Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Monitoring: from cardiac output monitoring to echocardiography

Purpose of reviewHemodynamic exploration is mandatory in patients with shock to identify the type of shock, to select the best therapeutic strategy, and to assess the efficacy of the selected therapy. In this review, we summarize the characteristics of the main available hemodynamic monitoring systems and emphasize on how to select the most appropriate ones in patients with circulatory shock. Recent findingsOver the past decade, hemodynamic monitoring techniques have progressively evolved from intermittent toward real-time measurements and from invasive toward less invasive approaches. Nowadays, echocardiography is recommended as the first-line modality of hemodynamic evaluation in patients with shock. Current guidelines recommend reserving advanced hemodynamic monitoring systems for patients not responding to the initial therapy and/or for complex conditions such as combination of shock with acute respiratory distress syndrome. Invasive and noninvasive uncalibrated cardiac output monitors, as well as esophageal Doppler, could find their place in the perioperative context rather than in patients with shock. SummaryThe use of echocardiography should be encouraged at the initial period of shock to identify main involved mechanisms and to select the appropriate therapy. The use of more invasive monitoring systems should be discussed on an individualized basis.
Coronary Artery Atherosclerosis Is Related to Reduced Regional Left Ventricular Function in Individuals Without History of Clinical Cardiovascular Disease: The Multiethnic Study of Atherosclerosis

Objective—We investigated whether regional coronary calcium score by computed tomography is related to regional left ventricular systolic function measured by MRI tagging in participants of the Multiethnic Study of Atherosclerosis. Methods and Results—The Multiethnic Study of Atherosclerosis is a prospective observational study of men and women without a history of previous heart disease from 4 ethnic groups. Calcium scores were measured separately for the left anterior descendent (LAD), left circumflex (LCX), and right (RCA) coronary arteries. Left ventricular strain and strain rate were determined by tagged MRI in the corresponding vascular territories of the coronary vessels in 509 participants. Greater coronary calcification in the LAD, LCX, and right RCA coronary arteries were related to worse function in their respective perfusion. Anterior wall strain rate was −1.37±0.41 when LAD calcium was zero versus −1.17±0.24 1/s in the highest quartile of calcium score (P<0.001). Similar relationships were evident in the LCX and RCA regions. Participants with 1- and 2-vessel coronary artery calcium had better myocardial function in the remote area compared with the territory supplied by the diseased artery. Conclusions—High-local calcium score is related to regional dysfunction in the corresponding coronary territory among individuals without a history of previous heart disease. These results indicate a link between atherosclerosis and subclinical regional left ventricular dysfunction.
Image tampering localization via estimating the non-aligned double JPEG compression

In this paper, we present an efficient method to locate the forged parts in a tampered JPEG image. The forged region usually undergoes a different JPEG compression with the background region in JPEG image forgeries. When a JPEG image is cropped to another host JPEG image and resaved in JPEG format, the JPEG block grid of the tampered region often mismatches the JPEG block grid of the host image with a certain shift. This phenomenon is called non-aligned double JPEG compression (NA-DJPEG). In this paper, we identify different JPEG compression forms by estimating the shift of NA-DJPEG compression. Our shift estimating approach is based on the percentage of non zeros of JPEG coefficients in different situations. Compared to previous work, our tampering location method (i) performances better when dealing with small image size, (ii) is robust to common tampering processing such as resizing, rotating, blurring and so on, (iii) doesn't need an image dataset to train a machine learning based classifier or to get a proper threshold.
An attenuated variant of Coxsackievirus B3 preferentially induces immunoregulatory T cells in vivo

