Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of enalapril on survival in patients with reduced left ventricular ejection fractions and congestive heart failure.

BACKGROUND Patients with congestive heart failure have a high mortality rate and are also hospitalized frequently. We studied the effect of an angiotensin-converting-enzyme inhibitor, enalapril, on mortality and hospitalization in patients with chronic heart failure and ejection fractions less than or equal to 0.35. METHODS Patients receiving conventional treatment for heart failure were randomly assigned to receive either placebo (n = 1284) or enalapril (n = 1285) at doses of 2.5 to 20 mg per day in a double-bind trial. Approximately 90 percent of the patients were in New York Heart Association functional classes II and III. The follow-up averaged 41.4 months. RESULTS There were 510 deaths in the placebo group (39.7 percent), as compared with 452 in the enalapril group (35.2 percent) (reduction in risk, 16 percent; 95 percent confidence interval, 5 to 26 percent; P = 0.0036). Although reductions in mortality were observed in several categories of cardiac deaths, the largest reduction occurred among the deaths attributed to progressive heart failure (251 in the placebo group vs. 209 in the enalapril group; reduction in risk, 22 percent; 95 percent confidence interval, 6 to 35 percent). There was little apparent effect of treatment on deaths classified as due to arrhythmia without pump failure. Fewer patients died or were hospitalized for worsening heart failure (736 in the placebo group and 613 in the enalapril group; risk reduction, 26 percent; 95 percent confidence interval, 18 to 34 percent; P less than 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS The addition of enalapril to conventional therapy significantly reduced mortality and hospitalizations for heart failure in patients with chronic congestive heart failure and reduced ejection fractions.
SPN Modeling for GDCS Task Scheduling

Reasonable and fault-tolerance scheduling mechanism is the key factor of effective use the grid resource and guarantee the implement of applicable task. For Grid-based Distributed Control System (GDCS), this paper introduces the two-level task scheduling system frame: System scheduler sorts all upload tasks by functions or attributes, then assigns local area scheduler to dispatch tasks to resource nodes, and handles fault-tolerance dynamically during the process of task. Considering two types subtask of complete independence and non complete independence of GDCS, establishes a fault-tolerance mechanism model by Stochastic Petri Nets (SPN) for local areas scheduler, describes the complete independent subtask dispatching and allocating policies, and proposes a dynamic scheduling train of thought of non complete independent subtask.
Magnetic Anisotropy Evolution in CoFe/Au Barcode Nanowire Arrays

Owing to their multifunctional properties, multisegmented metallic nanowires have generated interest for potential applications in magnetics and biology. In this paper, we present the magnetic properties of Co50Fe50/Au barcode nanowire arrays with CoFe and Au segments of various diameters and thicknesses. The distinct anisotropic behavior and magnetization reversal process depending upon these geometric factors were investigated. As the diameter increased (50-200 nm), the easy-axis direction changed from parallel (//) to perpendicular (⊥) to the nanowire axis. As the intersegment spacing increased (tAu = 50-200 nm), the easy-axis direction tended to lie in the plane of the nanowires. In addition, we examined the changes in the magnetization reversal modes.
Comparison of membrane filter, multiple-fermentation-tube, and presence-absence techniques for detecting total coliforms in small community water systems

Methods for detecting total coliform bacteria in drinking water were compared using 1,483 different drinking water samples from 15 small community water systems in Vermont and New Hampshire. The methods included the membrane filter (MF) technique, a 10-tube fermentation tube (FT) technique, and the presence-absence (P-A) test. Each technique was evaluated using a 100-ml drinking water sample. Of the 1,483 samples tested, 336 (23%) contained coliforms as indicated by either one, two, or all three techniques. The FT detected 82%, the P-A detected 88%, and the MF detected 64% of these positives. All techniques simultaneously detected 55% of the positives. Evaluation of the confirmation efficiency of the P-A technique showed 94% of the presumptive positives confirming as coliforms. Thirteen different species of coliforms were identified from the 37 tests in which the P-A was positive but the MF and FT were negative. The P-A test was simple to inoculate and interpret and was considerably more sensitive than the MF and slightly more sensitive than the FT in detecting coliforms in this type of drinking water supply.
Genetic and Environmental Correlates of Semen Quality: A Twin Study

