Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The MOnitoring Resynchronization dEvices and CARdiac patiEnts (MORE-CARE) Randomized Controlled Trial: Phase 1 Results on Dynamics of Early Intervention With Remote Monitoring

Background Remote monitoring (RM) in patients with advanced heart failure and cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillators (CRT-D) may reduce delays in clinical decisions by transmitting automatic alerts. However, this strategy has never been tested specifically in this patient population, with alerts for lung fluid overload, and in a European setting. Objective The main objective of Phase 1 (presented here) is to evaluate if RM strategy is able to reduce time from device-detected events to clinical decisions. Methods In this multicenter randomized controlled trial, patients with moderate to severe heart failure implanted with CRT-D devices were randomized to a Remote group (with remote follow-up and wireless automatic alerts) or to a Control group (with standard follow-up without alerts). The primary endpoint of Phase 1 was the delay between an alert event and clinical decisions related to the event in the first 154 enrolled patients followed for 1 year. Results The median delay from device-detected events to clinical decisions was considerably shorter in the Remote group compared to the Control group: 2 (25th-75th percentile, 1-4) days vs 29 (25th-75th percentile, 3-51) days respectively, P=. 004. In-hospital visits were reduced in the Remote group (2.0 visits/patient/year vs 3.2 visits/patient/year in the Control group, 37.5% relative reduction, P<.001). Automatic alerts were successfully transmitted in 93% of events occurring outside the hospital in the Remote group. The annual rate of all-cause hospitalizations per patient did not differ between the two groups (P=.65). Conclusions RM in CRT-D patients with advanced heart failure allows physicians to promptly react to clinically relevant automatic alerts and significantly reduces the burden of in-hospital visits. Trial Registration Clinicaltrials.gov NCT00885677; http://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT00885677 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6IkcCJ7NF).
Hyperreactive platelet phenotypes: Relationship to altered serotonin transporter number, transport kinetics and intrinsic response to adrenergic co-stimulation

Summary The mechanism underlying a hyperreactive platelet phenotype remains unknown. Since serotonin has been shown to influence platelet biology and atherothrombosis, we sought to investigate the association of platelet serotonin transporter number, binding affinity, and uptake kinetics with platelet aggregation. A total of 542 healthy volunteers had light transmittance platelet aggregometry measured in response to varying concentrations of epinephrine, serotonin, epinephrine plus serotonin, ADP and collagen. Transporter-dependent serotonin uptake rate was determined (Vmax), as were serotonin transporter number (Bmax) and binding affinity (Kd) using 3H paroxetine binding in a homologous displacement assay, nonlinear regression and validated algorithms for kinetic modelling. Stimulation with submaximal (2μM) epinephrine concentration elicited a distinct, bimodal pattern of platelet aggregation in this population. In contrast, subjects exhibited minimal aggregation in response to serotonin alone. Co-stimulation with submaximal epinephrine and serotonin induced platelet aggregation to a level beyond that observed with either agonist alone and maintained a bimodal response distribution. Subjects with heightened (>60%) platelet aggregation to both epinephrine alone and epinephrine plus serotonin exhibited increased platelet serotonin uptake, and transporter number and affinity. In a population of healthy subjects, co-stimulation with submaximal concentrations of epinephrine and serotonin identifies a subset of individuals with a hyperreactive platelet aggregation profile that is associated with changes in platelet serotonin function.
[The Basel Interview for Psychosis (BIP): structure, reliability and validity].

