Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ancillary subunits and stimulation frequency determine the potency of chromanol 293B block of the KCNQ1 potassium channel

KCNQ1 (Kv7.1 or KvLQT1) encodes the alpha‐subunit of a voltage‐gated potassium channel found in tissues including heart, brain, epithelia and smooth muscle. Tissue‐specific characteristics of KCNQ1 current are diverse, due to modification by ancillary subunits. In heart, KCNQ1 associates with KCNE1 (MinK), producing a slowly activating voltage‐dependent channel. In epithelia, KCNQ1 co‐assembles with KCNE3 (Mirp2) producing a constitutively open channel. Chromanol 293B is a selective KCNQ1 blocker. We studied drug binding and frequency dependence of 293B on KCNQ1 and ancillary subunits expressed in Xenopus oocytes. Ancillary subunits altered 293B potency up to 100‐fold (IC50 for KCNQ1 = 65.4 ± 1.7 μm; KCNQ1/KCNE1 = 15.1 ± 3.3 μm; KCNQ1/KCNE3 = 0.54 ± 0.18 μm). Block of KCNQ1 and KCNQ1/KCNE3 was time independent, but 293B altered KCNQ1/KCNE1 activation. We therefore studied frequency‐dependent block of KCNQ1/KCNE1. Repetitive rapid stimulation increased KCNQ1/KCNE1 current biphasically, and 293B abolished the slow component. KCNQ1/KCNE3[V72T] activates slowly with a KCNQ1/KCNE1‐like phenotype, but retains the high affinity binding of KCNQ1/KCNE3, demonstrating that subunit‐mediated changes in gating can be dissociated from subunit‐mediated changes in affinity. This study demonstrates the KCNQ1 pharmacology is significantly altered by ancillary subunits. The response of KCNQ1 to specific blockers will therefore be critically dependent on the electrical stimulation pattern of the target organ. Furthermore, the dissociation between gating and overall affinity suggests that mutations in ancillary subunits can potentially strongly alter drug sensitivity without obvious functional changes in gating behaviour, giving rise to unexpected side‐effects such as a predisposition to acquired long QT syndrome.
Swedish two-county trial: impact of mammographic screening on breast cancer mortality during 3 decades.

PURPOSE To estimate the long-term (29-year) effect of mammographic screening on breast cancer mortality in terms of both relative and absolute effects. MATERIALS AND METHODS This study was carried out under the auspices of the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare. The board determined that, because randomization was at a community level and was to invitation to screening, informed verbal consent could be given by the participants when they attended the screening examination. A total of 133 065 women aged 40-74 years residing in two Swedish counties were randomized into a group invited to mammographic screening and a control group receiving usual care. Case status and cause of death were determined by the local trial end point committees and, independently, by an external committee. Mortality analysis was performed by using negative binomial regression. RESULTS There was a highly significant reduction in breast cancer mortality in women invited to screening according to both local end point committee data (relative risk [RR] = 0.69; 95% confidence interval: 0.56, 0.84; P < .0001) and consensus data (RR = 0.73; 95% confidence interval: 0.59, 0.89; P = .002). At 29 years of follow-up, the number of women needed to undergo screening for 7 years to prevent one breast cancer death was 414 according to local data and 519 according to consensus data. Most prevented breast cancer deaths would have occurred (in the absence of screening) after the first 10 years of follow-up. CONCLUSION Invitation to mammographic screening results in a highly significant decrease in breast cancer-specific mortality. Evaluation of the full impact of screening, in particular estimates of absolute benefit and number needed to screen, requires follow-up times exceeding 20 years because the observed number of breast cancer deaths prevented increases with increasing time of follow-up.
Clinician-Targeted Mobile Apps in Palliative Care: A Systematic Review.

BACKGROUND The availability of smartphone applications has increased rapidly including applications related to palliative care. The scope of these available apps has not been synthesized. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to identify and review available palliative care-related smartphone applications for clinicians. DESIGN Smartphone application platform stores, for example, App Store iOS, Google Play Store, Windows App-Microsoft Store, and Blackberry World App store were searched (December 2016) using relevant key words. RESULTS Forty-six palliative care applications targeting clinicians were identified, including clinical guidelines (n = 17), advance care planning (n = 9), training materials in palliative care (n = 7), and pharmaceutical tools (n = 7), and platforms for distributing current palliative care news, articles, and opinions (n = 6). The majority of the applications were free and available in English. The most common platforms were Android and iOS. CONCLUSIONS The number of palliative care apps targeting clinicians has increased dramatically for the past five years. However, many apps did not report adequate information to judge the evidence upon which the apps were based.
Calcium‐dependent chloride current induced by axotomy in rat sympathetic neurons.