Background: The influences of environmental factors on the male reproductive system have been much debated over the last 3 decades. We studied the impact of genes and environment on semen quality, sex hormone levels, and sperm chromatin stability by using a twin design. Methods: The study population consisted of monozygotic and dizygotic twins from the population-based Danish Twin Registry and a random selection of pairs of singleton brothers from the Danish Civil Registration System. All men were 20 to 45 years of age. The study population comprised 100 monozygotic twin brothers (50 pairs), 102 dizygotic twins (51 pairs), and 102 single-born brothers (51 pairs). A semen sample and blood sample were collected from all participants. Results: Heritability was estimated to account for 20% (95% confidence interval = 0% to 68%) of the variation in sperm density. A higher heritability was found for the hormones reflecting Sertoli cell function (inhibin B, 76% [36% to 84%] and follicle-stimulating hormone, 81% [40% to 88%]) and for percent morphologic normal cells (41% [0% to 60%] and sperm chromatin parameters (mean αT, 68% [34% to 81%] and COMP αT, 72% [25% to 82%], respectively). Conclusion: Our study indicates a substantial hereditary component in plasma levels of hormones reflecting Sertoli cell function and in sperm cell chromatin stability and morphology. The environmental contribution (including the prenatal environment) appeared to be largest for sperm count.
Dynamic Pivotal Politics 1

We analyze a dynamic extension of a parsimonious model of lawmaking in which preferences evolve over time and today’s policy becomes tomorrow’s status quo. Unlike in existing models of pivotal politics, policy makers’ voting behavior depends on the institutional environment and on their expectations about future economic and political shocks. Relative to sincere voting, the equilibrium behavior exhibits a strategic polarization eﬀect which increases with the degree of consensus required by the institution, the volatility of the policy environment, and the expected ideological polarization of the future policy makers. The equilibrium behavior also exhibits a strategic policy bias which works against any exogenous policy bias embedded in the voting rule. Our analysis implies that the existing literature underestimates the inertial eﬀect of checks and balances and overestimates the impact of institutional biases such as ﬁscally conservative budget procedures.
Fluid surface: interactive water surface display for viewing information in a bathroom

Information is becoming accessible everywhere in everyday life due of the spread of smart phones and portable personal computers; however are very few methods in accessing contents in a bathing environment. Sometimes smart phones can be carried into a bathroom but it is unnatural to be holding a device at during bathing, so a suitable technique for information browsing in a bathing environment is required. We propose an interactive water surface display system, which uses image-recognition techniques. By using water, the system can perform an intuitive interaction peculiar to water such as poking a finger up from under the water surface, stroking the water surface and scooping up water. In this paper, we discuss interaction design in a bathroom, describing an implementation of our system and its applications.
The Adapter Protein CrkII Regulates Neuronal Wiskott-Aldrich Syndrome Protein, Actin Polymerization, and Tension Development during Contractile Stimulation of Smooth Muscle*

Actin polymerization has been shown to occur in tracheal smooth muscle tissues and cells in response to contractile stimulation, and there is evidence that the polymerization of actin is required for contraction. In tracheal smooth muscle, agonist-induced actin polymerization is mediated by activation of neuronal Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome protein (N-WASp) and the Arp (actin-related protein) 2/3 complex, and activation of the small GTPase Cdc42 regulates the activation of N-WASp. In the present study, the role of the adapter protein CrkII in the regulation of N-WASp and Cdc42 activation, actin polymerization, and tension development in smooth muscle tissues was evaluated. Stimulation of tracheal smooth muscle tissues with acetylcholine increased the association of CrkII with N-WASp. Plasmids encoding wild type CrkII or a CrkII mutant lacking the SH3 effector-binding ability, CrkII SH3N, were introduced into tracheal smooth muscle tissues, and the tissues were incubated for 2 days to allow for protein expression. Expression of the CrkII SH3N mutant in smooth muscle tissues inhibited the association of CrkII with N-WASp and the activation of Cdc42. The CrkII SH3N mutant also inhibited the increase in the association of N-WASp with Arp2, a major component of the Arp2/3 complex, in response to contractile stimulation, indicating inhibition of N-WASp activation. Expression of the CrkII SH3N mutant also inhibited tension generation and actin polymerization in response to contractile stimulation; however, it did not inhibit myosin light chain phosphorylation. These results suggest that CrkII plays a critical role in the regulation of N-WASp activation, perhaps by regulating the activation of Cdc42, and that it thereby regulates actin polymerization and active tension generation in tracheal smooth muscle. These studies suggest a novel signaling pathway for the regulation of N-WASp activation and active contraction in smooth muscle tissues.
Interleukin-10 in human heart transplantation: an in situ hybridization study. The Manchester Transplant Cytokine Group.

