Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
EFFECTS OF 'EDTA' ON THE MEMBRANE POTENTIAL AND TENSION OF VENTRICULAR MUSCLE OF THE RABBIT.

1. The effects of EDTA on the transmembrane potentials and mechanical events of the ventricular muscle of rabbits were studied under different ionic conditions.2. EDTA (5×10-3M) caused a relaxation and complete disappearance of the contraction in spite of the appearance of slight depolarization of the membrane, and marked prolongation in duration of the action potential. An increase of the latent period and a rise in threshold were also noticed before automaticity of the muscle occurred.3. After reintroducing of normal Tyrode solution, small oscillation appeared on the plateau and developed to a full repolarization of the membrane, when exceeded a critical value. The potential, soon returning up to the plateau from the resting potential level, shifted between these two stable states spontaneously and repeatedly.4. When EDTA was added to and NaCl was depleted from the solution, the level of plateau lowered and the duration rather shortened despite the action of EDTA. The lowering of spike height was continuous but the plateau potential stayed for a while at a level about-17mV and later diminished. Under these conditions the action potential appeared often divided into two components, spike and plateau.5. When EDTA was added and KCl was depleted from the solution, the prolongation of plateau was more remarkable than when EDTA alone applied. But the prolongation was canceled and rather a shortening of the plateau appeared when Na+ was lack in the solution. Oscillation of increasing amplitude was also observed toward the end of plateau when the KCl-lack EDTA solution was replaced by normal one.6. EDTA-added NaCl-excess Tyrode caused first an increase in height of both the spike and plateau and then a decrease probably due to the hypertonicity of solution. EDTA-added KCl-excess Tyrode, on the other hand, produced a decrease of the spike and later the plateau.7. From these results it is assumed that the transmembrane action potential of the cardiac muscle has at least two components, spike and plateau, each of which relates principally but differently to Na+ ions. The plateau potential was further estimated to have some relation with Ca++-chelating action on the membrane of the contractile elements of the muscle during the tension development.
Coordination of MMC converter protection and DC line protection in DC grids

This paper studies the coordination of MMC converter protection and DC line protection in DC transmission networks. To quickly isolate a DC line fault, hybrid DC circuit breaker is connected at each end of every DC transmission line. DC line protection based on measuring derivative of DC voltage is employed to timely trip faulted DC line only. The goal of protection coordination is to prevent blocking of MMC converter which may happen at high DC current just before DCCB tripping. The current limiting inductors at each DCCB are designed to ensure that DC current stays below the MMC blocking threshold, and their values are 0.5H-0.7H. 3-level cascaded control is employed at MMC converters to improve DC voltage stability of the grid. EMTP simulations are provided to verify theoretical analysis.
Reasons for rehospitalization in patients with spinal cord injury: 5 years' experience

The aim of this study was to determine the causes of rehospitalization in patients with spinal cord injury (SCI) treated in Istanbul Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Centre and to compare the data with previous studies. Patients who were rehospitalized after an initial phase of rehabilitation between 1 January 1996 and 31 December 2001 were enrolled into the study. SCI patients aged 17 years or over at the time of injury were included. This retrospective study was designed using our medical records. In 5 years, 733 SCI patients were treated and 56 of them experienced rehospitalization. We examined the demographic and injury characteristics of rehospitalized patients with SCI. The SPSS computer programme was used for statistical analysis. We found that the rate of rehospitalization was 7.6%, the length of stay (LOS) was 72.21 days and the average age was 34.25 years. The reasons for rehospitalization were, in descending order, spasticity 25%, additional rehabilitation 21.4%, pressure sores 17.9%, urinary infection 16.1%, spinal surgery 8.9%, urinary system surgery 5.4% and pain 5.4%. Statistical significance was found between mean age and causes. The patients who were rehospitalized because of spinal surgery had a lower mean age than those rehospitalized because of pain (P=0.04, F=2.4). The most frequent reasons for rehospitalization of patients over 25 years old were spasticity and pressure sores. In conclusion, SCI patients' LOS was longer than found in previous studies because of a lack of efficient home rehabilitation. The most frequent cause of rehospitalization was spasticity, because of uncontrolled medical therapy. The study demonstrates how education of the patients and their families is important, and that home-based rehabilitation services must be established and supported by government.
The Ubiquitous-Eco-City of Songdo: An Urban Systems Perspective on South Korea's Green City Approach

