Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
WHAT IS THE BEST ANIMAL MODEL FOR ACS?

Abstract Introduction: Current treatment of the abdominal compartment syndrome (ACS) is based on consensus definitions but several questions regarding fluid regime or critical level of intra-abdominal hypertension (IAH)) remain unsolved. It is questionable whether these issues can be addressed in prospective randomized trials in the near future. This review aimed to summarize current animal models and to outline requirements for the best model. Methods: PubMed® data base was searched for articles describing animal models of ACS. Results: 25 articles were found. ACS in animals has not been defined yet. Investigations varied considerably regarding the experimental design. Animals were rats, rabbits, dogs and pigs with a bodyweight from 200g to 70 kg. IAP increase varied from 20 to 50 mmHg. The time period of IAH ranged between 30 min and 24h. The time between the IAH insult and organ dysfunction varied between 15 min and 18h. Investigations demonstrated that IAH is able to induce loss of intravascular volume, organ hypoperfusion, ischemic organ damage and multiple organ failure within 4 to 6h. Conclusion: In contrast to IAH or pneumoperitoneum for surgical exposure, ACS in an animal may be stated if an artificially increased IAP leads to circulatory, respiratory and renal insufficiency. A next step in animal research would be the development of a “pathological” model in which haemorrhage or systemic inflammation together with resuscitation lead to abdominal fluid accumulation and increased intra-abdominal pressure.
Unresolved issues in the management of ulcers of the foot in diabetes

Management of diabetic foot ulcers presents a major clinical challenge. The response to treatment is often poor and the outcome disappointing, while the costs are high for both healthcare providers and the patient. In such circumstances, it is essential that management should be based on firm evidence and follow consensus. In the case of the diabetic foot, however, clinical practice can vary widely. It is for these reasons that the International Working Group on the Diabetic Foot has published guidelines for adoption worldwide. The Group has now also completed a series of non‐systematic and systematic reviews on the subjects of soft tissue infection, osteomyelitis, offloading and other interventions designed to promote ulcer healing. The current article collates the results of this work in order to demonstrate the extent and quality of the evidence which is available in these areas. In general, the available scientific evidence is thin, leaving many issues unresolved. Although the complex nature of diabetic foot disease presents particular difficulties in the design of robust clinical trials, and the absence of published evidence to support the use of an intervention does not always mean that the intervention is ineffective, there is a clear need for more research in the area. Evidence from sound clinical studies is urgently needed to guide consensus and to underpin clinical practice. It is only in this way that patients suffering with these frequently neglected complications of diabetes can be offered the best hope for a favourable outcome, at the least cost.
Variance Risk Premium in Individual Stocks: Aggregating Factor Variance Risk

The risk premium of stocks due to priced variance risk is summarized to two variables -- the stock-specific price of variance risk (the difference between realized and option-implied variance) and the quantity (i.e., how stock prices respond to their variance shocks) of variance risk. Empirically, stocks with a high negative price have higher future returns. However, this spread is significant only for stocks that also have a high negative quantity. The relationship holds after controlling for market variance risk and also for stocks without options traded, suggesting that the results are unlikely to be driven by the price pressure of informed trading.
Protective effect of L‐carnitine on testicular ischaemia–reperfusion injury in rats

Testicular torsion is a urological emergency referred to as ‘acute scrotum’, because inappropriate treatment can lead to male subfertility and infertility. A possible cause of testicular damage is the ischaemia–reperfusion (I/R) injury attributed to oxygen free radicals. L‐carnitine, a vitamin‐like antioxidant, plays a pivotal role in the maturation of spermatozoa within the reproductive tract. The aim of the present paper was to determine the protective effect of L‐carnitine on testicular I/R‐induced injury. Thirty‐two male rats were divided into 4 groups (n = 8). Testicular torsion was created by rotating the right testis 720° in a clockwise direction. Group 1: sham‐operated control; group 2: ischaemia; group 3: I/R; group 4: ischaemia–L‐carnitine treatment–reperfusion group. L‐carnitine (500 mg kg−1, intraperitoneally) was administered before 30 min of detorsion in Group 4. After torsion (5 h) and detorsion (5 h), bilateral orchidectomy was performed. The malondialdehyde (MDA) level was evaluated in testes. Histopathologically, Johnsen's spermatogenesis criteria and mean seminiferous tubule diameter (MSTD) measurements were used. Testicular MDA levels were higher in the torsion group compared to the sham‐control group (p < 0.05). Detorsion (reperfusion) caused a further increase in MDA levels (p < 0.05). Pretreatment with L‐carnitine prevented a further increase in MDA levels (p < 0.05). Histologically, torsion caused some separation among germinal cells in the seminiferous tubules, which became much more prominent in the I/R group but was attenuated with L‐carnitine pretreatment. In conclusion, L‐carnitine pretreatment may have a protective effect in experimental testicular torsion–detorsion model in rats by its well‐known antioxidant potential. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Economic evaluation of public-private mix for tuberculosis care and control, India. Part I. Socio-economic profile and costs among tuberculosis patients.