BACKGROUND Although several instruments have been developed to identify patients with an at-risk mental state (ARMS) for psychosis and first episode of psychosis (FEP), up to now there were no instruments for a detailed assessment of risk factors and indicators of emerging psychosis and the temporal development of psychiatric symptoms over the whole life span in these patients. We therefore developed the Basle Interview for Psychosis (BIP). The aim of this study is to describe the development of the BIP and to report about its psychometric properties. METHODS The BIP is a comprehensive semi-structured interview that was developed for the Basel early detection of psychoses (FePsy) study. Its items were derived from the most important risk factors and indicators of psychosis described in the literature and from several existing instruments. It contains the following six sections: 1) social and physical development and family, 2) signs and symptoms, 3) vulnerability, 4) help-seeking behavior, 5) illness insight, 6) evaluation of the interview. To estimate the inter-rater reliabilities of the items of sections 2 and 3, 20 interviews were conducted and rated by 8 well-trained raters. The factorial structure of the BIP section "signs and symptoms" was explored in a sample of 120 ARMS and 77 FEP patients. On the basis of the discovered factorial structure, we created new subscales and assessed their reliabilities and validities. RESULTS Of the 153 studied items of sections 2 and 3, 150 (98 %) were rated with sufficiently high agreement (inter-rater reliability > 0.4). The items of section "signs and symptoms" could be grouped into 5 subscales with predominantly good to very good internal consistencies, homogeneities, and discriminant and convergent validities. Predictive validities could be demonstrated for the subscales "Positive Psychotic Symptoms", "Disturbance of Thinking" and the total score. DISCUSSION The BIP is the first interview for comprehensively assessing risk factors and indicators of emerging psychosis and the temporal development of psychiatric symptoms over the whole life span, which has been validated in ARMS and FEP patients. We could show that the BIP has excellent psychometric properties.
Risk of Damage to the Endolymphatic Sac and Duct during Removal of the Posterior Meatal Wall: An Anatomic Study

OBJECTIVE: With removal of the posterior meatal wall for intrameatal acoustic neurinoma, preservation of the structures adjacent to the internal acoustic meatus is important. The authors performed an anatomic study to clarify the risk of damage to the endolymphatic sac and endolymphatic duct during this maneuver. METHODS: Twenty-seven sides of adult temporal bone were examined. Distances measured were between the posterior meatal lip and the upper limit of the endolymphatic ledge, at the upper extent of the endolymphatic sac, and between a reference line extending from the inferior margin of the internal acoustic meatus posteriorly (parallel to the petrous ridge), simulating the inferior margin of the drilling, and the upper limit of the endolymphatic ledge. Whether the latter was located on or above the line was also recorded. After posterior meatal wall drilling, the distance between the posterior meatal lip and the vestibular aqueduct surrounding the endolymphatic duct and the depth of the structure from the surface were assessed. RESULTS: The shortest distances between the posterior meatal lip and the endolymphatic ledge and between the posterior meatal lip and the vestibular aqueduct were 6.80 mm and 4.68 mm, respectively. The upper limit of the endolymphatic ledge was present on or above the reference line in approximately half of the specimens. CONCLUSION: During surgical maneuvers to remove the posterior meatal wall, the occasional close proximity of the endolymphatic sac and endolymphatic duct to the internal acoustic meatus should be kept in mind. Preoperative radiological evaluation of anatomic relationships is mandatory when preservation of hearing is the aim.
N-Methyl-N′-nitro-N-nitrosoguanidine Activates Cell-Cycle Arrest through Distinct Mechanisms Activated in a Dose-Dependent Manner

SN1-alkylating agents, such as the mutagenic and cytotoxic drug N-methyl-N′-nitro-N-nitrosoguanidine (MNNG), robustly activate the DNA damage-responsive G2 checkpoint. Establishment of this checkpoint is dependent on a functional mismatch repair (MMR) system; however, exposure to high doses of MNNG overrides the requirement for MMR to trigger G2 arrest. In addition, unlike moderate-dose exposure, in which the G2 checkpoint is attenuated in ataxia-telangiectasia, mutated (ATM)-deficient cells, high-dose MNNG treatment activates G2 arrest through an ATM-independent mechanism. We document that this arrest is sensitive to the pharmacological agents caffeine and 7-hydroxystaurosporine (UCN-01) that inhibit the checkpoint kinases ATM/ATM and Rad-3–related (ATR) and Chk1/Chk2, respectively. Furthermore, these agents block inactivation of the cell-cycle regulatory molecules Cdc25C and Cdc2, establishing the downstream mechanism through which high-dose MNNG establishes G2 arrest. Activation of both Chk2 and Chk1 was independent of ATM and MMR in response to high-dose MNNG, unlike the response to moderate doses of this drug. Chk2 was found to be dispensable for cell-cycle arrest in response to high-dose MNNG treatment; however, ATR deficiency and decreased Chk1 expression forced by RNA interference resulted in diminished checkpoint response. These results indicate that MNNG activates the G2 checkpoint through different mechanisms activated in a dose-dependent fashion.
Curvilinear one-dimensional antiferromagnets.