Since the 1980s, within the broader context of studies on smart cities, there has been a growing body of academic research on networked cities and “computable cities” by authors including Manuel Castells (Castells, 1989; Castells & Cardoso, 2005), William Mitchell (1995), Michael Batty (2005, 2013), and Rob Kitchin (2011). Over the last decade, governments in Asia have displayed an appetite and commitment to construct large scale city developments from scratch—one of the most infamous being the smart entrepreneurial city of Songdo, South Korea. Using Songdo as a case study, this paper will examine, from an urban systems perspective, some of the challenges of using a green-city model led by networked technology. More specifically, this study intends to add to the growing body of smart city literature by using an external global event—the global financial crisis in 2008—to reveal what is missing from the smart city narrative in Songdo. The paper will use the definition of an urban system and internal subsystems by Bertuglia et al. (1987) and Bertuglia, Clarke and Wilson (1994) to reveal the sensitivity and resilience of a predetermined smart city narrative. For instance, what happens if the vision moves from the originally intended international-orientated population towards remarketing the city to attract a domestic middle-class population. The lens of the financial crisis in 2008 revealed that the inherent inflexibility of a closed-system approach in Songdo was not sufficiently resilient to external shocks. The shift towards a domestic middle-class population revealed the inequality in accessing the city services in a system designed with formalized and rigid inputs and outputs. By focusing predominantly on technology, the social dimensions of the city were not part of Songdo’s smart city vocabulary. Therefore, in adopting a technologically deterministic approach (Mullins & Shwayri, 2016) to achieving efficiency and combating environmental issues, Songdo’s green city model was found insufficient in its ability to cope with the complexity and dissonance that occurs in relation to “glocal” challenges facing cities today.
Therapeutische Anwendung von L-Arginin

Zusammenfassung Eine gezielte diätetische Zufuhr von L-Arginin ist bei Arteriosklerose und anderen Herz-Kreislauf-Erkrankungen angezeigt. Die Aminosäure zeichnet sich durch hohe Wirksamkeit und gute Verträglichkeit aus und kann eine medikamentöse Therapie ideal ergänzen.
Developmental Neuropathology and Outcome of Perinatal Brain Damage and the Brain Microvascuar System

The cerebral cortex microvascular system of normal (unaltered) brains is described and compared with that of altered ones by perinatal brain damage. The brain’ microvascular system evolves from the pial capillary plexus an important meningeal compartment poorly studied. A pial capillary anastomotic plexus already cover the cortex in 6-week-old embryos, although its vascularization will not start until the eight-week. This plexus expands covering cortex entire surface throughout life. The cortex has two basic intracerebral microvascular compartments: an extrinsic one represented by the perforating vessels and an intrinsic one represented by the anastomotic capillary plexus established among contiguous perforators. Throughout the developing and the adult cortex, the perforating vessels are separated from each other by a distance raging from 400 to 600 micrometers. The equidistant distance among perforators is considered to represent a biological constant necessary for the functional activity of gray matter neurons. All perforating vessels are within the Virchow-Robin Compartment and hence extrinsic to the nervous tissue. This compartment remains open to the meningeal interstitium and serves as the cortex sole drainage system (mammals’ brain lacks a lymphatic system). The cortex’ intrinsic microvascular compartment is represented by the anastomotic capillary plexus established between contiguous perforators. The neurons, glial cells, fibers terminals and synaptic profiles within the intrinsic microvascular compartment represent the functional center of each cortical region. The interexchange of information among these elements determines the blood flow through each region in response to its neurons functional demands. Each cortical region may function independently or in combination with proximal as well as distant regions functionally interconnected with it. There are more perforating vessels and intrinsic capillaries in the gray than in the white matter, which explains their different neuronal activities and different vulnerabilities to perinatal brain damage. In hemorrhagic and/or ischemic brain lesions, damaged intrinsic capillaries are replaced by post-inflammatory ones, which lack their functional efficiency. In any reappeared cortical lesion, the local neurons, intrinsic neuropil and vascularitywill are transformed. Local neuronal alterations could affect the functional activity of proximal and distant regions interconnected with them and eventually the whole brain. This ongoing mechanism could play a role in the pathogenesis of neurological sequelae secondary to perinatal brain damage.
Experience of aging in patients with rheumatic disease: A comparison with the general population

