Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ATP released from perivascular nerves hyperpolarizes smooth muscle cells by releasing an endothelium‐derived factor in hamster mesenteric arteries

1 The interaction between perivascular nerves and endothelium was investigated by measuring the changes in smooth muscle membrane potentials using intracellular microelectrode techniques in hamster mesenteric thin (100–150 μm) and thick (300–350 μm) arteries. 2 In both arteries, nerve stimulation evoked excitatory junction potentials (EJPs) which were strongly inhibited by pyridoxalphosphate‐6‐azophenyl‐2′,4′‐disulphonic acid (PPADS) (0·5–5 μM). This result indicated that the EJPs were induced by the activation of P2X receptors. 3 Transient hyperpolarizations were evoked by trains of pulses at 20 Hz in PPADS (5 μM)‐pre‐treated thin arteries, but not in the thick arteries. ATP (100 μM) applied to adventitial surfaces mimicked the hyperpolarizations. Both the ATP‐ and nerve stimulation‐induced hyperpolarizations were blocked by cibacron blue F3GA (2–100 μM) and were also abolished after endothelium removal, indicating that the neurally released ATP evoked transient hyperpolarization through the activation of P2Y receptors located on the endothelium. 4 In endothelium‐intact preparations, intimal application of uridine 5′‐triphosphate (UTP 100 μM), a P2Y2‐like receptor agonist, but not 2‐methylthio ATP (7 μM), hyperpolarized the smooth muscle. The UTP‐induced hyperpolarization was significantly inhibited by cibacron blue F3GA and was abolished after endothelium removal. 5 These results suggest that ATP released from the perivascular nerves may reach the endothelium and activate P2Y2‐like receptors to induce the release of an endothelium‐derived hyperpolarizing factor in thin arteries.
Sequence of a segment of yeast chromosome XI identifies a new mitochondrial carrier,a new member of the G protein family, and a protein with the PAAKK motif of the H1 histones

We have entirely sequaenced an 8.3 kb segment localized on the left arm of chromosome XI of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Five new open reading frames have been uncovered. One of them encodes a new mitochondrial carrier protein which is dispensable for growth on glycerol medium. Another could be a new member of the G protein family. A third possesses the PAAKK motif common to H1 histones.
Muslim Young People Online: “Acts of Citizenship” in Socially Networked Spaces

This paper reviews the current literature regarding Muslim young people’s online social networking and participatory practices with the aim of examining whether these practices open up new spaces of civic engagement and political participation. The paper focuses on the experiences of young Muslims living in western societies, where, since September 11, the ability to assert claims as citizens in the public arena has diminished. The paper draws upon Isin & Nielsen’s (2008) “acts of citizenship” to define the online practices of many Muslim youth, for whom the internet provides a space where new performances of citizenship are enacted outside of formal citizenship rights and spaces of participation. These “acts" are evaluated in light of theories which articulate the changing nature of publics and the public sphere in a digital era. The paper will use this conceptual framework in conjunction with the literature review to explore whether virtual, online spaces offer young Muslims an opportunity to create a more inclusive discursive space to interact with co-citizens, engage with social and political issues and assert their citizen rights than is otherwise afforded by formal political structures; a need highlighted by policies which target minority Muslim young people for greater civic participation but which do not reflect the interests and values of Muslim young people.
Early Clinical Exposure to Geriatric Medicine in Second‐Year Medical School Students—The McGill Experience

