Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Histamine Release during Morphine and Fentanyl Anesthesia

High doses of morphine produce peripheral vasodilation and frequently significant hypotension. These effects are thought to be due, in part, to the release of histamine. One putative advantage of high-dose fentanyl anesthesia is its relatively small effect on peripheral vascular resistance. In a randomized study, the authors examined the possibility that the hemodynamic differences between morphine and fentanyl might be attributable to histamine release. Fifteen patients were studied prior to coronary artery bypass surgery. Subjects received an infusion of morphine (1 mg·kg−1, iv at 100 Amg-·kg−1·min−1 [n – 8]) or fentanyl (50 μg·kg−1 at 5 μg·kg−1·min−1 [n = 7]). Patients in the morphine group had an average 750 per cent peak increase in plasma histamine accompanied by a significant decrease in mean arterial pressure (-27 mmHg) and systemic vascular resistance (-520 dyne·s·cm−1). The greatest decrease in systemic vascular resistance occurred in those patients with the highest levels of plasma histamine (r = −0.81). Patients in the fentanyl group had no change in plasma histamine and no decrease in arterial pressure or systemic vascular resistance. Cardiac output and heart rate were comparable between the two groups. Differences in the release of histamine account for most, if not all, of the different effects of morphine and fentanyl on the peripheral vasculature.
Traffic signals on endothelium for lymphocyte recirculation and leukocyte emigration.

The circulatory and migratory properties of white blood cells have evolved to allow efficient surveillance of tissues for infectious pathogens and rapid accu­ mulation at sites of injury and infection. Lymphocytes continually patrol the body for foreign antigen by recirculating from blood, through tissue, into lymph, and back to blood. Lymphocytes acquire a predilection, based on the environment in which they first encounter foreign antigen, to home to or recirculate through that same environment (39, 40). Granulocytes and mono­ cytes cannot recirculate, but emigrate from the bloodstream in response to molecular changes on the surface of blood vessels that signal injury or infec­ tion. Lymphocytes can similarly accumulate in response to inflammatory stim­ uli. The nature of the inflammatory stimulus determines whether lymphocytes. monocytes, neutrophils, or eosinophils predominate, and thus exercises spec­ ificity in the molecular signals or "area codes" that are displayed on endothe­ lium and control traffic of particular leukocyte classes. Recent findings show that the "traffic signals" for lymphocyte recirculation and for neutrophil and monocyte localization in inflammation are strikingly similar at the molecular level. These traffic signal or area code molecules are
Enhanced kinetic extraction of parvovirus B19 structural proteins.

Recombinant structural proteins (VP1 and VP2) of the human parvovirus B19 have been expressed simultaneously using the baculovirus expression system to form virus-like particles (VLPs) that have potential use as vaccines. In this study, we report optimization of extraction conditions to recover these VLPs from cell paste. Under hypotonic conditions with neutral pH these VLPs were poorly extracted (up to 3% extraction). Addition of reducing agents, detergents, salts, and sonication did not improve the extractability. While screening for conditions to improve the extractability of the VLPs, we discovered that a combination of higher pH and elevated processing temperature significantly increased the extraction. Whereas increasing pH alone increased extractability from 3% to 6% (pH increased from 8.0 to 9.5), the effect of elevated temperature was much more substantial. At 50 degrees C, we observed the extraction to be more than fivefold higher than that at room temperature (up to 25% extracted at pH 9.0). The kinetics of extraction at elevated temperatures showed a rapid initial rate of extraction (on the order of minutes) followed by a plateau. In addition, we compared the extraction of VP1 expressed alone. VP1 expressed alone is incapable of forming VLPs. We observed that non-VLP VP1 was easily extractable (up to 60% extracted) under conditions in which the VP1 + VP2 VLPs were not extractable. From these studies we conclude that parvovirus B19 structural proteins expressed to form VLPs have a hindered extractability as compared with non-VLP protein. This hindrance to extraction can be significantly reduced by processing at elevated temperatures and an increased pH, possibly due to the enhanced rates of solubilization and diffusion.
How effective leadership of knowledge management impacts organizational performance