Objectives: Self-perceptions of aging have been shown to predict mental and physical health and even longevity. This study examined the aging perceptions of patients with rheumatic disease and compared them with the general Dutch population. Methods: Consecutive patients visiting a rheumatology clinic completed the Personal Experience of Aging Scale (PEAS) subscales: physical decline, social loss, continuous growth, and two sentence stems from the SELE instrument (What I like/do not like about getting older …) as qualitative measures of the subjective experience of aging. A representative sample from the general Dutch population between 40 and 85 years was used as a comparison group. Participants included in this study were 208 patients with a rheumatic disease and 975 persons from the Dutch Aging Survey (DAS). Results: Both quantitative and qualitative data showed that patients perceived aging more strongly as physical decline. These negative experiences did not extend to social and psychological domains of aging. Age-group comparisons revealed that patients in middle adulthood experienced physical aging similar to older people without a rheumatic disease. Conclusion: The negative experience of aging in patients is limited to the physical domain and does not extend to other domains of life. The negative experience of physical aging even in middle-aged groups warrants further studies on its effects on mental and physical health outcomes and health behavior in patients with rheumatic disease.
400 Gbit/s frequency-division-multiplexed and polarization-multiplexed 256 QAM-OFDM transmission over 400 km with a spectral efficiency of 14 bit/s/Hz

We demonstrate a 400-Gbit/s frequency-division-multiplexed and polarization-multiplexed OFDM transmission over 400 km (5×80 km SSMF) with 256 QAM subcarrier modulation using an optical PLL. A record spectral efficiency of 14 bit/s/Hz was successfully achieved.
Development of a portable setup suitable for in vivo measurement of the dielectric properties of biological tissues

In the present paper, a preliminary study for the development of a portable setup suitable for in vivo measurements of tissue dielectric properties is presented. The setup consists of a hand-held spectrum analyzer, equipped with a tracking generator to operate as a vector network analyzer, and an in-house software for the post-processing of measured parameters. The proposed setup was optimized to operate in a broad frequency band (from 500 MHz to 3 GHz), minimizing the measurement uncertainty. The reliability of the setup was assessed through a comparative study with a commercial system, measuring the dielectric properties of reference liquids and ex vivo biological tissue samples.
SlARF4, an Auxin Response Factor Involved in the Control of Sugar Metabolism during Tomato Fruit Development1[C][W]

Tomato fruit development is subject to connections between auxin signaling, chloroplastic activity, and sugar metabolism. Successful completion of fruit developmental programs depends on the interplay between multiple phytohormones. However, besides ethylene, the impact of other hormones on fruit quality traits remains elusive. A previous study has shown that down-regulation of SlARF4, a member of the tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) auxin response factor (ARF) gene family, results in a dark-green fruit phenotype with increased chloroplasts (Jones et al., 2002). This study further examines the role of this auxin transcriptional regulator during tomato fruit development at the level of transcripts, enzyme activities, and metabolites. It is noteworthy that the dark-green phenotype of antisense SlARF4-suppressed lines is restricted to fruit, suggesting that SlARF4 controls chlorophyll accumulation specifically in this organ. The SlARF4 underexpressing lines accumulate more starch at early stages of fruit development and display enhanced chlorophyll content and photochemical efficiency, which is consistent with the idea that fruit photosynthetic activity accounts for the elevated starch levels. SlARF4 expression is high in pericarp tissues of immature fruit and then undergoes a dramatic decline at the onset of ripening concomitant with the increase in sugar content. The higher starch content in developing fruits of SlARF4 down-regulated lines correlates with the up-regulation of genes and enzyme activities involved in starch biosynthesis, suggesting their negative regulation by SlARF4. Altogether, the data uncover the involvement of ARFs in the control of sugar content, an essential feature of fruit quality, and provide insight into the link between auxin signaling, chloroplastic activity, and sugar metabolism in developing fruit.
Increased risk of colorectal polyps in patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease undergoing liver transplant evaluation.

