Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Smoking abstinence and depressive symptoms modulate the executive control system during emotional information processing

Smoking abstinence disrupts affective and cognitive processes. In this study, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to investigate the effects of smoking abstinence on emotional information processing. Smokers (n = 17) and non‐smokers (n = 18) underwent fMRI while performing an emotional distractor oddball task in which rare targets were presented following negative and neutral task‐irrelevant distractors. Smokers completed two sessions: once following 24‐hour abstinence and once while satiated. The abstinent versus satiated states were compared by evaluating responses to distractor images and to targets following each distractor valence within frontal executive and limbic brain regions. Regression analyses were done to investigate whether self‐reported negative affect influences brain response to images and targets. Exploratory regression analyses examined relations between baseline depressive symptoms and smoking state on brain function. Smoking state affected response to target detection in the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). During satiety, activation was greater in response to targets following negative versus neutral distractors; following abstinence, the reverse was observed. Withdrawal‐related negative affect was associated with right insula activation to negative images. Finally, depression symptoms were associated with abstinence‐induced hypoactive response to negative emotional distractors and task‐relevant targets following negative distractors in frontal brain regions. Neural processes related to novelty detection/attention in the right IFG may be disrupted by smoking abstinence and negative stimuli. Reactivity to emotional stimuli and the interfering effects on cognition are moderated by the magnitude of smoking state‐dependent negative affect and baseline depressive symptoms.
Growth of Callosal Terminal Arbors in Primary Visual Areas of the Cat

In kittens ranging in age between postnatal day (P) 5 and P150, callosal axons originating near the 17/18 border were anterogradely labelled with biocytin and reconstructed from serial sections. At the end of the first postnatal week most of the axons begin to invade the cortex near the 17/18 border with multiple branches; some axons already span the grey matter up to layer I. Branches tend to grow into the grey matter in loose bundles ≤l00 μm in diameter, separated by empty spaces of comparable width. In the following weeks additional branches are produced in the grey matter; this appears to blur the initial bundled distribution, although by the end of the first postnatal month the branches are distributed in discrete patches similar to the adult terminal columns. Although a few boutons (presumably synaptic boutons) are found in the white matter/subplate region at earlier ages, they appear in the grey matter from P12 onwards. Their number per axon increases with age, reaching adult values about the end of the first month. Subsequently the number of boutons continues to increase and remains above adult values at P50, P65 and P80; it then decreases, reaching adult levels by P150. During the first month boutons tend to be more numerous in the infragranular layers, but then the trend reverses in favour of the supragranular layers. In most cases, the distribution of boutons spares layer IV partially or completely. From the onset boutons are distributed in radial‘columns’whose diameter increases with age. They maintain selective laminar and columnar distributions through the period of rapid and exuberant increase. These distributions do not appear to be sharpened further by the reduction in the number of boutons to adult levels. On the whole, callosal terminal arbors differentiate through stages of exuberant, albeit progressively constrained, growth involving both progressive and regressive events. Comparisons with previous work suggest that visual activity might finely shape the arbor, from the onset of synaptogenesis onwards.
Medical malpractice reform and employer-sponsored health insurance premiums.

OBJECTIVE Tort reform may affect health insurance premiums both by reducing medical malpractice premiums and by reducing the extent of defensive medicine. The objective of this study is to estimate the effects of noneconomic damage caps on the premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance. DATA SOURCES/STUDY SETTING Employer premium data and plan/establishment characteristics were obtained from the 1999 through 2004 Kaiser/HRET Employer Health Insurance Surveys. Damage caps were obtained and dated based on state annotated codes, statutes, and judicial decisions. STUDY DESIGN Fixed effects regression models were run to estimate the effects of the size of inflation-adjusted damage caps on the weighted average single premiums. DATA COLLECTION/EXTRACTION METHODS State tort reform laws were identified using Westlaw, LEXIS, and statutory compilations. Legislative repeal and amendment of statutes and court decisions resulting in the overturning or repealing state statutes were also identified using LEXIS. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Using a variety of empirical specifications, there was no statistically significant evidence that noneconomic damage caps exerted any meaningful influence on the cost of employer-sponsored health insurance. CONCLUSIONS The findings suggest that tort reforms have not translated into insurance savings.
CS 224 n Assignment 4 : Machine Comprehension with Exploration on Attention Mechanism