SETTING Bangalore City, India. OBJECTIVES To assess the socio-economic profile, health-seeking behaviour and costs related to tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis and treatment among patients treated under the Revised National TB Control Programme (RNTCP). DESIGN All 1106 new TB patients registered for treatment under the RNTCP in the second quarter of 2005 participated. Interviews at the beginning and at the end of treatment were conducted. A convenience sample of 32 patients treated outside the RNTCP also participated. RESULTS Among the TB patients, respectively 50% and 39% were from low and middle standard of living (SL) households, and 77% were from households with a per capita income of less than US$1 per day. The first health contact was with a private practitioner in the case of >70% of patients. Mean patient delay was low, at 21 days, but the mean health system delay was 52 days. The average cost incurred by patients before treatment in the RNTCP was US$145, and during treatment it was US$21. Costs as a proportion of annual household income per capita were 53% for people from low SL households and 41% for those from other households. Costs during treatment faced by patients treated outside the RNTCP averaged US$127. CONCLUSION Patients treated under the RNTCP through a public-private mix approach were predominantly poor. Many of them experienced considerable health expenditures before starting treatment. Additional efforts are required to reduce the delays and the number of health care providers consulted, and to ensure that patients are shifted to subsidised treatment within the RNTCP.
A CPW-Fed Compact UWB Microstrip Antenna

A novel coplanar waveguide (CPW)-fed compact ultrawideband (UWB) microstrip antenna is proposed for ultrawideband applications. The proposed antenna posseses a method to minimize the monopole antenna by loading of inverted L-strip over the conventional monopole patch antenna to lower the height of the antenna. The ground was vertically extended toward two sides of the single radiator. Therefore, the large space around the radiator that is usually wasted can be effectively saved. The antenna is practically fabricated and simulated. Measured results show a good agreement with simulated results. The prototype with overall size of $25 \times 25 \times 1.6\ {\hbox{mm}}^3$ achieves good impedance matching, constant gain, stable radiation patterns, and constant group delay over an operating bandwidth of 2.6-13.04 GHz (10.44 GHz).
A 10-bit low-power SAR ADC with a tunable series attenuation capacitor

A 10-bit successive approximation analog-to-digital converter (ADC), with offset correction circuitry and a tunable series attenuation capacitor is presented for implantable biosensor applications. The ADC is designed in a standard 0.13 ¿m CMOS process technology and can operate with supply voltages down to 0.6 V. The ADC uses MOSFETs that are designed to operate in the sub-threshold region of operation. The ADC achieved sample rates of up to 500 kS/s with all 1024 codes present and an INL and DNL of 0.1009LSB and 0.1429LSB respectively. A power dissipation of 20.9 pJ/cycle was measured, while operating at 100 kS/s, with a 0.6 V supply voltage and an INL and DNL of 0.2585LSB and 0.2862LSB respectively, with all codes present. With a 1.0 V VDD, a 320 kS/s signal achieved an INL and DNL of 0.1623LSB and 0.2858LSB, respectively, with all codes present. A series attenuation capacitor is used to reduce the size of the circuit. Since processing variations can change the value of this capacitor and degrade the ADC operation, it was designed to vary between 401.7 fF to 487.5 fF using five digital input bits. Without process variations, the optimal variable capacitor code was designed to be the middle code, ¿10000¿.
Reliability and validity of shoulder function outcome measures in people with a proximal humeral fracture

Abstract Purpose: Investigate test--retest reliability and validity of five shoulder outcome measures in people during their active rehabilitation after a shoulder fracture. Method: This prospective longitudinal study assessed shoulder function in 20 people (16 women, mean age 68.1 years) with surgical or conservative management at 6, 12 and 13 weeks post proximal humeral fracture using three patient-reported (Disabilities of Arm, Shoulder and Hand; Oxford Shoulder Score; Subjective Shoulder Value) and two clinician-administered (Constant Score; UCLA Shoulder score) outcome measures. Results: Content analysis categorised items into multiple domains of functioning for each outcome measure. Construct validity testing between measures found moderate to strong correlations (r = 0.43–0.92). Longitudinal validity (responsiveness), represented by correlations between change scores, was moderate to strong (r = 0.44–0.83). Although ICCs2,1 for test–retest reliability ranged from 0.75 to 0.93, Limits of Agreement between measurements were relatively wide (10–23% of available range of scores). Minimal clinically important difference estimates varied between anchor- and distribution-based methods. Conclusions: The five outcome measures assessing shoulder function provided values for reliability and validity that meet measurement requirements for use in groups of people after a proximal humeral fracture. However, the use of these outcome measures might be limited by low absolute agreement between measurements and their content covering multiple domains of functioning. Implications for Rehabilitation Linking the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) to the content of common shoulder function outcome measures showed that multiple domains of functioning are combined into a single score. This might not be preferred for measurement of the single construct of “shoulder function”. Currently available shoulder function outcome measures may not be sufficiently reliable to monitor change in an individual after a proximal humeral fracture during the rehabilitation phase.
How Effective is Design Abstraction in Thrust?: An Empirical Evaluation