Antiferromagnets host exotic quasiparticles, support high frequency excitations and are key enablers of the prospective spintronic and spin-orbitronic technologies. Here, we propose a concept of a curvilinear antiferromagnetism where material responses can be tailored by a geometrical curvature without the need to adjust material parameters. We show that an intrinsically achiral one-dimensional (1D) curvilinear antiferromagnet behaves as a chiral helimagnet with geometrically tunable Dzyaloshinskii--Moriya interaction (DMI) and orientation of the Néel vector. The curvature-induced DMI results in the hybridization of spin wave modes and enables a geometrically-driven local minimum of the low frequency branch. This positions curvilinear 1D antiferromagnets as a novel platform for the realization of geometrically tunable chiral antiferromagnets for antiferromagnetic spin-orbitronics and fundamental discoveries in the formation of coherent magnon condensates in the momentum space.
Risk Factors for Genital Ulcerations in Kenyan Sex Workers: The Role of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Infection

Background and Objectives: Genital ulcer disease (GUD) is a major risk factor for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) transmission. Cross‐sectional studies have suggested that HIV infection may itself predispose to genital ulceration (GU). Goal: To prospectively study the effects of HIV type 1 (HIV‐1) infection and behavioral variables on GU incidence. Methods: A cohort of 302 Kenyan female sex‐workers was established in April 1991. Women were scheduled for assessment every 2 weeks, and bloods were collected every 6 months for HIV serology, rapid plasma reagin (RPR) and CD4 counts. Logistic regression was used to study risk factors for incident genital ulcers. Results: 189 women (62.5%) had at least one incident ulcer over 24.3 ± 15.3 months. GU incidence was higher in seropositive than initially seronegative women (82% vs. 48%; odds ratio [OR]) = 4.33; P < 0.01). Only HIV‐1 seropositivity (OR = 3.42), a CD4 count < 200/ml (OR = 1.94), and oral contraceptive use (OR = 1.35) were associated (P < 0.05) with GU incidence in regression analysis. For those ulcers where an etiology was actively sought, Hemophilus ducreyi was confirmed in 54 (19%) of cases, and syphilis in 30 (29%). Conclusion: GU incidence in Kenyan sex workers is independently affected by HIV‐1 serostatus, degree of immunosuppression, and oral contraceptive use.
Influence of beta-blocking drugs on glucose metabolism in hypertensive, non-diabetic patients.

Two beta-blocking agents, non-selective propranolol and beta 1-selective metoprolol, were investigated with respect to their effect on glucose metabolism in 11 hypertensive, non-diabetic patients. They were randomly treated for two weeks in a double-blind cross-over manner with propranolol, metoprolol and placebo. Both drugs caused a small but significant increase in basal blood glucose values as compared with placebo (p less than 0.01). Metoprolol increased the blood glucose concentrations during the first 10 min of an i.v. glucose tolerance test (IVGTT) as compared with placebo (p less than 0.02) and propranolol (p less than 0.05). Propranolol raised only the blood glucose values during the later part of the IVGTT (p less than 0.01). The increase in blood glucose concentrations was, however, not associated with significant changes in peripheral insulin levels. The mean basal glucagon concentrations were lower during propranolol and metoprolol than during placebo (p less than 0.01). Propranolol also induced a more pronounced reduction of plasma glucagon than placebo (p less than 0.05) at 10 min of the IVGTT. The mean basal free fatty acid (FFA) concentrations were lower during propranolol (p less than 0.001) and metoprolol (p less than 0.05) than during placebo. Both drugs decreased the plasma levels of FFA during the first 10 min of the IVGTT as compared with placebo (p less than 0.01 and p less than 0.02, respectively). Pharmacological doses of propranolol and metoprolol increased blood glucose concentrations, decreased plasma glucagon and FFA concentrations, but had no effect on serum insulin levels in hypertensive, non-diabetic subjects.
Comparison of direct and indirectly liquid-cooled coreless linear actuators with multi-layer coils