1. Seven to ten days after sectioning their axons, rat sympathetic neurons were studied using intracellular recording techniques in an in vitro preparation of the superior cervical ganglion. 2. In 75% of axotomized cells, an after‐depolarization (ADP) was observed following spike firing or depolarization with intracellular current pulses. Discontinuous single‐electrode voltage‐clamp techniques were employed to study the ADP. When the membrane potential was clamped at the resting level just after an action potential, a slow inward current was recorded in cells that showed an ADP. 3. In the presence of TTX and TEA, inward peaks and outward currents were recorded during depolarizing voltage jumps, followed by slowly decaying inward tail currents accompanied by large increases in membrane conductance. The inward peak and tail currents activated between ‐10 and ‐20 mV and reached maximum amplitudes around 0 mV. With depolarizing jumps to between +40 and +50 mV, net outward currents were recorded during the depolarizing jumps but inward tail currents were still activated. 4. In the presence of the Ca2+ channel blocker cadmium, or when Ca2+ was substituted by Mg2+, the ADP disappeared. In voltage‐clamped cells, cadmium blocked the inward tail currents. The reversal potential for the inward tail current was approximately ‐15 mV. Substitution of the extracellular NaCl by sucrose or sodium isethionate increased the amplitude of the inward tail current, and displaced its equilibrium potential to more positive values. Changes in extracellular [K+] did not appreciably affect the inward tail current amplitude or equilibrium potential. Niflumic acid, a blocker of chloride channels activated by Ca2+, almost completely blocked the tail current. 5. No ADPs were observed in non‐axotomized neurons, and when depolarizing pulses were applied while in voltage clamp no inward tail currents were evoked in these normal cells. 6. It is concluded that axotomy of sympathetic ganglion cells produces the appearance of a Ca(2+)‐dependent chloride current responsible for the ADP observed following spike firing.
A method for determining ontology-based user profile in document retrieval system

Information overload has become a very important aspect of information retrieval domain. Even if a user knows where to look for interesting information, he can have a problem with precisely formulating his information needs. A solution of the problem is personalization and recommendation system – they observe user activities, analyze them to discover important preferences. Based on these information the system can improve the effectiveness of the results. In this paper we present a method for determining user profile in a document retrieval system. We propose ontology-based profile. Such a structure allows to process semantic relations between users’ queries. We focus on methods for adapting profile because only up-to-date profile can help the user to obtained results that correspond with his information needs. We present a set of postulates for adaptation methods. Performed experimental evaluations of developed methods are promising.
Perceived Value, Reputation, Trust, and Switching Costs as Determinants of Customer Retention

In service companies, maintenance and expansion of relational exchanges reinforce customer retention as a differentiator from the competition. In this research we developed and tested a theoretical model considering perceived value, service provider reputation, trust, and switching costs as determinants of customer retention. After that, a survey was done, and analysis of the results was performed using structural equation modeling with a sample of 269 client companies of corporate health plans. The contributions of the specified theoretical model, considering its uniqueness, proved that perceived value positively influences service provider reputation, service provider reputation has a direct impact on trust and switching costs, switching costs are configured as determinants of customer retention, and customer retention is positively influenced by service provider reputation in a relational context.
THE PEOPLE’S PERCEPTIONS ON AESTHETIC AND USES OF THE ACTIVE URBAN PARKS IN SURABAYA

Urban open space namely urban parks in Surabaya are a recent phenomenon that advocated by the recent mayor to provide outdoor recreation for physical welfare of the people. So far, however, no information was found regarding perception of the people on condition of the urban parks, which is a first step to improve the urban parks. The objective of this paper is to examine the perception of the people toward the urban parks in Surabaya, in specific to what extend the provision of the parks meet the needs of the visitors. Five urban parks were surveyed, and data were collected through observation, documentation, and distribution of questionnaires that conducted in April 2014. As a result, based upon the surveys, most of the visitors (78%) perceived the 5 parks are good places to be visited that perceived as clean (74%), save (76%), gorgeous (78%), and adequate availability of amenities (66%). In this sense, this good perception of the parks is a result of emphatic actions in designing the parks that emphasis on the needs of visitors. Nevertheless, in the future, many of the visitors (54%) hope that the amenities in the parks have to be improved.
Agricultural Trade: Planting the Seeds of Regional Liberalization in Asia

The paper explores the potential for agricultural trade opportunities at the regional level thorugh preferential trade agreements (PTAs), at a time when the number of PTAs globally and in the ESCAP region has been increasing sharply. products as well as associalte tariff and non-tariff barriers. the objectives are to mapand analyse exisitng trade agreements in the region and their product coverage especially. in agricultural products. Also, another aim is to derive implications and guidelines for trade policy and negotiations.
Wide band characterization of the mobile-satellite propagation channel using a helicopter