This goal of this paper is to perform the prediction task on SQuAD dataset about reading comprehension. Given a pair of context paragraph and a question, we’ll output an answer. To do this, a model is built combining the idea of Bidirectional LSTM and attention flow mechanism. The basic architecture and setup details of the model are introduced, so do the summary of performance and error analysis during experiments. Further more, the main exploration part would be focused on how to plug appropriate attention mechanism into the whole neural network architecture.
Methods and models for studying mechanisms of redox-active enzymes

Methods and models used in recent quantum chemical studies of redox-active enzymes are described. Only density functional methods are able to treat these systems with sufficient accuracy. For the most accurate of these methods, the so-called hybrid methods, a fraction of exact exchange is included and the deviation from experimental energies is usually not higher than 5 kcal mol−1. The size of the models depends on the problem studied, but is usually in the range 60–100 atoms. To keep the optimized structures sufficiently close to the experimental ones, one atom in each amino acid residue is kept frozen to its position in the X-ray structure. Examples from different recent studies are given with emphasis on dioxygen evolution in photosystem II and proton pumping in cytochrome oxidase. The main advantage of using theoretical methods to study these systems is that short-lived intermediates and transition states can be investigated as easily as stable structures.
Clinical pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of dolutegravir used as a single tablet regimen for the treatment of HIV-1 infection

Introduction: With the introduction of the coformulated dolutegravir, abacavir and lamivudine, a new single tablet regimen (STR) is made available for the use in treatment-naive and treatment-experienced HIV-infected patients. This drug combination is the fourth STR that will be positioned next to the STRs with efavirenz, rilpivirine or elvitegravir as third agents, respectively. Areas covered: The objective of this review is to provide an overview of the efficacy and safety of the combined dolutegravir/abacavir/lamivudine coformulation. The review will focus on dolutegravir and includes both published data as well as data presented at recent major international HIV/AIDS conferences. Expert opinion: The dolutegravir/abacavir/lamivudine regimen is highly effective in achieving sustained suppression of HIV-1 RNA plasma concentrations. The STR has a favorable safety profile and a low potential for drug interactions, which will contribute to a prominent role in therapy. As this STR contains abacavir as backbone component, the use requires patients to be HLA-B*5701 negative, with good hepatic function. Other first-line treatment combinations are preferred for patients with hepatitis B co-infection or with a high cardiovascular risk.
Diltiazem: Ten Years of Clinical Experience in the Treatment of Hypertension

Diltiazem hydrochloride is a benzothiazepine derivative calcium‐channel blocker with proven antianginal and antihypertensive capabilities. Its primary mechanism of action is vasodilatation, which results in diminished vascular resistance and improved perfusion to various vascular beds and target organs. The antihypertensive efficacy of diltiazem in various demographic groups has been studied and compared with diuretics, β‐blockers, angiotensin‐converting enzyme inhibitors, and other calcium‐channel blockers. These studies have shown that the antihypertensive effect of diltiazem is similar to that of the other therapies. Diltiazem does not adversely affect electrolytes or carbohydrate or lipid metabolism, and it may have beneficial effects on the heart and kidneys. Diltiazem reduces myocardial hypertrophy and exerts antianginal effects on the heart through coronary vasodilation and reduction in the blood pressure double product. Diltiazem improves renal perfusion and attenuates proteinuria. These effects may be helpful in limiting the progression of renal injury. Overall, the efficacy and tolerability of diltiazem, as well as its salutary effects on the heart and kidneys, make it an important therapeutic consideration for patients with hypertensive disease.
Cytological and biochemical characterization of the FtsA cell division protein of Bacillus subtilis