This study examined the effect of a curriculum change on early clinical exposure to geriatrics for second‐year medical students at McGill University and its effects on learning and students' appreciation of geriatrics as a subspecialty. Second‐year medical students (N = 200) were exposed to a change in the curriculum involving the integration of 10 weekly sessions into one integrated week in geriatric medicine. Students participating in 10 weekly sessions were Group 1 and students participating in one integrated week were Group 2. Students rated their rotation using two different scales. The students completed 12‐item questionnaires during their feedback sessions at the end of the 10‐week session experience or the integrated week. The first six items assessed the students' appreciation of their improvement of knowledge in the subject of geriatrics and aging. The second and third part of the survey (questions 7 and 8) included the students' opinions about the quality of the instruction (teaching feedback) and evaluation. Students in Group 2 found their rotation more effective as a learning experience and expressed greater satisfaction with interaction with the tutors, community settings, and multidisciplinary team sessions. Grades obtained on final examinations showed a better and more‐effective acquisition of knowledge by Group 2. The integrated week is a more‐effective learning tool in the early clinical experience for medical students in geriatric medicine than 10 weekly sessions as the first introductory experience to the field of geriatric medicine.
Impact of Device Scaling on Phase Noise in SiGe HBTs UWB VCOs

The performance of the electronic system strongly depends on the speed of devices, and technological scaling has driven this momentum towards achieving faster speed and high level of integration. Device scaling has been the principal driving force behind the technological innovations, and breakthrough of the past century. This paper investigates the impact of device scaling on oscillator/VCO phase noise in SiGe HBTs, which has recently emerged as a strong contender for RF and mixed signal applications. The relative contribution of the broadband (thermal and shot noise) and low frequency (1/f noise) noise sources are examined with respect to the device scaling. An approach of minimizing the phase noise with respect to the scaling is discussed, and demonstrated for distributed coupled resonator (DCR) based ultra wideband (UWB) VCOs. The measured phase noise is typically -115 dBc/Hz at 100 kHz offset over the tuning range (2-6 GHz), and to our knowledge, this is the best phase noise performance for this band using printed multi-coupled resonator with SiGe HBT (Infineon BFP 740) so far reported
Impacto de la innovación sobre la conducta exportadora en el sector de alimentos y bebidas de Colombia

This paper tries to identify the impact of the different types of innovation on export behavior in the Colombian food and beverage industry. The application of the propensity score matching method reveals that only technological innovation has a significant effect on the sector’s export behavior. In particular, product innovation impacts positively the internationalization of large companies, while process innovation does so in SMEs. The differences in strategic and innovative strategy explain the heterogeneity in the impacts obtained by the size of business and the type of innovation.
Survenance, émergence et immersion: le problème de la conscienze d'un point de vue externaliste

Ce texte examine a nouveaux frais le probleme dit « difficile» de la comprehension de la nature de la conscience phenomenale dans un cadre materialiste general. Apres avoir rappele les sources et la portee ce probleme, nous distinguons plusieurs definitions du concept d’emergence, en contrastant certaines d’entre elles avec le concept de survenance. Nous exemplifions les portees respectives de ces definitions en evoquant diverses theories actuelles de la conscience phenomenale qui font appel au concept d’emergence et a ses rapports possibles avec le phenomene de non-reductibilite (deductive ou predictive). Apres avoir fait signe vers le caractere problematique de l’externalisme revendique par certaines de ces theories, nous introduisons le concept d'immersion pour penser, dans une perspective externaliste moderee et renouvelee, les rapports entre conscience phenomenale et emergence.
An Investigation into the Impact of Mobile Technologies on Economic Growth and Employment in the Caribbean

The adoption of mobile technologies in developing countries in Africa, the Caribbean and Asia has grown exponentially. People in poor regions are using mobile phones for banking, business transactions, socializing, staying connected and monitor the weather. This has reduced the need for travel, lead to the creation of new businesses, shorten supply chains and boost productivity. Consequently, these technologies can be used to eliminate the time and distance barriers between businesses and their customers. This paper examined the impact of mobile technologies in ten Caribbean countries which are primarily developing countries. It utilized a cross-country panel data and regression analysis to estimate and investigates the impact of mobile technologies on economic growth. Results from the paper showed that all the coefficient of the mobile technology components namely the internet user ratio, mobile-cellular telephone subscriptions and the fixed-telephone subscriptions were all significant and positive across all the regressions. This is because of the belief that they contribute to the knowledge spillover, which consequently enhances economic growth.
A prospective, randomized, double-blind comparison of bilateral and right unilateral electroconvulsive therapy at different stimulus intensities.