This paper describes the comparison between direct and indirectly liquid-cooled topologies for coreless linear motors with multiple coil layers. The electromagnetic force production is obtained by 3-D magnetic scalar potential modeling whereas thermal modeling is performed by 3-D finite element and volume methods. The power dissipation and force density of each topology is investigated for different pole pitches and wire configurations.
Various Approaches to Aspect-based Sentiment Analysis

The problem of aspect-based sentiment analysis deals with classifying sentiments (negative, neutral, positive) for a given aspect in a sentence. A traditional sentiment classification task involves treating the entire sentence as a text document and classifying sentiments based on all the words. Let us assume, we have a sentence such as "the acceleration of this car is fast, but the reliability is horrible". This can be a difficult sentence because it has two aspects with conflicting sentiments about the same entity. Considering machine learning techniques (or deep learning), how do we encode the information that we are interested in one aspect and its sentiment but not the other? Let us explore various pre-processing steps, features, and methods used to facilitate in solving this task.
Exploiting the DRAM Microarchitecture to Increase Memory-Level Parallelism

This paper summarizes the idea of Subarray-Level Parallelism (SALP) in DRAM, which was published in ISCA 2012, and examines the work's significance and future potential. Modern DRAMs have multiple banks to serve multiple memory requests in parallel. However, when two requests go to the same bank, they have to be served serially, exacerbating the high latency of on-chip memory. Adding more banks to the system to mitigate this problem incurs high system cost. Our goal in this work is to achieve the benefits of increasing the number of banks with a low-cost approach. To this end, we propose three new mechanisms, SALP-1, SALP-2, and MASA (Multitude of Activated Subarrays), to reduce the serialization of different requests that go to the same bank. The key observation exploited by our mechanisms is that a modern DRAM bank is implemented as a collection of subarrays that operate largely independently while sharing few global peripheral structures. Our three proposed mechanisms mitigate the negative impact of bank serialization by overlapping different components of the bank access latencies of multiple requests that go to different subarrays within the same bank. SALP-1 requires no changes to the existing DRAM structure, and needs to only reinterpret some of the existing DRAM timing parameters. SALP-2 and MASA require only modest changes (< 0.15% area overhead) to the DRAM peripheral structures, which are much less design constrained than the DRAM core. Our evaluations show that SALP-1, SALP-2 and MASA significantly improve performance for both single-core systems (7%/13%/17%) and multi-core systems (15%/16%/20%), averaged across a wide range of workloads. We also demonstrate that our mechanisms can be combined with application-aware memory request scheduling in multicore systems to further improve performance and fairness.
New millennium bronchodilators for asthma: single-isomer beta agonists

Racemic β2 agonists are composed of a 50:50 mixture of R and S isomers. The R isomer exhibits virtually all the bronchodilation, whereas the S isomers are generally considered inert. However, (S)-albuterol was shown to enhance bronchial reactivity to methacholine, eosinophil activation, and histamine-induced influx of fluid, proteins, and neutrophils into the airspaces. Actions such as these may compress the potency and foreshorten the duration of (R)-albuterol. Accordingly, pure (R)-albuterol provides bronchodilation at lower doses than racemate, allowing for fewer β-adrenergic-mediated side effects. In addition, differential metabolism may allow for the progressive accumulation of (S)-albuterol. This logic is applicable to long-acting β2 agonists: the therapeutically active (R,R)-formoterol is currently being developed in the United States, and preliminary results suggest rapid improvements in FEV1 with up to 24-hour duration of action. These combined observations with the R isomers of β2 agonists suggest that potential improvements in therapeutic indices can be achieved with isomerically pure versions of existing racemic drugs.
The role of post‐translational modifications in acute and chronic cardiovascular disease