The paper first presents an experimental set-up using a helicopter, which was realized to study the wide band and variable mobile satellite propagation channel. The first statistical characterizations stated are described. More specifically, the authors present cumulative distributions of narrow band and wide band excess path loss as a function of the elevation angle, as well as distribution functions of some frequency selectivity parameters. <<ETX>>
Performance and Characteristics of Swedish Mutual Funds 1993-97

The performance, and its characteristics, of Swedish-based equity and bond mutual funds are studied in detail. Accounting for survivorship biases, regular equity funds have a slight overperformance, equity funds with certain tax advantages have a negative performance (before tax), and bond funds a clear underperformance. The performance is related to fund specific characteristics such as netflows of new money into funds, past performance, expense measures, commissions paid by the funds, turnover, and the size of funds. The economic importance of the cross-sectional differences is quantified by investigating various trading strategies.
Valuation Strategies in Divorce

Analyzing and Adjusting Financial Statements (S. Stone) Analysis of Corporate and Personal Tax Returns (R. Haas) Discovery Issues in Valuation Cases (R. Feder) Valuation of Closely Held Businesses (S. Stone) Valuation of Professional Practices (R. Haas) Valuation of Pensions (M. Snyder) Valuation of Real Estate (W. Yetke) Personal Property, Collections, and Fine Arts (L. Lynch-Clinton) Direct Examination of Business Appraisers (R. Feder) Cross-Examination of Business Appraisers (R. Feder) Index.
Bidirectional Clustering for Scalable VPL-based Global Illumination

Virtual Point Lights (VPL) methods approximate global illumination (GI) in a scene by using a large number of virtual lights modeling the reﬂected radiance of a surface. These methods are efﬁcient, and allow computing noise-free images signiﬁcantly faster that other methods. However, they scale linearly with the number of virtual lights and with the number of pixels to be rendered. Previous approaches improve the scalability of the method by hierarchically evaluating the virtual lights, allowing sublinear performance with respect the lights being evaluated. In this work, we introduce a novel bidirectional clustering approach, by hierarchically evaluating both the virtual lights and the shading points. This allows reusing radiance evaluation between pixels, and obtaining sublinear costs with respect to both lights and camera samples. We demonstrate signiﬁcantly better performance than state-of-the-art VPL clustering methods with several examples, including high-resolution images, distributed effects, and rendering of light ﬁelds.
Banks' Funding Costs and Lending Rates

Over the past year, lending rates and funding costs have both fallen in absolute terms but have risen relative to the cash rate. The rise in funding costs, relative to the cash rate, reflects strong competition for deposits, particularly term deposits, and higher spreads on wholesale debt reflecting an increase in investors’ concerns about the global banking industry. While spreads have narrowed recently, they are still noticeably higher than they have been over the past couple of years. Over the past six months, lending rates have generally fallen by more than funding costs.
Foreign Exchange Exposure and Short-Term Cash Flow Sensitivity

In this paper we hypothesize that because of firms' ability to adjust to exchange rate movements over the longer term, stock prices are unlikely to reflect foreign exchange exposure unless a firm is particularly sensitive to short-term cash flow variability. Controlling for firms' ability to adjust their cost structures, we find that the magnitude of exchange rate exposure of U.S. manufacturing firms is related to firms' short-term leverage, availability of internal funds, size, costs of underinvestment and product specialization. Further, during large, unexpected movements of the dollar, firms with higher expected costs of financial distress show larger exposures as measured by their larger abnormal returns and abnormal volatilities in response to exchange rate shocks.
Artifact reduction in moving‐table acquisitions using parallel imaging and multiple averages

Two‐dimensional (2D) axial continuously‐moving‐table imaging has to deal with artifacts due to gradient nonlinearity and breathing motion, and has to provide the highest scan efficiency. Parallel imaging techniques (e.g., generalized autocalibrating partially parallel acquisition GRAPPA)) are used to reduce such artifacts and avoid ghosting artifacts. The latter occur in T2‐weighted multi‐spin‐echo (SE) acquisitions that omit an additional excitation prior to imaging scans for presaturation purposes. Multiple images are reconstructed from subdivisions of a fully sampled k‐space data set, each of which is acquired in a single SE train. These images are then averaged. GRAPPA coil weights are estimated without additional measurements. Compared to conventional image reconstruction, inconsistencies between different subsets of k‐space induce less artifacts when each k‐space part is reconstructed separately and the multiple images are averaged afterwards. These inconsistencies may lead to inaccurate GRAPPA coil weights using the proposed intrinsic GRAPPA calibration. It is shown that aliasing artifacts in single images are canceled out after averaging. Phantom and in vivo studies demonstrate the benefit of the proposed reconstruction scheme for free‐breathing axial continuously‐moving‐table imaging using fast multi‐SE sequences. Magn Reson Med 57:226–232, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Simple head pose estimation in still images