BACKGROUND The role of interleukin-10 in graft acceptance and rejection was investigated by analysis of its messenger RNA expression within endomyocardial biopsy material from heart transplant recipients. METHODS Forty-six biopsy specimens were analyzed from 19 patients (16 male, 3 female), with an age range of 15 to 62 years (mean = 47 years). Biopsy specimens were "snap" frozen in liquid nitrogen, and 10-microns thick sections were cut and postfixed in 4% paraformaldehyde. Messenger RNA for interleukin-10 was localized with nonradioactively (digoxigenin) labeled complementary DNA probes and detected immunoenzymatically with an antidigoxigenin polyclonal antibody. The histopathologic diagnosis of rejection was made according to the criteria of the Heart Rejection Study group. RESULTS Interleukin-10 transcripts were detected in 12 of 36 rejecting biopsy specimens. None of the ten nonrejecting biopsy specimens were positive. Expression within the rejection infiltrate was more prominent in biopsy specimens from milder rejection episodes. By contrast, in biopsy specimens from moderate rejection, expression was mainly within areas of fibrosis. The expression of interleukin-10 transcripts did not relate to the number of previous rejection episodes nor to the histologic grade of the subsequent biopsy specimens. CONCLUSIONS This study emphasizes the importance of in situ techniques in localizing cytokine expression in relation to tissue structure and suggests that interleukin-10 may serve a function in the immune regulation of the infiltrate at sites of inflammation, rather than in immune suppression of the rejection process. Further study is necessary to elucidate the precise role of interleukin-10 in transplantation in relation to the overall profile of cytokine expression within the rejection infiltrate.
Attenuation of pancreatitis-induced pulmonary injury by aerosolized hypertonic saline.

BACKGROUND The immunomodulatory effects of hypertonic saline (HTS) provide potential strategies to attenuate inappropriate inflammatory reactions. This study tested the hypothesis that administration of intratracheal aerosolized HTS modulates the development of lung injury in pancreatitis. METHODS Pancreatitis was induced in 24 male Sprague-Dawley rats by intraperitoneal injection of 20% L-arginine (500 mg/100 g body weight). At 24 and 48 h, intratracheal aerosolized HTS (7.5% NaCl, 0.5 mL) was administered to 8 rats, while a further 8 received 0.5 mL of aerosolized normal saline (NS). At 72 hours, pulmonary neutrophil infiltration (myeloperoxidase activity) and endothelial permeability (bronchoalveolar lavage and wet:dry weight ratios) were assessed. In addition, histological assessment of representative lung tissue was performed by a blinded assessor. In a separate experiment, polymorphonucleocytes (PMN) were isolated from human donors, and exposed to increments of HTS. Neutrophil transmigration across an endothelial cell layer, VEGF release, and apoptosis at 1, 6, 12, 18, and 24 h were assessed. RESULTS Histopathological lung injury scores were significantly reduced in the HTS group (4.78 +/- 1.43 vs. 8.64 +/- 0.86); p < 0.001). Pulmonary neutrophil sequestration (1.40 +/- 0.2) and increased endothelial permeability (6.77 +/- 1.14) were evident in the animals resuscitated with normal saline when compared with HTS (0.70 +/- 0.1 and 3.57 +/- 1.32), respectively; p < 0.04). HTS significantly reduced PMN transmigration (by 97.1, p = 0.002, and induced PMN apoptosis (p < 0.03). HTS did not impact significantly upon neutrophil VEGF release (p > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS Intratracheal aerosolized HTS attenuates the neutrophil-mediated pulmonary insult subsequent to pancreatitis. This may represent a novel therapeutic strategy.
Intra-Abdominal Manifestations of von Recklinghausen's Neurofibromatosis