BACKGROUND Screening colonoscopy is a standard part of the liver transplant (LT) evaluation process. We aimed to evaluate the yield of screening colonoscopy and determine whether non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) was associated with an increased risk of colorectal neoplasia. METHODS We retrospectively assessed all patients who completed LT evaluation at our center between 1/2008-12/2012. Patients <50 years old and those without records of screening colonoscopy, or with greater than average colon cancer risk were excluded. RESULTS A total of 1,102 patients were evaluated, 591 met inclusion criteria and were analyzed. The mean age was 60 years, 67% were male, 12% had NAFLD and 88% had other forms of chronic liver disease. Overall, 42% of patients had a polyp found on colonoscopy: 23% with adenomas, 14% with hyperplastic polyps and with 1% inflammatory polyps. In the final multivariable model controlling for age, NAFLD [odds ratio (OR) 2.41, P=0.001] and a history of significant alcohol use (OR 1.69, P=0.004) were predictive of finding a polyp on colonoscopy. In addition, NAFLD (OR 1.95, P=0.02), significant alcohol use (OR 1.70, P=0.01) and CTP class C (OR 0.57, P=0.02) were associated with adenoma, controlling for age. CONCLUSIONS Screening colonoscopy in patients awaiting LT yields a high rate of polyp (43%) and adenoma (22%) detection, perhaps preventing the accelerated progression to carcinoma that can occur in immunosuppressed post-LT patients. Patients with NAFLD may be at a ~2 fold higher risk of adenomas and should be carefully evaluated prior to LT.
Evaluation of Brucella abortus Phosphoglucomutase (pgm) Mutant as a New Live Rough-Phenotype Vaccine

ABSTRACT Brucella abortus S19 is the vaccine most frequently used against bovine brucellosis. Although it induces good protection levels, it cannot be administered to pregnant cattle, revaccination is not advised due to interference in the discrimination between infected and vaccinated animals during immune-screening procedures, and the vaccine is virulent for humans. Due to these reasons, there is a continuous search for new bovine vaccine candidates that may confer protection levels comparable to those conferred by S19 but without its disadvantages. A previous study characterized the phenotype associated with the phosphoglucomutase (pgm) gene disruption in Brucella abortus S2308, as well as the possible role for the smooth lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in virulence and intracellular multiplication in HeLa cells (J. E. Ugalde, C. Czibener, M. F. Feldman, and R. A. Ugalde, Infect. Immun. 68:5716-5723, 2000). In this report, we analyze the protection, proliferative response, and cytokine production induced in BALB/c mice by a Δpgm deletion strain. We show that this strain synthesizes O antigen with a size of approximately 45 kDa but is rough. This is due to the fact that the Δpgm strain is unable to assemble the O side chain in the complete LPS. Vaccination with the Δpgm strain induced protection levels comparable to those induced by S19 and generated a proliferative splenocyte response and a cytokine profile typical of a Th1 response. On the other hand, we were unable to detect a specific anti-O-antigen antibody response by using the fluorescence polarization assay. In view of these results, the possibility that the Δpgm mutant could be used as a vaccination strain is discussed.
A Study on the Effect of Native Sago Starch on the Mechanical Properties of Modified Mango Jam