BALB/c mice infected with the Woodruff variant of coxsackievirus group B type 3 (CVB3W) develop myocarditis mediated by autoimmune cytolytic T lymphocytes. A variant of CVB3W (designated H3-10A1) which infects the myocardium but induces minimal mortality of myocarditis compared to the parental virus was selected. Although H3-10A1 infections stimulate normal CTL responses to CVB3-infected myocytes, the autoimmune response to myocardial antigens is absent. Treatment of H3-10A1-infected mice with 50 mg of cyclophosphamide per kg of body weight, a treatment which preferentially eliminates suppressor cells, allows both the development of the autoimmune cytotoxic T-lymphocyte response and the expression of myocarditis. Similar treatment of CVB3W-infected mice had no effect on the disease. The presence of the immunoregulatory cells was confirmed by adoptive transfer of T lymphocytes from either H3-10A1 or CVB3W-infected donor mice into syngeneic CVB3W-infected recipients. Animals given H3-10A1-immune cells had minimal myocardial inflammation, while animals given CVB3W-immune lymphocytes developed enhanced cardiac disease. Elimination of the T-lymphocyte population from the donor cells prior to transfer abrogated suppression with the H3-10A1-immune population, showing that immunoregulation depended upon T lymphocytes. Both H3-10A1 and CVB3W have cross-reactive epitopes between the adenine translocator protein and the virion which are indicative of antigenic mimicry and may be the basis for the autoimmunity to cardiac antigens. These results suggest that immunoregulatory T cells may be primarily responsible for the nonpathogenicity of the H3-10A1 variant.
Pain sensitivity and neural processing during dissociative states in patients with borderline personality disorder with and without comorbid posttraumatic stress disorder: a pilot study.

BACKGROUND Stress-induced dissociative states involving analgesia are a common feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Our aim was to investigate the psychologic, somatosensory (pain sensitivity) and neural correlates of dissociative states in patients with these disorders. METHODS We included 15 women with BPD who were not taking medication; 10 of these women had comorbid PTSD. While undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging at 1.5 Tesla, participants were exposed to a script describing a personalized dissociation-inducing situation and a personalized script describing a neutral situation. We assessed dissociative psychopathology and pain sensitivity. RESULTS Dissociative psychopathology scores were significantly higher and pain sensitivity was lower after the dissociation-inducing script was read compared with the neutral script. The blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal was significantly increased in the left inferior frontal gyrus (Brodmann area [BA] 9) during the presentation of the dissociation-inducing script. Regression analyses revealed positive correlations between BOLD signal and dissociative psychopathology in the left superior frontal gyrus (BA 6) and negative correlations in the right middle (BA 21) and inferior temporal gyrus (BA 20). In the subgroup of participants with comorbid PTSD, we also found increased activity in the left cingulate gyrus (BA 32) during script-driven imagery-induced dissociation, a positive correlation between dissociation scores and activity in the right and left insula (BA 13) and a negative correlation in the right parahippocampal gyrus (BA 35). LIMITATIONS The main limitation of this pilot study is the absence of a control group. Therefore, the results may also reflect the neural correlates of non-BPD/PTSD specific dissociative states or the neural correlates of emotionally stressful or "loaded" memories. Another limitation is the uncorrected statistical level of the functional magnetic resonance imaging results. CONCLUSION Our results showed that the script-driven imagery method is capable of inducing dissociative states in participants with BPD with and without comorbid PTSD. These states were characterized by reduced pain sensitivity and a frontolimbic activation pattern, which resembles the findings in participants with PTSD while in dissociative states.
Boosting GPU Virtualization Performance with Hybrid Shadow Page Tables

The increasing adoption of Graphic Process Unit (GPU) to computation-intensive workloads has stimulated a new computing paradigm called GPU cloud (e.g., Amazon's GPU Cloud), which necessitates the sharing of GPU resources to multiple tenants in a cloud. However, state-of-the-art GPU virtualization techniques such as gVirt still suffer from non-trivial performance overhead for graphics memory-intensive workloads involving frequent page table updates. To understand such overhead, this paper first presents GMedia, a media benchmark, and uses it to analyze the causes of such overhead. Our analysis shows that frequent updates to guest VM's page tables causes excessive updates to the shadow page table in the hypervisor, due to the need to guarantee the consistency between guest page table and shadow page table. To this end, this paper proposes gHyvi, an optimized GPU virtualization scheme based on gVirt, which uses adaptive hybrid page table shadowing that combines strict and relaxed page table schemes. By significantly reducing trap-and-emulation due to page table updates, gHyvi significantly improves gVirt's performance for memory-intensive GPU workloads. Evaluation using GMedia shows that gHyvi can achieve up to 13× performance improvement compared to gVirt, and up to 85% native performance for multithread media transcoding.
INHIBITION OF COMPLEMENT BY CARRAGEENIN: MODE OF ACTION, EFFECT ON ALLERGIC REACTIONS AND ON COMPLEMENT OF VARIOUS SPECIES.