The actin‐like protein FtsA is present in many eubacteria, and genetic experiments have shown that it plays an important, sometimes essential, role in cell division. Here, we show that Bacillus subtilis FtsA is targeted to division sites in both vegetative and sporulating cells. As in other organisms FtsA is probably recruited immediately after FtsZ. In sporulating cells of B. subtilis FtsZ is recruited to potential division sites at both poles of the cell, but asymmetric division occurs at only one pole. We have now found that FtsA is recruited to only one cell pole, suggesting that it may play an important role in the generation of asymmetry in this system. FtsA is present in much higher quantities in B. subtilis than in Escherichia coli, with approximately one molecule of FtsA for five of FtsZ. This means that there is sufficient FtsA to form a complete circumferential ring at the division site. Therefore, FtsA may have a direct structural role in cell division. We have purified FtsA and shown that it behaves as a dimer and that it has both ATP‐binding and ATP‐hydrolysis activities. This suggests that ATP hydrolysis by FtsA is required, together with GTP hydrolysis by FtsZ, for cell division in B. subtilis (and possibly in most eubacteria).
PSS design criteria to mitigate power quality phenomena in distribution systems with distributed generators

This paper proposes an additional criterion to be included in the PSS design stage, when applying these stabilizers to power distribution systems with distributed synchronous generators. Recently, it was shown that such generators can induce voltage fluctuations in the aforementioned systems, ans since these generators are connected very close to the loads, consumers might be affected by these voltage fluctuations. The proposed PSS design criteria considers a set of perturbations that the system might be prone to, and defines an additional criterion that, together with the classical minimum damping criterion for small-signal stability margin, reshapes the region for pole placement related to the PSS design process to deal with the voltage fluctuations and their consequences. The proposed PSS design criteria can be easily handled by any PSS design method that deals with general regional pole placement problems.
Interorganizational Relationships and Organizational Performance

The hyperturbulent health care environment is causing health care organizations to create interorganizational relationships (IORs). This article reports on a study of 686 medical groups that assessed how 11 types of IORs affected 7 dimensions of organizational performance. Organizational performance was ascertained through self-reported questions about performance relative to local market competitors. Respondents believed that, to varying degrees, all IORs lead to a competitive advantage over local competitors in all seven performance categories. There was no consistent pattern for either loose or tight linkages to be associated with superior performance. Consequently, loose linkages may be preferable to tighter linkages (i.e., membership in a fully integrated delivery system) that require higher levels of resource commitment.
WIF1, a component of the Wnt pathway, is down‐regulated in prostate, breast, lung, and bladder cancer

To detect novel Wnt‐pathway genes involved in tumourigenesis, this study analysed the RNA expression levels of 40 genes of the Wnt pathway by chip hybridization of microdissected matched pairs of 54 primary prostate carcinomas. Eleven genes showed greater than two‐fold differential expression in at least 10% of prostate cancers. Three of these genes encode extracellular components of the Wnt pathway (WNT2, WIF1, SFRP4); two are receptors (FZD4, FZD6); two belong to the intracellular signal cascade (DVL1, PPP2CB); one regulates transcription (TCF4); and three represent genes regulated by this pathway (CCND2, CD44, MYC). While SFRP4, FZD4, FZD6, DVL1, TCF4, and MYC are up‐regulated, WIF1, WNT2, PPP2CB, CCND2, and CD44 are down‐regulated in certain prostate cancer patients. Wnt inhibitory factor 1 (WIF1) and secreted frizzled related protein (SFRP4) showed the most significant aberrant expression at the RNA level. WIF1 was down‐regulated in 64% of primary prostate cancers, while SFRP4 was up‐regulated in 81% of the patients. Immunohistochemical analysis using a polyclonal antibody revealed strong cytoplasmic perinuclear WIF1 expression in normal epithelial cells of the prostate, breast, lung, and urinary bladder. Strong reduction of WIF1 protein expression was found in 23% of prostate carcinomas, but also in 60% of breast, 75% of non‐small cell lung (NSCLC), and 26% of bladder cancers analysed. No significant association between WIF1 down‐regulation and tumour stage or grade was observed for prostate, breast or non‐small cell lung carcinomas, indicating that loss of WIF1 expression may be an early event in tumourigenesis in these tissues. However, down‐regulation of WIF1 correlated with higher tumour stage in urinary bladder tumours (pTa versus pT1–pT4; p = 0.038). Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Co-emulation and debugging of HW/SW-systems