High performance computing applications are far more difficult to write, therefore, practitioners expect a well-tuned software to last long and provide optimized performance even when the hardware is upgraded. It may also be necessary to write software using sufficient abstraction over the hardware so that it is capable of running on heterogeneous architecture. A good design abstraction paradigm strikes a balance between the abstraction and visibility over the hardware. This allows the programmer to write applications without having to understand the hardware nuances while exploiting the computing power optimally. In this paper we have analyzed the power of design abstraction of a popular design abstraction framework called Thrust both from ease of programming and performance perspectives. We have shown that while Thrust framework is good in describing an algorithm compared to the native CUDA or OpenMP version but it has quite a few design limitations. With respect to CUDA it does not provide any abstraction over the shared, texture or constant memory usage to the programmer. We have compared the performance of a Thrust application code in CUDA, OpenMP and the CPP backends with respect to the native versions (implementing exactly same algorithm), written for these backends and found that the current Thrust version performs poorly in most of the cases. While we conclude that the framework is not ready for writing applications that can exploit the optimal performance from the hardware, we also highlight the improvements necessary for the framework to make the performance comparable.
Recent Advances in Pathophysiology of Traumatic Brain Injury

Background: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) constitutes the primary reason for mortality and morbidity in persons worldwide below 45 years of age. 1.7 million Traumatic events occur yearly in the United States alone, considering for 50,000 deaths. In severe traumatic brain injury sufferers, a considerable achievement attained in treating short-term conse-quences; but till date, huge failures are occurring in researcher’s capability to render severe traumatic brain injury sufferers to an elevated degree of performing. Methods: Initial damage force results in Primary brain injury, causing tissue destruction and distortion in the early post-injury period. These secondary injuries from TBI cause changes in cell performance and dissemination of trauma via activi-ties like free-radical generation, depolarization, and formation of edema, excitotoxicity, and disruption of blood brain barrier, calcium homeostasis, and intracranial hematoma. The expectation for developing effect in TBI sufferers is the best knowledge of these activities and enhancement of remedies that restrict secondary brain damage. Results: The focal point of this study is on knowing the complex outburst of secondary impairments and studying the path-ophysiology of TBI which provides alternative treatment benefits. Conclusion: While injured persons demonstrate dissimilar levels of harm and every case is novel with specific recovery pro-files, this article strengthens the recent pathophysiological sight of TBI mainly attention on oxidative stress, excitotoxicity, cerebral oxygenation and cerebral blood flow (CBF), development of edema, and inflammatory activities. For initial research acknowledgment of these recurring factors could permit clarification of possible beneficial targets.
Molecular analysis of urease genes from a newly identified uncultured species of Helicobacter

"Gastrospirillum hominis" is an uncultured gastric spiral bacterium that has recently been shown by 16S rDNA sequence analysis to be a newly recognized species of Helicobacter that infects humans, and it has been provisionally designated "Helicobacter heilmannii. " We used PCR to directly amplify the urease structural genes of "H. heilmannii" from infected gastric tissue. DNA sequence analysis identified two open reading frames, ureA and ureB, which code for polypeptides with predicted molecular weights of 25,729 and 61,831, respectively. The urease subunit genes from "H. heilmannii" were cloned and expressed in Escherichia coli. Western blot (immunoblot) analysis showed that antiserum directed against the ureA and ureB gene products from H. pylori was cross-reactive with the corresponding polypeptides from "H. heilmannii. " Analysis of the derived amino acid sequences of "H. heilmannii" UreA and UreB demonstrated that "H. heilmannii" urease is more highly related to the urease from H. felis (found in the stomachs of cats and dogs) than to the urease from H. pylori. These data are consistent with 16S rDNA sequence analysis and suggest that "H. heilmannii" is phylogenetically most closely related to H. felis.
Studies on Interference Fit Between Armature and Rails in Railguns