Robust, reliable head pose estimation is a key step in many practical applications involving face analysis tasks. We address the problem of head pose estimation in still gray scale images, assuming a standard camera with limited resolution details. To achieve the proposed goal, we rely on the standard pattern recognition approach: we describe the previously detected faces with easy-to-compute image features (such as integral image projections, Local Binary Pattern - LBP and Histogram of oriented Gradient - HoG), that are subsequently feed into a machine learning system (namely a Multi-Layer Perceptron - MLP) that will approximate the head angle. We have thoroughly evaluated our system on the HPEG and Columbia publicly available databases.
How Does Fair Value Measurement under IAS 39 Affect Disclosure Choices of European Banks

There is a considerable degree of heterogeneity in the way how European banks present their financial instruments in IFRS financial statements. In a sample of 109 European banks, we identify three major presentation formats that are currently applied: a presentation by measurement category, by product, and by purpose. We find the use of the measurement categories, which were originally designed by IAS 39 for measurement purposes, as line items to be the prevalent choice across countries. We analyze the factors that could explain this disclosure choice. We find that a corresponding regulatory recommendation has a strong effect on the choice. We further find that the disclosure of measurement categories is negatively associated with the relative book value of financial assets measured at fair value. This finding suggests discretionary disclosure management by banks. We conclude, based on behavioral theory, that banks expect investors to have a negative bias in the risk perception of assets measured at fair value.
Inhaled corticosteroids during acute bronchiolitis in the prevention of post-bronchiolitic wheezing.

BACKGROUND Acute bronchiolitis in infants and young children is associated with long-term airway disease also known as post-bronchiolitic wheezing. Two major hypotheses have been proposed to explain the association between bronchiolitis and PBW. The first hypothesis considers bronchiolitis to be the first manifestation of recurrent wheezing in infants and children who are susceptible to obstructive airway disease. The second hypothesis suggests that the infection and concomitant inflammatory reaction in the acute phase leads to airway epithelium injury resulting in long-term obstructive airway disease. In line with the latter hypothesis, corticosteroids may have a beneficial effect on the prevention of post-bronchiolitic wheezing. OBJECTIVES The objective of this review was to evaluate the effect of inhaled corticosteroids, started during the acute phase of bronchiolitis, on the prevention of post-bronchiolitic wheezing. SEARCH STRATEGY We searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (The Cochrane Library Issue 3, 2006) which contains the Cochrane Acute Respiratory Infections Group's trials register, MEDLINE (1966 to September 2006), EMBASE (1980 to September 2006) and Current Contents (September 2006). Abstracts and reports of congresses (ERS 1999 to September 2005, ATS 1999 to September 2005) were obtained. We contacted experts in the field and pharmaceutical companies for ongoing or unpublished studies. SELECTION CRITERIA Randomised placebo-controlled trials studying the effect of inhaled corticosteroids in children younger than two years of age with the clinical diagnosis of acute bronchiolitis were included. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS Two authors independently extracted data and assessed trial quality using the Jadad 5-point scale. MAIN RESULTS Five studies matched the inclusion criteria, with a median Jadad score of 4 (Inter Quartile Range 3 to 4), involving 374 infants. Pooling of the data was limited, due to the clinical diversity of the studies. However, no effect of inhaled corticosteroids in the prevention of wheezing (diary records or GP diagnosed), hospital re-admissions or use of corticosteroids or bronchodilators could be demonstrated. Duration of therapy, length of follow up or causative agent (respiratory syncytial virus or not) did not influence the pooled effect. In the three studies that also evaluated the adverse events, none were reported. AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS This review does not demonstrate an effect of inhaled corticosteroids given during the acute phase of bronchiolitis in the prevention of post-bronchiolitic wheezing. The small number of included participants and the inability to pool all clinical outcomes precludes us from making strong recommendations.
Auditing accounting estimates, including fair value accounting estimates and related disclosures

01 This section addresses the auditor's responsibilities relating to accounting estimates, including fair value accounting estimates and related disclosures, in an audit of financial statements. Specifically, it expands on how section 315, Understanding the Entity and Its Environment and Assessing the Risks of Material Misstatement; section 330, Performing Audit Procedures in Response to Assessed Risks and Evaluating the Audit Evidence Obtained; and other relevant AU-C sections are to be applied with regard to accounting estimates. It also includes requirements and guidance related to misstatements of individual accounting estimates and indicators of possible management bias.