Presents a method that allows one to observe and control the emulation of communicating systems consisting of hardware (HW) and software (SW) parts. The approach provides the ability to set breakpoints in either technology, without breaking the protocol or losing data. Systems may contain several SW and HW processes. Each process runs in a separate debugger, while the presented approach provides the necessary synchronization between the processes to preclude loss of data at the communication interfaces due to breakpoints. Therefore it allows the operation to continue after a breakpoint, which is essential for interactive debugging.
Association Tests in Nuclear Families

We present a conditional likelihood approach for testing linkage disequilibrium in nuclear families having multiple affected offspring. The likelihood, conditioned on the identity-by-descent (IBD) structure of the sibling genotypes, is unaffected by familial correlation in disease status that arises from linkage between a marker locus and the unobserved trait locus. Two such conditional likelihoods are compared: one that conditions on IBD and phase of the transmitted alleles and a second which conditions only on IBD of the transmitted alleles. Under the log-additive model, the first likelihood is equivalent to the allele-counting methods proposed in the literature. The second likelihood is valid under the added assumption of equal male and female recombination fractions. In a simulation study, we demonstrated that in sibships having two or three affected siblings the score test from each likelihood had the correct test size for testing disequilibrium. They also led to equivalent power to detect linkage disequilibrium at the 5% significance level.
Biochemical and biophysical aspects of water deficits and the predisposition to disease.

A predisposition to disease is often observed in host plants during water deficiencies. While there are no instances in which the biochemical and bio­ physical causes are known with certainty, there are changes in host plants that alter their int era ctions with other organisms an d that suggest possible mecha­ nisms of predisposition. Gradients in water potential can be altered by water deficits and prevent growth in the host without altering growth ofthe pathogen. There is a decrease in photosynthetic activity and protein synthetic activity when water deficits develop that could decrease the synthesis of metabolites and enzymes important for disease res istance. A method of supplying meta­ bolites has been used to change the flux of these molecules in intact plants and might provide tests of the causes of host predisposition to disease during water deficits.
Hierarchical equivalent source algorithm based on relaxed spherical equivalence surface

A new hierarchical algorithm based on surface equivalence principle is proposed in this work. The equivalent sources residing on relaxed spherical equivalence surfaces are computed by closed-form integral operators rather than numerical approximations. Consequently, a hierarchical algorithm based on oct-tree is straightforward to implement. Numerical examples validate the accuracy and capability of the proposed algorithm.
Randomized trial for answers to clinical questions: evaluating a pre-appraised versus a MEDLINE search protocol.

OBJECTIVE The paper compares the speed, validity, and applicability of two different protocols for searching the primary medical literature. DESIGN A randomized trial involving medicine residents was performed. SETTING An inpatient general medicine rotation was used. PARTICIPANTS Thirty-two internal medicine residents were block randomized into four groups of eight. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Success rate of each search protocol was measured by perceived search time, number of questions answered, and proportion of articles that were applicable and valid. RESULTS Residents randomized to the MEDLINE-first (protocol A) group searched 120 questions, and residents randomized to the MEDLINE-last (protocol B) searched 133 questions. In protocol A, 104 answers (86.7%) and, in protocol B, 117 answers (88%) were found to clinical questions. In protocol A, residents reported that 26 (25.2%) of the answers were obtained quickly or rated as "fast" (<5 minutes) as opposed to 55 (51.9%) in protocol B, (P = 0.0004). A subset of questions and articles (n = 79) were reviewed by faculty who found that both protocols identified similar numbers of answer articles that addressed the questions and were felt to be valid using critical appraisal criteria. CONCLUSION For resident-generated clinical questions, both protocols produced a similarly high percentage of applicable and valid articles. The MEDLINE-last search protocol was perceived to be faster. However, in the MEDLINE-last protocol, a significant portion of questions (23%) still required searching MEDLINE to find an answer.
Appropriate use of vancomycin in an educational tertiary care hospital in Tehran, Iran