Starches have been widely used as thickening agents in food industry. In this work, the use of sago starch as a thickening agent has been investigated, testing its rheological (steady state shear and dynamic oscillatory shear) and textural properties. The rheological characteristics of the modified mango jams were studied in three concentrations (2%, 6%, and 10%) at the temperature range of 5 oC to 45 oC. Modified mango jams containing sago starch behaved as a non-Newtonian pseudoplastic fluid with yield stress. Three models (Power Law, Herschel-Bulkley, and Mizrahi-Berk) were used to evaluate the shear rate-shear stress data. The rheograms were best fitted in the Herschel-Bulkley model with high regression coefficient, R 2 > 0.9980. The apparent viscosity increased with sago starch concentration but decreased with temperature. As for the dynamic oscillatory shear, results revealed that the magnitude of storage modulus (G') were higher than loss modulus (G") in the frequency window studied (1-100 Hz). Sago starch concentration affected the viscoelastic characteristics of the samples, such that the viscoelastic characteristics ranged from fluid-like to weak gel as sago starch concentration increased. Modified mango jam texture was also affected by the concentration of sago starch.
Are Macro-Forecasters Essentially The Same? An Analysis of Disagreement, Accuracy and Efficiency

We investigate whether there are systematic differences between forecasters in terms of their levels of disagreement and the accuracy of their forecasts, and whether these differences are related to whether or not a forecaster efficiently uses their available information. We find that forecasters are not interchangeable. At any point in time, the level of disagreement between forecasters is more likely to be due to a given set of forecasters, as opposed to any randomly-selected set of forecasters. In terms of forecast accuracy, we also find persistence, in that forecasters who are more (less) accurate in one period tend to be more (less) accurate in a subsequent period. Finally, we reject efficiency for around half of all forecasters at short horizons (depending on the variable in question), and ? find that efficient forecasters tend to be more accurate and less contrarian. Our results do not support the notion that contrarian forecasts stand apart by virtue of having superior information - knowing something that others do not.
Connective Tissue Abnormalities in Diabetes Mellitus

cellular matrix[l,2]. However, interstitial connective tissues such as the skeleton, joints and periarticular structures are also affected, although these complications have received little attention because they are less disabling. The rheumatological aspects have been previously reviewed[3,4] but clearer recognition of diabetic osteoporosis, the 'pseudo-scleroderma' of juvenile diabetes and the association with Dupuytren's disease, has stimulated investigation of the mechanisms underlying these connective tissue lesions. A wide range of syndromes are associated with diabetes (Table 1) and these fall largely into two groups: first, those characterised by reduced bone density (generalised or localised) and, second, those involving inappropriate deposition of connective tissue.
Different Laborer's Stock of Education Levels and the Economic Growth: A Granger Causal Analysis of China from 1981 to 2006

This paper uses co-integration analysis and Granger causal relation test to empirical study the relation between different laborer's stock of education level (primary, secondary, college, and graduate) and economic growth of China from 1981 to 2006. The results indicate that the dynamic equilibrium relation only exists between laborer's stock of secondary and college educated and economic growth in China. Meanwhile the Granger causal is only significant from laborer's stock of secondary education to economic growth.
RDBMS as an Efficient Tool to Mine Cliques on Complex Networks

Complex networks are intrinsically present in a wide range of applications. Real world networks have several unique properties, such as, sparsity, node degree distribution, which follow a power law and a large amount of triangles that further form larger cliques. Triangles and cluster coefficient, which are usually used to find groups, are not always enough to distinguish a different node neighborhood topology. By using cliques of sizes 4 and 5, it is possible to study how triangles become involved to form large cliques. To retrieve these cliques called k4 and k5 a novel technique called ``FCR - Fast Clique Retrieval'' has been developed, taking advantage of the data management and optimization techniques of a relational database management system and SQL to query cliques of sizes 4 and 5. This paper demonstrates that cliques (3, 4 and 5) follow interesting power laws that allow identifying nodes with suspicious behaviors. It also presents an extension of the cluster coefficient formula, which may become a valuable equation to identify nodes that most influence the network first eigenvalue.