The current article shows how transformational leadership influences knowledge management to improve organizational performance through better use of a firm’s internal resources. Transformational leaders not only directly impact knowledge management, they also foster more effective strategy implementation and information technology use, which positively contribute to the effectiveness of knowledge management as a driver of organizational performance. This study contributes to the literature by exploring a framework upon which to continue developing a more comprehensive understanding of the relationships between transformational leadership, knowledge management, a firm’s internal resources, and organizational performance. Furthermore, the current article contributes to the practice of management by identifying ways in which managers can build a high-performance organization through leadership and knowledge management.
Effects of Nd:YAG laser irradiation on cultured human gingival fibroblasts

The Nd:YAG laser has been proposed to apply in minor soft tissue surgery, including various periodontal procedures. However, little information is available regarding the direct effect of Nd:YAG laser on gingival fibroblasts, which play an important role in the early healing processes of periodontal repair.
Ergonomic design interventions – a case study involving portable ladders

Portable ladders are one of the most ancient tools conceived by man. They remain ubiquitous and indispensable even today. It is interesting to note that there is little difference between the makeshift portable ladders used throughout history and some still used today. The design of portable ladders seems to have simply evolved, rather than been subject to formal design process, including ergonomic criteria. An analysis of 277 fatalities associated with ladders was conducted to describe the pattern of ladder fatalities and identify and assess ergonomic design controls. All ladder fatalities analysed were found to contain multiple human, equipment (ladder) and environmental causative factors. It is hypothesized that significant gains with regard to reducing future fatalities can be achieved by applying ergonomic design principles to ladders to accommodate predictable and undesirable human behaviour. Without effective future change, the only prediction that can be made is that the pattern of ladder fatalities will simply continue.
Dopaminergic Contribution to the Regulation of Emotional Perception

Dopamine (DA) acts as a key neurotransmitter in the brain. Numerous studies have shown its regulatory role in motor and cognitive function. However, the impairment of emotional processes in neurologic and psychiatric pathologies involving the dopaminergic system (Parkinson disease, schizophrenia, autism, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Huntington disease, frontal lobe lesions), as well as the influence that administration of dopaminergic agonists/antagonists exert on the processing of emotion, suggest a role for DA in emotional processes. Moreover, emotional processes are dependent upon a variety of structures, the majority of which form part of the limbic system and are subject to DA innervation. In reviewing the literature, the amygdala emerges as a brain structure critical for emotional processing. It may also be implicated in deficits in emotional recognition found in two major disorders where DA's implication is clear: Parkinson disease and schizophrenia. In addition, the amygdala's response to emotional tasks is likely to be altered by the administration of both agonist and antagonist dopaminergic drugs. Experimental studies reinforce the idea of a dopaminergic contribution to emotional response, as suggested by biochemical, pharmacologic, and lesion experiments. Although the implication of the dopaminergic system in emotional processing appears to be clearly documented, the contribution of specific DA receptor subtypes, or of the DA cotransmitters cholecystokinin and neurotensin, or even glutamate, is, however, still unclear. Altogether, these observations suggest that DA has, undoubtedly, a direct and/or indirect role in the full emotional process.
Predictive values of intratumoral microvascular density (MVD) in the patients (pts) with advanced NSCLC and metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) receiving chemotherapy plus bevacizumab.