Background: Inappropriate prescription of vancomycin has been shown to be associated with induction of antibiotic resistance. The objective of this study was to determine the incidence of inappropriate use of vancomycin in a tertiary care hospital in Iran. Methods: Adescriptive cross-sectional investigation was performed from September 2004 to March 2005 in all units of a general teaching Medical Center in Tehran. All adults and children who had vancomycin initiated in this medical center were enrolled in the study and the appropriateness of vancomycin use was determined according to Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines. Results: Forty-four percent of vancomycin use was inappropriate with the highest incidence of inappropriate use occurring in surgical units. The most common inappropriate indication for vancomycin was routine surgical prophylaxis. Conclusion: Inappropriate use of vancomycin is very common in a tertiary care hospital in Iran and could potentially be decreased by educating physicians about the CDC guidelines. These educational programs should target physicians in surgical units.
Vascular endothelial growth factor up‐regulates the expression of intracellular adhesion molecule‐1 in retinal endothelial cells via reactive oxygen species, but not nitric oxide

Background The vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is involved in the initiation of retinal vascular leakage and nonperfusion in diabetes. The intracellular adhesion molecule‐1 (ICAM‐1) is the key mediator of the effect of VEGFs on retinal leukostasis. Although the VEGF is expressed in an early‐stage diabetic retina, whether it directly up‐regulates ICAM‐1 in retinal endothelial cells (ECs) is unknown. In this study, we provided a new mechanism to explain that VEGF does up‐regulate the expression of ICAM‐1 in retinal ECs. Methods Bovine retinal ECs (BRECs) were isolated and cultured. Immunohistochemical staining was performed to identify BRECs. The cultured cells were divided into corresponding groups. Then, VEGF (100 ng/ml) and other inhibitors were used to treat the cells. Cell lysate and the cultured supernatant were collected, and then, the protein level of ICAM‐1 and phosphorylation of the endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) were detected using Western blotting. Griess reaction was used to detect nitric oxide (NO). Results Western blotting showed that the VEGF up‐regulated the expression of ICAM‐1 protein and increased phosphorylation of the eNOS in retinal ECs. Neither the block of NO nor protein kinase C (PKC) altered the expression of ICAM‐1 or the phosphorylation of eNOS. The result of the Western blotting also showed that inhibition of phosphatidylinositol 3‐kinase (PI3K) or reactive oxygen species (ROS) significantly reduced the expression of ICAM‐1. Inhibition of PI3K also reduced phosphorylation of eNOS. Griess reaction showed that VEGF significantly increased during NO production. When eNOS was blocked by L‐NAME or PI3K was blocked by LY294002, the basal level of NO production and the increment of NO caused by VEGF could be significantly decreased. Conclusion ROS‐NO coupling in the retinal endothelium may be a new mechanism that could help to explain why VEGF induces ICAM‐1 expression and the resulting leukostasis in diabetic retinopathy.
Definitions of Managed Objects for Packet Sampling

This memo defines managed objects for sampling and filtering techniques for IP packet selection. These objects provide information about managed nodes supporting packet sampling, including packet sampling capabilities and configuration. They also allow to configure packet sampling concerning the IP interface at which packets are sampled and the packet selections methods used for sampling.