Neurofibromatosis type-1 (NF1), also known as von Recklinghausen disease, is a common autosomal dominant condition with an approximate incidence of one per 3000 births. NF1 involves multiple systems of the body. Abdominal involvement occurs in the form of neurofibroma and tumour growth in the liver, mesentery, retroperitoneum, gastric and bowel. Gastrointestinal neoplasms have a reported occurrence of 2–25%. Two cases are reported herein as well as a review of the literature of the intra-abdominal manifestations of NF1, including a discussion on the radiological appearance and diagnosis. The article provides an insight into the intriguing variety of clinical problems that such patients may present.
Perceptions of Conflict Behavior and Relational Satisfaction in Adult Parent–Child Relationships

Dyadic data were used to examine associations between attachment, relational satisfaction, and perceptions of conflict style in adult child–parent relationships. Several actor effects emerged; secure attachment was associated with more collaborating and compromising, dismissive attachment was associated with less collaborating and more indirect fighting and avoiding, and preoccupied attachment was associated with more competitive and indirect fighting. There were also partner effects. Individuals were more likely to report using collaborating and compromising if their partner (parent or child) was secure, and more likely to report indirect fighting if their partner was dismissive. Four actor by partner interactions surfaced. Preoccupied individuals reported more collaborating when their partners were secure and less compromising when their partners were dismissive. Dismissive individuals reported less yielding if their partner was preoccupied. Secure individuals reported less competitive fighting if their partner was fearful. The data also demonstrated that for actor effects, the collaborating style mediated a positive association between secure attachment and relational satisfaction. For partner effects, there were direct associations between a parent’s attachment security and a child’s relational satisfaction as well as between one’s partner’s reported use of collaborating and one’s own relational satisfaction. These and other findings are discussed in terms of their implications for work on attachment and conflict.
Vitamin antioxidants, lipid peroxidation and the systemic inflammatory response in patients with prostate cancer

The relationship between lipid soluble antioxidant vitamins, lipid peroxidation, disease stage and the systemic inflammatory response were examined in healthy subjects (n = 14), patients with benign prostate hyperplasia BPH (n = 20), localized (n = 40) and metastatic (n = 38) prostate cancer. Prostate cancer patients had higher concentrations of malondialdehyde (p < 0.05) and lower circulating concentrations of lutein (p < 0.05), lycopene (p < 0.001) and β‐carotene (p < 0.05). Patients with metastatic prostate cancer, when compared with patients having localized disease, had a higher Gleason score (p < 0.01) and had more hormonal treatment, but lower concentrations of PSA (p < 0.05), α‐tocopherol (p ≤ 0.05), retinol (p < 0.01), lutein (p < 0.05) and lycopene (p < 0.01). In the prostate cancer patients, PSA was correlated with the concentrations of the lipid peroxidation product, malondialdehyde (rs = 0.353, p = 0.002). C‐reactive protein was not correlated with the vitamin antioxidants nor malondialdehyde. In contrast, there was a negative correlation between malondialdehyde concentrations and both lutein (rs = −0.263, p = 0.020) and lycopene (rs = −0.269, p = 0.017). These results indicate that lower concentrations of carotenoids, in particular, lycopene reflect disease progression rather than the systemic inflammatory response in patients with prostate cancer. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Ca2+ Selectivity and Fatty Acid Specificity of the Noncapacitative, Arachidonate-regulated Ca2+ (ARC) Channels*