e14618 Background: The using of bevacizumab (VEGFR inhibitor) combined with chemotherapy represents a most noticeable recent advance in clinical oncology for significantly improving pts' survival in several tumor types. There is an unmet need for seeking biomarker(s) to predict the treatment response of bevacizumab and identify the pts sensitive to the treatment. Our study was designed to investigate the predictive value of intratumoral MVD in NSCLC and mCRC pts treated with bevacizumab. METHOD Sixteen NSCLC (stage IIIB/IV) and 15 mCRC pts who underwent chemotherapy (paclitaxel+carbo for NSCLC and IFL for CRC, respectively) combined with Bevacizumab were included into this study. The paraffin-embedded tumor samples (13/16 NSCLC and all CRC samples were collected from primary tumor) were sectioned and stained immunohistochemically for blood vessel markers (CD34 and CD31) to identify the characteristics of intratumoral vasculature. A computerized image analysis program was used to quantitatively calculate the intratumoral MVD (Yao et al., Clin Cancer Res 2007). Treatment response was evaluated by computed tomography scanning. RESULTS Two types of blood vessel, undifferentiated (CD31+/CD34-) and differentiated (CD34+), were identified. For the 16 NSCLC pts, a positive correlation was found between the largest tumor shrinkage percentage (evaluate in the primary tumors and metastases) and the total (CD31+) MVD as well as the undifferentiated (CD31+/CD34-) MVD, with Spearman's correlation coefficients equaled to 0.567 (p=0.022) and 0.576 (p=0.019), respectively. However, no significant correlation between tumor shrinkage and MVD was found in CRC pts, in which the treatment response was evaluated in metastatic lesions while the MVD was calculated in primary tumor. CONCLUSION This exploratory analysis suggests higher total vessel and undifferentiated vessel MVD appeared to be predictive of bevacizumab treatment advantage for advance NSCLC pts.Our study also indicated that the MVD of primary lesions did not correlate with the treatment response of metastatic lesions in CRC pts. Further studies are needed to verify the predictive role of MVD in the treatment of bevacizumab in NSCLC. [Table: see text].
A New Investor Sentiment Indicator Based on Return Decomposition

Abstract This paper extends the DSSW model to accommodate rational arbitrageurs, optimistic investors and pessimistic investors. We model the price impact by using daily data and create a new methodology to calculate the optimistic and the pessimistic. The new sentiment indicator has high correlation with the other traditional ones, and as a proxy variable of individual share or financial market on daily, it could distinguish the optimistic and the pessimistic. In the empirical research, we develop a time-series model and a cross-section model respectively to explore the explanatory power of highly frequent investor sentiment to idiosyncratic volatility and capital asset mispricing. The results show that the new sentiment indicator can explain 21.31% of idiosyncratic volatility to individual share on average, and it has a great explanation of 36% to capital asset mispricing.
Improved 20nm device yield and gate dielectric integrity with optimized aluminum metal fill process

Titanium-aluminum (TiAl) alloys are the industry standard source for work function tuning of High-K nMOS transistors in the gate-last process architecture. When aluminum is used as a metal gate fill material, the TiAl alloy also serves as a diffusion barrier against excess aluminum migration into the work function metal and dielectric layers. However, the formation of the TiAl alloy by annealing titanium and aluminum film stack, as commonly performed in gate-last integration, is highly non-uniform due to preferential alloying across grain boundaries. In this work, we describe a failure mechanism resulting from excess aluminum diffusion due to non-uniformity in the TiAl layer, and we describe a method for improving the uniformity of the TiAl barrier formation as a solution to the failure mode. Specifically, we report our observation of the dielectric breakdown in high-voltage transistors, and resolution of this breakdown through encapsulating a thin aluminum layer between two titanium layers, forcing the complete aluminum reaction which subsequently results in a very uniform TiAl layer. While completely resolving the aforementioned dielectric breakdown, we report additional benefits of TiAl barrier uniformity improvement to parametric limited yield.
How Cells Can Control Their Size by Pumping Ions