BACKGROUND Controversy persists about the use of right unilateral (RUL) and bilateral (BL) electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). While RUL ECT results in less severe short-term and long-term cognitive effects, there is concern that it is less efficacious than BL ECT. METHODS In a double-blind study, 80 depressed patients were randomized to RULECT, with electrical dosages 50%, 150%, or 500% above the seizure threshold, or BL ECT, with an electrical dosage 150% above the threshold. Depression severity and cognitive functioning were assessed before, during, immediately after, and 2 months after ECT. Compared with baseline, responders had at least a 60% reduction in symptom scores 1 week after ECT, and were monitored for relapse for 1 year. RESULTS High-dosage RUL and BL ECT were equivalent in response rate (65%) and approximately twice as effective as low-dosage (35%) or moderate-dosage (30%) unilateral ECT. During the week after the randomized phase, BL ECT resulted in greater impairment than any dosage of unilateral ECT in several measures of anterograde and retrograde memory. Two months after ECT, retrograde amnestic deficits were greatest among patients treated with BL ECT. Thirty-three (53%) of the 62 patients who responded to ECT relapsed, without treatment group differences. The relapse rate was greater in patients who had not responded to adequate pharmacotherapy prior to ECT and who had more severe depressive symptoms after ECT. CONCLUSION Right unilateral ECT at high dosage is as effective as a robust form of BL ECT, but produces less severe and persistent cognitive effects.
NEW CANDIDATE ERUPTIVE YOUNG STARS IN LYNDS 1340

We report on the discovery of three candidate eruptive young stars, found during our comprehensive multi-wavelength study of the young stellar population of the dark cloud L1340. These stars are as follows. (1) IRAS 02224+7227 (2MASS 02270555+7241167, HH 487S) exhibited FUor-like spectrum in our low-resolution optical spectra. The available photometric data restrict its luminosity to 23 L☉ < Lbol < 59 L☉. (2) 2MASS 02263797+7304575, identified as a classical T Tauri star during our Hα survey, exhibited an EXor-type brightening in 2005 November at the time of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey observations of the region. (3) 2MASS 02325605+7246055, a low-mass embedded young star, associated with a fan-shaped infrared nebula, underwent an outburst between the DSS 1 and DSS 2 surveys, leading to the appearance of a faint optical nebula. Our [S ii] and Hα images, as well as the Spitzer Infrared Array Camera 4.5 μm images, revealed Herbig–Haro objects associated with this star. Our results suggest that amplitudes and timescales of outbursts do not necessarily correlate with the evolutionary stage of the stars.
Information and communication technology to facilitate learning for students in the health professions: Current uses, gaps, and future directions

Changes in the US Healthcare System along with the need for institutions of higher education to prepare a work force ready to address the challenges of today and tomorrow have highlighted the need to incorporate technology in its broadest sense as part of the student learning experience. In health professional education, this becomes challenging as programs have traditionally relied on face-to-face instruction along with internship experiences which provide hands on patient care. In addition, learning activities that incorporate higher order critical thinking must be incorporated in order to meet competency based professional expectations as well as expectations in the work place environment. This article will address current technology use in health professional education programs and identify opportunities to incorporate technology to enhance the student learning experiences with emphasis on the critical thinking, communication, and psychomotor skills required of today’s health professional graduate.
Geographic variation of MS incidence in two prospective studies of US women