There is an interference fit between the trailing arms of the monolithic C-shaped armature and the rails to provide good solid-on-solid contact during the early portion of a railgun launch. In this paper, the contact interference between the rail and armature in a railgun is calculated using a finite-element structural analysis code. The contact properties, including the contact pressure and contact area, are analyzed. It is found that a contact separation caused by the interference is inevitable in armatures with line-shaped contact interference. The reduction of the contact interference in an armature design cannot eliminate this kind of contact separation. A proper design of the armature structure can decrease the length of the separation effectively. A new design of the contact interference is proposed. Both the experiments and calculations show that the new design of the contact interference can effectively improve the performance of the armature.
Structure-Function Analysis of MurJ Reveals a Solvent-Exposed Cavity Containing Residues Essential for Peptidoglycan Biogenesis in Escherichia coli

ABSTRACT Gram-negative bacteria such as Escherichia coli build a peptidoglycan (PG) cell wall in their periplasm using the precursor known as lipid II. Lipid II is a large amphipathic molecule composed of undecaprenyl diphosphate and a disaccharide-pentapeptide that PG-synthesizing enzymes use to build the PG sacculus. During PG biosynthesis, lipid II is synthesized at the cytoplasmic face of the inner membrane and then flipped across the membrane. This translocation of lipid II must be assisted by flippases thought to shield the disaccharide-pentapeptide as it crosses the hydrophobic core of the membrane. The inner membrane protein MurJ is essential for PG biogenesis and homologous to known and putative flippases of the MOP (multidrug/oligo-saccharidyl-lipid/polysaccharide) exporter superfamily, which includes flippases that translocate undecaprenyl diphosphate-linked oligosaccharides across the cytoplasmic membranes of bacteria. Consequently, MurJ has been proposed to function as the lipid II flippase in E. coli. Here, we present a three-dimensional structural model of MurJ generated by the I-TASSER server that suggests that MurJ contains a solvent-exposed cavity within the plane of the membrane. Using in vivo topological studies, we demonstrate that MurJ has 14 transmembrane domains and validate features of the MurJ structural model, including the presence of a solvent-exposed cavity within its transmembrane region. Furthermore, we present functional studies demonstrating that specific charged residues localized in the central cavity are essential for function. Together, our studies support the structural homology of MurJ to MOP exporter proteins, suggesting that MurJ might function as an essential transporter in PG biosynthesis.
Investigation and Classification of Short-Circuit Failure Modes Based on Three-Dimensional Safe Operating Area for High-Power IGBT Modules

Insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) short-circuit failure modes have been under research for many years, successfully paving the way for device short-circuit ruggedness improvement. The aim of this paper is to classify and discuss recent contributions about IGBT short-circuit failure modes, in order to establish the current state of the art and trends in this area. First, the concept of 3-D safe operating area is proposed as the IGBT's operational boundary to divide the device short-circuit failure modes into short-circuit $V_{{\rm{DC}}}/ V_{{\rm{rated}}}\hbox{--} I_{{\rm{SC}}}$ SOA limiting and short-circuit endurance time limiting groups. Then, the discussion is centered on currently reported IGBT short-circuit failure modes in terms of their relationships with the device 3-D short-circuit safe operating area (3D-SCSOA) characteristics. In addition, further investigation on the interaction of 3D-SCSOA characteristics is implemented to motivate advanced contributions in future dependence research of device short-circuit failure modes on temperature. Consequently, a comprehensive and thoughtful review of where the development of short-circuit failure mode research works of IGBT stands and is heading is provided.
The clinical significance of positive blood cultures: a comprehensive analysis of 500 episodes of bacteremia and fungemia in adults. II. Clinical observations, with special reference to factors influencing prognosis.

Among 500 patients with bacteremia and fungemia, total mortality was 42%; about half of all deaths were attributable directly to infection. Mortality increased with age, but deaths unrelated to infection itself were responsible in part for this increase. Mortality was 2.6% among obstetric-gynecologic patients, 42% among medical patients, 49% among surgical patients, and 60% among transplant patients. The risk of death was especially high with enterococcal, facultative gram-negative, fungal, polymicrobial, or hospital-acquired sepsis; in the presence of shock, leukopenia, absolute granulocytopenia, or defined predisposing conditions (neoplasia, cirrhosis, and combinations of factors such as surgery and renal failure); and with a primary infected focus in the respiratory tract, the skin, a surgical wound, an abscess, or an unknown site. Body temperature was inversely related to mortality. Survival was increased by the use of appropriate antibiotics and, where applicable, additional therapeutic maneuvers (e.g., drainage). Multivariate analysis defined seven variables that independently influenced outcome: microorganism, blood pressure, body temperature, primary focus of infection, place of acquisition of infection, age, and predisposing factors. Although some adverse prognostic factors are not amenable to intervention, prevention of nosocomial bacteremia and fungemia and early reversal of hypotension may reduce the death rate from sepsis.