Carrageenin prevents the reaction of guinea-pig C′ with sensitized red blood cells, probably by a direct inactivation of the C′1. The anti-complementary effect of carrageenin is antagonized by protamine sulphate. Marked reduction of circulating C′ activity in guinea-pigs resulting from intravenous injection of carrageenin, does not alter their susceptibility to acute or protracted anaphylactic shock. The C′ activities of human, guinea-pig, rabbit, rat and monkey sera are all inhibited in vitro by carrageenin.
Tuberculosis: 9. Treatment.

Effective tuberculosis (TB) control in Canada depends on case-finding to discover infectious cases, investigation of contacts of those with TB, appropriate treatment (with drugs to which the organisms are susceptible and user-friendly regimens to encourage adherence), case holding (which includes registration of the patient and methods of ensuring that patients take their medications until they are declared cured by the appropriate health officials) and treatment of latent infection in high-risk groups. In this article I review the theoretical basis for treatment and describe a number of accepted regimens. Antituberculosis drugs have been described in terms of their activity in 3 areas: bactericidal activity, sterilizing activity and prevention of drug resistance. Bactericidal activity is the ability of a drug to reduce the number of actively dividing bacilli during the induction (initial) phase of therapy. 1 Isoniazid is the most potent bactericidal antituberculosis agent, although rifampin and streptomycin also have some bactericidal activity. Sterilizing activity is the ability of a drug to kill semidormant bacteria. Rifampin and pyrazinamide are the most potent sterilizing drugs for TB. 2 Drug resistance* is prevented by drugs that eliminate all bacterial populations and do not allow the emergence of resistant organisms. Effective treatment regimens are divided into 2 phases: an initial or induction phase, during which agents are used in combination to kill rapidly multiplying populations of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and to prevent the emergence of drug resistance, followed by a continuation phase, during which sterilizing drugs are used to kill the intermittently dividing populations. 3–6 Adherence to the treatment regimen can be achieved by directly observed therapy (DOT), in which a health care provider watches the patient swallow each dose of medication. DOT is important in the treatment of tuberculosis because it allows for monitoring of the number of doses that an individual has taken, drawing attention immediately to those who have missed treatment and thus alerting the health care worker in charge of the particular case that the patient may be absconding from treatment. In addition, it ensures that monotherapy does not occur, which might happen if an individual is intolerant to one or more of the medications prescribed and thus consciously takes fewer of the drugs than necessary. It also allows for the extension of treatment on the basis of the number of doses missed. DOT may be given daily or intermittently (2 or 3 times a week). 7–11 Intermittent therapy was introduced when it was shown in controlled clinical trials that therapeutic serum levels of the various antituberculosis drugs were maintained even when medications were given only 2 or 3 times a week.
Wolbachia Enhance Drosophila Stem Cell Proliferation and Target the Germline Stem Cell Niche

A bacterial endosymbiont up-regulates mitosis of Drosophila germline stem cells and blocks programmed cell death. Wolbachia are widespread maternally transmitted intracellular bacteria that infect most insect species and are able to alter the reproduction of innumerous hosts. The cellular bases of these alterations remain largely unknown. Here, we report that Drosophila mauritiana infected with a native Wolbachia wMau strain produces about four times more eggs than the noninfected counterpart. Wolbachia infection leads to an increase in the mitotic activity of germline stem cells (GSCs), as well as a decrease in programmed cell death in the germarium. Our results suggest that up-regulation of GSC division is mediated by a tropism of Wolbachia for the GSC niche, the cellular microenvironment that supports GSCs.
Machine vision and appearance based learning