The ability of all cells to set and regulate their size is a fundamental aspect of cellular physiology. It has been known for sometime but not widely so, that size stability in animal cells is dependent upon the operation of the sodium pump, through the so-called pump-leak mechanism (Tosteson and Hoffman, 1960). Impermeant molecules in cells establish an unstable osmotic condition, the Donnan effect, which is counteracted by the operation of the sodium pump, creating an asymmetry in the distribution of Na+ and K+ staving off water inundation. In this paper, which is in part a tutorial, I show how to model quantitatively the ion and water fluxes in a cell that determine the cell volume and membrane potential. The movement of water and ions is constrained by both osmotic and charge balance, and is driven by ion and voltage gradients and active ion transport. Transforming these constraints and forces into a set of coupled differential equations allows us to model how the ion distributions, volume and voltage change with time. I introduce an analytical solution to these equations that clarifies the influence of ion conductances, pump rates and water permeability in this multidimensional system. I show that the number of impermeant ions (x) and their average charge have a powerful influence on the distribution of ions and voltage in a cell. Moreover, I demonstrate that in a cell where the operation of active ion transport eliminates an osmotic gradient, the size of the cell is directly proportional to x. In addition, I use graphics to reveal how the physico-chemical constraints and chemical forces interact with one another in apportioning ions inside the cell. The form of model used here is applicable to all membrane systems, including mitochondria and bacteria, and I show how pumps other than the sodium pump can be used to stabilize cells. Cell biologists may think of electrophysiology as the exclusive domain of neuroscience, however the electrical effects of ion fluxes need to become an intimate part of cell biology if we are to understand a fundamental process like cell size regulation.
Gustatory receptors in Lepidoptera: chemosensation and beyond

Lepidoptera is one of the most widespread insect orders and includes several agriculturally important insect species. Ecological success of the lepidopteran insects partly depends on their adaptive chemoreception tactics, which play an important role in the selection of hosts, egg‐laying sites and mates. Members of the G‐protein coupled receptor family, gustatory receptors (GRs), are an integral part of the Lepidoptera chemosensory machinery. They are expressed in chemosensory neurones and are known to detect different environmental stimuli. Here, we discuss various aspects of the lepidopteran GRs with an emphasis on their roles in different processes such as chemosensation, host selection and adaptation. Phylogenetic analyses have shown that the large diversity of GR genes may have been generated through gene duplication and positive selection events, which also show lineage‐ and tissue‐specific expression. Moreover, lepidopteran GR proteins are diverse and demonstrate broad ligand selectivity for several molecules including sugars, deterrents, salts and CO2. Binding of ligands to GRs generates multiple downstream changes at the cellular level, which are followed by changes in behaviour. GRs play a critical role in chemosensation and influence the insect's behaviour. Overall, insect GRs are potential targets in the design of effective insect control strategies.
Identification of Cellular Proteome Modifications in Response to West Nile Virus Infection*

Flaviviruses are positive-stranded RNA viruses that are a public health problem because of their widespread distribution and their ability to cause a variety of diseases in humans. West Nile virus is a mosquito-borne member of this genus and is the etiologic agent of West Nile encephalitis. Clinical manifestations of West Nile virus infection are diverse, and their pathogenic mechanisms depend on complex virus-cell interactions. In the present work, we used proteomics technology to analyze early Vero cell response to West Nile infection. The differential proteomes were resolved 24 h postinfection using two-dimensional DIGE followed by mass spectrometry identification. Quantitative analysis (at least 2-fold quantitative alteration, p < 0.05) revealed 127 differentially expressed proteins with 68 up-regulated proteins and 59 down-regulated proteins of which 93 were successfully identified. The implication for mammalian cellular responses to this neurotropic flavivirus infection was analyzed and made possible more comprehensive characterization of the virus-host interactions involved in pathogenesis. The present study thus provides large scale protein-related information that should be useful for understanding how the host metabolism is modified by West Nile infection and for identifying new potential targets for antiviral therapy.
Bacterial vaginosis and HIV seroprevalence among female commercial sex workers in Chiang Mai, Thailand