The arachidonate-regulated, Ca2+-selective ARC channels represent a novel receptor-activated pathway for the entry of Ca2+ in nonexcitable cells that is entirely separate from the widely studied store-operated, Ca2+ release-activated Ca2+channels. Activation of ARC channels occurs specifically at the low agonist concentrations typically associated with oscillatory Ca2+ signals and appears to provide the predominant mode of Ca2+ entry under these conditions (Mignen, O., Thompson, J. L., and Shuttleworth, T. J. (2001)J. Biol. Chem. 276, 35676–35683). In this study we demonstrate that ARC channels are present in a variety of different cell types including both cell lines and primary cells. Examination of their pharmacology revealed that currents through these channels are significantly inhibited by low concentrations (< 5 μm) of Gd3+, are unaffected by 100 μm2-aminoethyoxydiphenyl borane, and are not activated by the diacylglycerol analogue 1-oleoyl-2-acetyl-sn-glycerol (100 μm). Their selectivity for Ca2+ was assessed by determining the EC50 for external Ca2+ block of the monovalent currents observed in the absence of external divalent cations. The value obtained (150 nm) indicates that the Ca2+ selectivity of ARC channels is extremely high. Examination of the ability of various fatty acids, including arachidonic acid, to activate the ARC channels demonstrated that activation does not reflect any nonspecific membrane fluidity or detergent effects, shows a high degree of specificity for arachidonic acid over other fatty acids (especially monounsaturated and saturated fatty acids), and is independent of any arachidonic acid metabolite. Moreover, studies using the charged analogue arachidonyl coenzyme A demonstrate that activation of the ARC channels reflects an action of the fatty acid specifically at the internal face of the plasma membrane. Whether this involves a direct action of arachidonic acid on the channel protein itself or an action on some intermediary molecule is, at present, unclear.
Interprofessional Health Team Communication About Hospital Discharge: An Implementation Science Evaluation Study

The Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research guided formative evaluation of the implementation of a redesigned interprofessional team rounding process. The purpose of the redesigned process was to improve health team communication about hospital discharge. Themes emerging from interviews of patients, nurses, and providers revealed the inherent value and positive characteristics of the new process, but also workflow, team hierarchy, and process challenges to successful implementation. The evaluation identified actionable recommendations for modifying the implementation process.
Community discovery and importance analysis in social network

Social networks are widespread and important in our daily life. Finding communities and reveal node characteristics in community are crucial to understand the network structure and function. Many methods based on Nonnegative matrix factorization NMF are proposed to find communities, while these results appear uncertain with the initial condition especially in weighted directed network. In this paper, firstly we improve the nonnegative matrix factorization NMF method with modeling network as the weighted directed graph and using diagonally dominant matrix as constraint condition to obtain the community membership of each node as well as the interaction among communities. Furthermore, we raise methods to evaluate nodes importance and to discuss node characteristics in community to analyze the network structure. Some experiments on the Zachary club datasets and other real-world datasets have been did to demonstrate the superiority of our methods for community discovery over other related matrix factorization methods. The results demonstrate that our methods are useful and applicable both in weighted directed model and undirected model for community discovery, and the results are more reliable. Experiments also illustrate the meaningful results by discussing the node characteristics in community. All those provide a useful way for analyzing social network.
Unique Properties of Flat Minima in Deep Networks

It is well known that (stochastic) gradient descent has an implicit bias towards flat minima. In deep neural network training, this mechanism serves to screen out minima. However, the precise effect that this has on the trained network is not yet fully understood. In this paper, we characterize the flat minima in linear neural networks trained with a quadratic loss. First, we show that linear ResNets with zero initialization necessarily converge to the flattest of all minima. We then prove that these minima correspond to nearly balanced networks whereby the gain from the input to any intermediate representation does not change drastically from one layer to the next. Finally, we show that consecutive layers in flat minima solutions are coupled. That is, one of the left singular vectors of each weight matrix, equals one of the right singular vectors of the next matrix. This forms a distinct path from input to output, that, as we show, is dedicated to the signal that experiences the largest gain end-to-end. Experiments indicate that these properties are characteristic of both linear and nonlinear models trained in practice.
General Synthesis of $N$-Band Resonator Based on $N$-Order Dual Behavior Resonator

This letter deals with a general method and synthesis devoted to the achievement of N-band resonators. The general topology is based on the dual behavior resonator. Indeed, this kind of topology allows the independent control of different transmission zeros and resonances. Thus, the topology proposed in this study consists of a parallel association of N+1 different bandstop structures to get N bandpasses separated by a transmission zero. After introduction of the general synthesis, the principle will be validated by the achievement of a four-band resonator in microstrip technology