in response to DNA damage

Recombination between homologous DNA molecules is essential for the proper maintenance and duplication of the genome, and for the repair of exogenously induced DNA damage such as double‐strand breaks. Homologous recombination requires the RAD52 group proteins, including Rad51, Rad52 and Rad54. Upon treatment of mammalian cells with ionizing radiation, these proteins accumulate into foci at sites of DNA damage induction. We show that these foci are dynamic structures of which Rad51 is a stably associated core component, whereas Rad52 and Rad54 rapidly and reversibly interact with the structure. Furthermore, we show that the majority of the proteins are not part of the same multi‐protein complex in the absence of DNA damage. Executing DNA transactions through dynamic multi‐protein complexes, rather than stable holo‐complexes, allows flexibility. In the case of DNA repair, for example, it will facilitate cross‐talk between different DNA repair pathways and coupling to other DNA transactions, such as replication.
Antibiotic resistance of Helicobacter pylori

1. S UMMARY Peptic ulcer disease due to infection with Helicobacter pylori is an extremely common chronic and disabling disease, which in the past was attributed to factors such as stress, genetics and personality. Reports of an association with flagellated bacilli had already appeared in the late 19th century, but this association was considered to be due to bacterial overgrowth in the presence of delayed gastric emptying and the significance of this observation was not realized. For decades, patients with ulcer disease were treated with rest, various diets, and finally, often with surgery. The recognition that chronic ulcer disease can result from infection with H. pylori turned it into a curable and preventable infectious disorder. Only a few antibiotics can be used successfully for eradication of H. pylori; these are metronidazole, tetracycline, amoxycillin, clarithromycin and azithromycin. Other drugs with some in vitro antimicrobial effect are bismuth salts and proton pump inhibitors. Successful eradication of H. pylori infection requires a combination of two or three antibiotics and an antacid drug. The increased prevalence of antibiotic-resistant H. pylori strains has serious implications as, apart from patient compliance, antimicrobial resistance is the most important factor determining the outcome of antibiotic treatment. Resistance against clarithromycin and metronidazole is of particular clinical importance as these two drugs are used in almost all standard H. pylori eradication regimens. Our current understanding of the mechanisms of antibiotic resistance for these two drugs now allows for rapid testing of resistance and provides clues on how to reduce the spread of resistance. Spontaneous resistance to rifampicin, tetracycline, amoxycillin, streptomycin, trovafloxacin and ciprofloxacin has also been reported. The underlying mechanisms for resistance against these drugs have been characterized in some detail and will be discussed.
Revolution Within Evolution: The Emergence of a ‘Secondary State’ on Protohistoric Bronze Age Cyprus

AbstractIn two studies published some 25 years ago (; 1988), I argued that the rise of social complexity on Cyprus during the late Middle to early Late Bronze Age involved the interplay of trade and external demand, the accumulation and reinvestment of wealth, and the division of labour into specialized production areas. In two follow-up papers (Knapp 1990a; 1993), I traced the ‘incipient’ stages in the emergence of socio-political complexity on Cyprus back to the Early and Middle Bronze Ages, arguing that gradual growth in metallurgical and agricultural production enabled emergent power groups to establish pre-eminence in the northern part of the island by at least 2000 BC. Nonetheless, I suggested that locally controlled exploitation of mineral, material and symbolic resources continued to characterize island society until c. 1700 BC, and that the ‘transformation’ then seen in Cyprus’s material culture represented a gradual development of power differentials in society. Virtually all other scholars invo.
RRQR based closed-form blind carrier offset estimator for OFDM systems

Carrier Frequency Offset (CFO) is one of the major drawbacks of the Multi Carrier Modulation (MCM) technique. Blind, semiblind and data-aided techniques have been introduced to estimate the CFO. In this paper, a new blind CFO estimator based on the Matrix Pencil (MP) method is proposed. A closed-form solution of this generalized eigenvalue problem using the MP method is solved by Rank Revealing QR factorization (RRQR). The RRQR reveals information about numerical rank and efficiently divides the space into signal and noise subspaces. Our algorithm is proficient to estimate CFO by not involving Eigenvalue Decomposition (EVD) or Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) of the spectral data matrix. The proposed method is characterized by the highly accurate CFO estimation especially with a very small number of OFDM frames. Computer simulations are included to show the dominant performance of our proposed method by comparing it with the ESPRIT algorithm, particularly at lower numbers of available data blocks.
An overview of sleepiness and accidents

SUMMARY This paper reviews the association between neurobiologically‐based sleepiness/fatigue and human‐error related accidents. It concludes that fatigue contributes to human error and accidents in technology‐rich, industrialized societies in terms of human, environmental and economic impacts. The cultural utilization of time as expressed in 24‐h work operations, combined with the widespread use of automation, will continue to escalate in the next century, further increasing the risks of fatigue‐related accidents, as more people conduct vigilance‐based activities at times other than the traditional daytime work hours. Fatigue management and prevention of fatigue‐related catastrophes need to become a sustained priority for government, industries, labour, and the public. Scientific data are urgently needed on the most likely areas in which sleepiness‐related performance failures contribute to accidents, and on the effectiveness of a wide range of potentially useful countermeasures.
Tradeoffs and design choices for a software defined acoustic modem: a case study: extended abstract

Challenges in developing high performance underwater acoustic modems can be summarized as: 1. Lack of maturity in underwater acoustic communications technology at all layers of the communication stack. This stems in part from the complex and dynamic nature of the underwater channel. 2. Spatially and temporally dynamic nature of the underwater acoustic channel. Theoretically "high performance" communications may not be achievable using the largely channel-specific (channel-static) processing techniques similar to those which have evolved for radio frequency and optical communications. 3. Resources. Without the expectation that the processing being implemented will reach a point of high maturity and meet a high-priority near-term operational need, it can be difficult to justify such an application specific investment.
On the Lower Tail Variational Problem for Random Graphs

We study the lower tail large deviation problem for subgraph counts in a random graph. Let X H denote the number of copies of H in an Erdős–Rényi random graph $\mathcal{G}(n,p)$ . We are interested in estimating the lower tail probability $\mathbb{P}(X_H \le (1-\delta) \mathbb{E} X_H)$ for fixed 0 < δ < 1. Thanks to the results of Chatterjee, Dembo and Varadhan, this large deviation problem has been reduced to a natural variational problem over graphons, at least for p ≥ n −α H (and conjecturally for a larger range of p). We study this variational problem and provide a partial characterization of the so-called ‘replica symmetric’ phase. Informally, our main result says that for every H, and 0 < δ < δ H for some δ H > 0, as p → 0 slowly, the main contribution to the lower tail probability comes from Erdős–Rényi random graphs with a uniformly tilted edge density. On the other hand, this is false for non-bipartite H and δ close to 1.
Experience with Insulin Analogues in Children

Current data on rapid and long-acting insulin analogues in the paediatric age group is limited. While several studies indicate a benefit in reducing hypoglycaemia, particularly at night, with rapid or long-acting insulin analogue treatment, the effect on long-term glycaemic control remains controversial. The continuous glucose monitoring system offers a new option for tailoring treatment with insulin analogues to achieve optimal glycaemia. In 29 adolescents with diabetes this approach confirmed the non-inferiority of postprandial rapid-acting analogue administration compared to preprandial regular insulin, but revealed significant mealtime differences, with increased analogue requirement at breakfast and dinner. Although rapid- and long-acting insulin analogues may offer potential benefits for problems frequently encountered in paediatric diabetology, their value for the individual child still has to be tested in long-term observations in daily clinical practice.