ObjectiveTo investigate the relationship between HIV seropositivity and bacterial vaginosis (BV) in a population at high risk for sexual acquisition of HIV. DesignA cross-sectional study was conducted among 144 female commercial sex workers in Chiang Mai, Thailand. MethodsThe participants were tested for cervical gonorrhea and Chlamydia infection, syphilis, Trichomonas vaginitis, Candida vaginitis, BV, and HIV infection. BV was diagnosed by clinical criteria (pH>4.5, positive amine test, and presence of clue cells) and using Gram stains. ResultsThirty-three per cent of participants had BV, and 43% were HIV-positive. Using clinical criteria, the association of BV and HIV seropositivity was significant (odds ratio (OR), 2.7; 95% confidence interval (CD, 1.3–5.0]. Although the association between BV and HIV prevalence was not significant using Gram stains alone for diagnosis of BV, an association was found between abnormal vaginal flora and HIV (OR, 2.1; 95% Cl, 1.0–4.8). In multiple logistic regression analysis, adjusting for age, number of sexual encounters per week, current condom use, and currently having a sexually transmitted disease (STD), both BV and a history of an STD were independently associated with HIV seropositivity (adjusted OR for BV, 4.0 and 95% Cl, 1.7–9.4; adjusted OR for history of an STD, 6.9 and 95% Cl, 2.1–22.9). Conclusions: When diagnosed clinically, BV is independently associated with HIV seroprevalence. HIV infection may promote abnormal vaginal flora, or BV may increase susceptibility to sexual transmission of HIV. Alternatively, the association seen here may result from intervening variables; in this case BV may be a marker or a cofactor of HIV transmission.
Monovision Surgery in Myopic Presbyopes: Visual Function and Satisfaction

Purpose To describe our experience with monovision excimer laser correction in individuals with myopic presbyopia. Methods This prospective interventional case series was conducted in a private refractive surgery center on 40 patients with presbyopia aged 40 years and older, who were treated with monovision refractive surgery between 2010 and 2011. The dominant eye was corrected for distance vision and the nondominant eye was corrected for near vision, with anisometropia of ≥1.00 diopters (D). All patients underwent comprehensive objective and subjective visual assessments, including a questionnaire that was filled out preoperatively and at 6 and 12 months postoperatively. The primary outcomes were preoperative and postoperative refraction, binocular visual acuity, stereopsis, contrast sensitivity, glare, and questionnaire results. Results The 1-year follow-up was completed by 38 patients (95%). Preoperative and 1-year postoperative refraction of the distance eye spherical equivalent (SE), anisometropia SE, and uncorrected visual acuity were −4.05 ± 1.94 and −0.01 ± 0.22 D, 0.45 ± 0.50 and 1.73 ± 0.56 D, and 0.87 ± 0.2 and 0.09 ± 0.11 logMAR, respectively. Best-corrected visual acuity was unchanged. Both mean distance and near stereopsis decreased, from 52 to 142 seconds of arc and from 54 to 57 seconds of arc, respectively. Contrast sensitivity and glare decreased significantly. Patient satisfaction improved from 41.5 ± 30.4% to 85.2 ± 5.0% (range, 40 to 100%) at the 1-year follow-up. Conclusions Monovision excimer laser correction provides both effective and satisfactory results and should be considered as an option for individuals with myopic presbyopia suitable for, and interested in, refractive surgery.
Chimeras of the Integrin β Subunit Mid-Region Reveal Regions Required for Heterodimer Formation and for Activation

A central region of the β2 integrin subunit, RN (residues D300 to C459), was replaced by the equivalent sequences from β1 and β7 to give the chimeras β2RN1 and β2RN7. Whilst the former construct failed to form heterodimer at the cell surface with αL, the later of these could be expressed together with the αL subunit to form a variant LFA-1. Based on recent modelling work, the RN region consists of two parts, one is the C-terminal end of the putative A-domain (RB, residues D300 to A359), and the other the mid-region (BN, residues Y360 to C459). Chimeras exchanging the two component regions were made. Of the four resultant chimeras, only the β2RB1 chimera failed to support LFA-1 expression. Thus the β1 specific residues of this region affect the interaction with the αL subunit. Whereas the αLβ2RB7 LFA-1 variant is wildtype like with respect to ICAM-1 adhesion, the αLβ2BN1 and αLβ2BN7, as well as the αLβ2BN7, variants are more adhesive than the wildtype. These results suggest that an authentic β2 mid-region is, in part, required for maintaining the LFA-1 in a resting state.