Smart algorithms are used in Machine vision to organize or extract high-level information from the available data. The resulted high-level understanding the content of images received from certain visual sensing system and belonged to an appearance space can be only a key first step in solving various specific tasks such as mobile robot navigation in uncertain environments, road detection in autonomous driving systems, etc. Appearance-based learning has become very popular in the field of machine vision. In general, the appearance of a scene is a function of the scene content, the lighting conditions, and the camera position. Mobile robots localization problem in machine learning framework via appearance space analysis is considered. This problem is reduced to certain regression on an appearance manifold problem, and newly regression on manifolds methods are used for its solution.
Management of Early Groin Vascular Bypass Graft Infections With Sartorius and Rectus Femoris Flaps

Groin infections adjacent to vascular bypass grafts continue to be a source of morbidity. The authors reviewed retrospectively 9 consecutive patients with early localized groin infections treated at their institution with sartorius or rectus femoris muscle flaps between 1998 and 2002. All wounds were initially opened and drained. Wounds with necrotic tissue were treated with serial surgical debridements, with a vacuum-assisted closure device, or with wet-to-dry dressing changes. Two bypass grafts were excised and replaced in the presence of marked exposure or pseudoaneurysm. Small wounds were closed with a turnover sartorius flap and larger wounds were closed with either a muscle or musculocutaneous rectus femoris flap. Groin wounds healed in all patients without subsequent graft exposure, rupture, or pseudoaneurysm. Local wound therapy with staged debridement and muscle flaps is effective for most early localized graft infections.
Detection of mycoplasma hyopneumoniae and porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome in clinical samples by polymerase chain reaction

The aim of this study was detect Swine Enzootic Pneumonia (SEP) and Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS) from clinical affected lung samples with PCR technique. In this technique three primers set used for M. hyopneumonieae detection were Cai (Forward: GAG CCT TCA AGC TIC ACC AAG A: Reverse: TGT GTT AGT GAC TTT TGC CAC C), Baumeister (Forward: TAG AAA TGA CTG GCA GAC AA: Reverse: GAG GCT TGA TTT TGG AGT C) and Caron (Forward: GAC CCG ATG AAA CCT ATT AAA ATA GAC: Reverse; GAA GCG AAA TTA AAT ATT TTT AAT TCG ATA CTG). For the detection of PRRS virus the primer sets used Oleksievicz (Forward: GAA CCT GCC CAI CAC G: Reverse: TAC CCC TAA TTG AAT AGG GGA) amd Suarez )Forward: GGG AAT GGC CAG CCA GTC AAT CAA CTG T: Reverse: TGT AGA AGT CAC GCG AAT CAG GCG CAC T). Nine pigs aged betwee 6-10 weeks were collected from farms in Selangor, Malaysia. One healthy pig and 8 other pigs with clinical signs of respiratory distress problem were sacrificed and lung bronchoalveolar lavage samples were obtained. Healthy pigs were selected as negative control while samples were harvested from 4 pigs with suspected SEP and 4 with respiratory problems for M. hyoneumoniae and PRRS virus detection. Base on the result, the Caronand Caiprimer sets were able to detect SEP from the affected lungs. For PRRS virus, RNA was extracted using easy-BLUE™ Total RNA Extraction Kit and converted it to cDNA with Maxime RT PreMix Kit. The oleksiewicz primer set was ideally suited for the detection of PRRS virus.
TRPC1 Channels Are Critical for Hypertrophic Signaling in the Heart

Rationale: Cardiac muscle adapts to increase workload by altering cardiomyocyte size and function resulting in cardiac hypertrophy. G protein–coupled receptor signaling is known to govern the hypertrophic response through the regulation of ion channel activity and downstream signaling in failing cardiomyocytes. Objective: Transient receptor potential canonical (TRPC) channels are G protein–coupled receptor operated channels previously implicated in cardiac hypertrophy. Our objective of this study is to better understand how TRPC channels influence cardiomyocyte calcium signaling. Methods and Results: Here, we used whole cell patch clamp of adult cardiomyocytes to show upregulation of a nonselective cation current reminiscent of TRPC channels subjected to pressure overload. This TRPC current corresponds to the increased TRPC channel expression noted in hearts of mice subjected to pressure overload. Importantly, we show that mice lacking TRPC1 channels are missing this putative TRPC current. Moreover, Trpc1−/− mice fail to manifest evidence of maladaptive cardiac hypertrophy and maintain preserved cardiac function when subjected to hemodynamic stress and neurohormonal excess. In addition, we provide a mechanistic basis for the protection conferred to Trpc1−/− mice as mechanosensitive signaling through calcineurin/NFAT, mTOR and Akt is altered in Trpc1−/− mice. Conclusions: From these studies, we suggest that TRPC1 channels are critical for the adaptation to biomechanical stress and TRPC dysregulation leads to maladaptive cardiac hypertrophy and failure.
Feeding point determination regarding hand effect of PIFA for mobile RFID band