Objective: To estimate the incidence of MS and its relation to latitude in two ongoing prospective studies of US women. Background: A higher incidence of MS has been found in northern areas compared with southern areas of the United States and other countries, but the attenuation of this gradient in Europe in the last few decades and the consideration of ethnic factors have led some authors to question the existence of a strong association between MS and latitude. Methods: The authors identified new cases of MS among participants in the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS), which took place between 1976 and 1994, and in the Nurses’ Health Study II (NHS II), which took place between 1989 and 1995. The NHS included women born between 1920 and 1946, and the NHS II included women born between 1947 and 1964. Results: The incidence of MS among NHS participants (181 definite/probable patients) increased significantly with latitude (p = 0.03, trend). Adjusted rate ratios were 3.5 (95% CI, 1.1, 11.3) for the north and 2.7 (95% CI, 0.8, 8.9) for the middle tiers relative to the southern tier. Among NHS II women (131 definite/probable patients), no association between latitude and MS was found (p = 0.89, trend). Adjusted rate ratios were 0.8 (95% CI, 0.4, 1.6) for the northern areas and 0.9 (95%, 0.4, 1.8) for the middle areas, relative to the southern areas. Conclusions: The association between latitude and risk of MS in the United States was corroborated, but there was an attenuation of the north–south gradient over time. If confirmed, this finding could provide new clues to identifying environmental causes of the disease.
Dietary fibre, fluids and physical activity in relation to constipation symptoms in pre-adolescent children

Children with constipation are advised frequently to increase their activity levels, fluids and fibre intake. The aim of this study was to examine the prevalence of constipation symptoms in a group of schoolchildren while concurrently assessing their activity levels and fluid and fibre intakes. Eighty-four pre-adolescent children aged 7—10 years were recruited. All children completed a bowel function diary, an activity diary and a weighed food inventory for seven consecutive days. Of the children, 33 percent were found to experience constipation symptoms. Fluid and fibre intakes were higher in the children who did not experience constipation symptoms, but the results were not significant. Physical activity levels were found to be significantly higher in the children reporting constipation symptoms, with the most active children reporting low water intakes. This study has highlighted that constipation symptoms are a prevalent problem in children not seeking medical treatment.
Second order Integral Sliding Mode Control : an approach to speed control of DC Motor

In this paper, a second order sliding mode controller is applied for single-input single-output (SISO) uncertain system. The presented controller successively overcomes the variations caused by the uncertainties and external load disturbances although an approximate model of the system is used in the design procedure. An integral type sliding surface is used and the stability and robustness properties of the controller are proved by means of Lyapunov stability theorem. The chattering phenomenon is significantly reduced adopting the switching gain with the known parameters of the system. Thus, the presented controller is suitable for long-term application to the systems those are having fast response closed-loop behaviours. The performance of the developed control scheme is validated by simulation in Mathworks MATLAB and the results are compared with the similar controllers presented in the literature. In order to verify the performance comparison of second order integral sliding mode approach, first, a sliding mode control system with a PID sliding surface is adopted to control the speed of an electromechanical plant. In this, a sliding mode controller Is derived so that the actual trajectory tracks the desired trajectory despite uncertainty, nonlinear dynamics, and external disturbances. The sliding mode controller is chosen to ensure the stability of overall dynamics during the reaching phase and sliding phase. The stability of the system is guaranteed in the sense of the Lyapunov stability theorem. Second, the sliding mode approach for stable systems which is available in the literature is designed with tuning parameters as per their guidelines. And finally conventional controller is designed based on the Zeiglar-Nicholas approach. All controllers applied to the electro-mechanical system to verify the performance in terms of time domain and performance error indices. The chattering problem is almost removed in the presented approach in comparison with other controllers. This problem is overcome using a hyperbolic function in the switching control considering the small constant term incase of the zero error to avoid the problem of zero division.
Partitioning range images using curvature and scale

A method is presented for partitioning a set of surface estimates obtained with a laser range finding system into subsets corresponding to parts of an object. The authors' strategy uses two complementary representations for surfaces, i.e., one which describes local structures in terms of differential properties (e.g., edges, lines, contours) and another which represents the surface as a collection of smooth patches at different scales. By enforcing a consistent interpretation between these two representations, it is possible to derive a partitioning algorithm that is both efficient and robust. <<ETX>>
MRI-guided brain PET image filtering and partial volume correction