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) in one of the leading causes of mortality and morbidity worldwide, accounting for both primary diseases of the heart and vasculature and arising as a co‐morbidity with numerous pathologies, including type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). There has been significant emphasis on the role of the genome in CVD, aiding in the definition of ‘at‐risk’ patients. The extent of disease penetrance however, can be influenced by environmental factors that are not detectable by investigating the genome alone. By targeting the transcriptome in response to CVD, the interplay between genome and environment is more apparent, however this implies the level of protein expression without reference to proteolytic turnover, or potentially more importantly, without defining the role of PTMs in the development of disease. Here, we discuss the role of both brief and irreversible PTMs in the setting of myocardial ischemia/reperfusion injury. Key proteins involved in calcium regulation have been observed as differentially modified by phosphorylation/O‐GlcNAcylation or phosphorylation/redox modifications, with the level of interplay dependent on the physiological or pathophysiological state. The ability to modify crucial sites to produce the desired functional output is modulated by the presence of other PTMs as exemplified in the T2DM heart, where hyperglycemia results in aberrant O‐GlcNAcylation and advanced glycation end products. By using the signalling events predicted to be critical to post‐conditioning, an intervention with great promise for the cardioprotection of the ischemia/reperfusion injured heart, as an example, we discuss the level of PTMs and their interplay. The inability of post‐conditioning to protect the diabetic heart may be regulated by aberrant PTMs influencing those sites necessary for protection.
Tracking visitors with sensor poles for robot's museum guide tour

In this paper, we propose a robot system which can take visitors on guided tours in a museum. When we consider developing a robot capable of giving a tour of an actual museum, we must implement a robot system able to measure the location and orientation of the robot and visitors using bearing sensors installed in a specific environment. Although many previous methods employed markers or tags attached to the robot to obtain positional information through cameras, it is not easy to situate sensors in the environment itself. SLAM is also used to localize the position of the robot. However, its robustness may not be sufficient when the system is deployed in an actual real-life situation since there will be many people moving freely around the robot. On the other hand, the robot needs information pertaining to both tour attendees and other visitors in the vicinity, in order to give a tour for the attendees. Therefore, we propose a new robot system which consists of simple devices such as multiple laser range finders attached to a pole. By just placing the sensor poles, we could track the location and orientation of the robot and visitors at the same time. We then conducted experiments to confirm the effectiveness and accuracy of our system. In addition, we conducted demonstrative experiments that our robot takes three visitors to the guide tour.
Distribution and Activity of the Plasma Membrane H+-ATPase in Mimosa pudica L. in Relation to Ionic Fluxes and Leaf Movements

Plasma membrane H+-ATPase was immunolocalized in several cell types of the sensitive plant Mimosa pudica L. , and transmembrane potentials were measured on cortical cells. In comparison with the nonspecialized cortical cells of the petiole or stem, the proton pump was highly expressed in motor cells. These immunological data are in close agreement with electrophysiological data, because the active component of the transmembrane potential was low in the nonspecialized cortical cells and high in motor cells. Therefore, motor cells contain the plasma membrane H+-ATPase required to mediate the ionic fluxes that are involved in circadian leaf movements and that are necessary to recover the turgor potential that is considerably affected by the large K+ and Cl- efflux associated with seismonastic movement. With the exception of sieve tubes, the phloem also had a high density of H+-ATPase. This suggests that the recovery of the transmembrane ionic gradients (K+ and Cl-), which is affected by various stimuli, is more energized by the companion and parenchyma cells than by the sieve elements. In addition, at the phloem/cortex interface collocytes displayed the required properties for lateral transduction of the action potential toward the pulvinal motor cells.