In this paper, we considered variations of the antenna characteristic about PIFA for mobile RFID Band when we held the mobile phone. So we studied antenna characteristic by feeding point variation of antenna. After all, we determined that antenna gets different effects after compared antenna characteristic about hand effect of each feeding point and studied the results.
Array of subarrays using adaptive element patterns

This paper explores the use of subarrays as array elements. Benefits of such a concept include improved gain in any direction without significantly increasing the overall size of the array and enhanced pattern control. The architecture for an array of subarrays will be discussed via a systems approach. Individual system designs are explored in further details and proof of principle is illustrated through a manufactured examples.
The effect of high doses of calcium-channel blockers on survival in primary pulmonary hypertension.

BACKGROUND Primary pulmonary hypertension is a progressive, fatal disease of unknown cause. Vasodilator drugs have been used as a treatment, but their efficacy is uncertain. METHODS We treated 64 patients with primary pulmonary hypertension with high doses of calcium-channel blockers. Patients who responded to treatment (defined as those whose pulmonary-artery pressure and pulmonary vascular resistance immediately fell by more than 20 percent after challenge) were treated for up to five years. Their survival was compared with that of the patients who did not respond and with patients enrolled in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Registry on Primary Pulmonary Hypertension. Warfarin was given to 55 percent of the patients as concurrent therapy, on the basis of a lung scan showing nonuniformity of pulmonary blood flow (47 percent of patients who responded and 57 percent of those who did not respond). RESULTS Seventeen patients (26 percent) responded to treatment, as indicated by a 39 percent fall in pulmonary-artery pressure and a 53 percent fall in the pulmonary-vascular-resistance index (P less than 0.001). Nifedipine (mean [+/- SD] daily dose, 172 +/- 41 mg) was given to 13 patients, and diltiazem (mean daily dose, 720 +/- 208 mg) was given to 4 patients. After five years, 94 percent of the patients who responded (16 of 17) were alive, as compared with 55 percent of the patients who did not respond (26 of 47, P = 0.003). The survival of the patients who responded was also significantly better than that of the NIH registry cohort (P = 0.002) and patients from the NIH registry who were treated at the University of Illinois (P = 0.001). The use of warfarin was associated with improved survival (P = 0.025), particularly in the patients who did not respond. CONCLUSIONS This study suggests that high doses of calcium-channel blockers in patients with primary pulmonary hypertension who respond with reductions in pulmonary-artery pressure and pulmonary vascular resistance may improve survival over a five-year period.
The measurement of heat loss from the rat's tail.

A simple method is described for measuring variation in the rate of heat loss from the tail of unanaesthetized rats with Hatfield-Turner heat flow discs. The method was tested by giving l-isoprenaline to adult rats acclimated to 20 or 3° C. The thermogenic response to this drug at an ambient temperature of 20° C. was increased four-fold by cold-acclimation. At 20° C. both the ‘resting’ and maximum rates of heat loss from the tail were greater in the 3° C. acclimated rats. The rate of heat loss from the tail increased abruptly to its maximum when the colon temperature reached a critical level of about 39·2° C. This response to l-isoprenaline was not part of a general vaso-dilatation diie to the drug.
A Web-based Data Cube Visualization Ecosystem Architecture

What would the world be like if anyone with an Internet connection could easily use any interactive visualization technique to explore and present any publicly available data sets? Education would be revolutionized, policy making could be mostly data-driven, journalists could present facts to their audiences directly, and the general public could incorporate visualization into their daily decision making processes. This doctoral thesis explores how this goal can be accomplished by harnessing the power of mass-collaboration, the Semantic Web, and modern Web graphics technology.