Positron emission tomography (PET) image quantification is a challenging problem due to limited spatial resolution of acquired data and the resulting partial volume effects (PVE), which depend on the size of the structure studied in relation to the spatial resolution and which may lead to over or underestimation of the true tissue tracer concentration. In addition, it is usually necessary to perform image smoothing either during image reconstruction or afterwards to achieve a reasonable signal-to-noise ratio. Typically, an isotropic Gaussian filtering (GF) is used for this purpose. However, the noise suppression is at the cost of deteriorating spatial resolution. As hybrid imaging devices such as PET/MRI have become available, the complementary information derived from high definition morphologic images could be used to improve the quality of PET images. In this study, first of all, we propose an MRI-guided PET filtering method by adapting a recently proposed local linear model and then incorporate PVE into the model to get a new partial volume correction (PVC) method without parcellation of MRI. In addition, both the new filtering and PVC are voxel-wise non-iterative methods. The performance of the proposed methods were investigated with simulated dynamic FDG brain dataset and 18F-FDG brain data of a cervical cancer patient acquired with a simultaneous hybrid PET/MR scanner. The initial simulation results demonstrated that MRI-guided PET image filtering can produce less noisy images than traditional GF and bias and coefficient of variation can be further reduced by MRI-guided PET PVC. Moreover, structures can be much better delineated in MRI-guided PET PVC for real brain data.
Activation of p38 Mitogen-activated Protein Kinase by Signaling through G Protein-coupled Receptors

Various extracellular stimuli activate three classes of mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs): extracellular signal-regulated kinase, c-Jun N-terminal kinase, and p38 MAPK. In mammalian cells, p38 MAPK is activated by endotoxins, inflammatory cytokines, and environmental stresses. We show here that p38 MAPK is also activated upon stimulation of G protein-coupled receptors (Gq/G11-coupled m1 and Gi-coupled m2 muscarinic acetylcholine and Gs-coupled β-adrenergic receptors) in human embryonal kidney 293 cells. The activation of p38 MAPK through the m2 and β-adrenergic receptors was completely inhibited by coexpression of Gαo, whereas the activation by the m1 receptor was only partially inhibited. Furthermore, we show that overexpression of Gβγ or a constitutively activated mutant of Gα11, but not Gαs and Gαi, can stimulate p38 MAPK. These results suggest that the signal from the m2 and β-adrenergic receptors to p38 MAPK is mediated by Gβγ, whereas the signal from the m1 receptor is mediated by both Gβγ and Gαq/11.
Mechanism of the establishment of epstein‐barr virus genome‐containing lymphoid cell lines from infectious mononucleosis patients: Studies with phosphonoacetate

A concentration of disodium phosphonoacetate (PA) has been defined which will reduce the synthesis of infectious EB virus in a producer cell line to 1% of control values but which will not affect the growth of EB virus‐transformed cells in a 12‐week colony‐forming assay. When total mononuclear cells or T‐lymphocyte‐depleted mononuclear cells from the blood of acute IM patients were cultured in the presence of PA at the above concentration, the regular establishment of EB virus genome‐containing cell lines seen in control cultures was almost totally abolished. In further experiments, when T‐lymphocyte‐depleted IM mononuclear cells were co‐cultivated with foetal cells of the opposite sex in the presence and absence of PA, cell lines of mixed or of exclusively foetal origin were obtained not only from control co‐cultures but also on those rare occasions when transformed foci developed in PA‐treated co‐cultures. The results suggest that all cell lines derived from the blood of IM patients are initiated in culture by a two‐step process of virus release and secondary infection, and argue against the occurrence of any direct outgrowth of IM cells transformed by the virus in vivo.