bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Investigation of the effects of a polymerised bovine haemoglobin solution on tension in isolated canine saphenous artery
Authors: Pawson P. , Dowell F. J.
Published: April 2014

OBJECTIVES

To investigate the vasoconstriction induced by a polymerised bovine haemoglobin solution, Hb‐200, in isolated canine arteries.

METHODS

Rings of canine saphenous artery, from euthanatized dogs, were mounted between stainless steel wires in Krebs’ solution (95% O2, 5% CO2, 37°C) for isometric tension recording. Following incubation with Hb‐200, cumulative concentration response curves to phenylephrine (vasoconstrictor) and acetylcholine (vasodilator) were investigated. Responses to acute addition of Hb‐200 were also examined in pre‐constricted or pre‐dilated arteries. Responses were further studied in the presence or absence of the endothelium, inhibitors of endothelium‐dependent vasodilation (L‐NAME, charybdotoxin and apamin), an endothelin antagonist (BQ‐788) and the antioxidant superoxide dismutase.

RESULTS

Incubation with Hb‐200 (0·2 or 2 g/L) significantly enhanced phenylephrine‐induced contraction (decreasing half maximal effective concentration, EC50, P=0·0035) and inhibited acetylcholine‐induced relaxation (increasing EC50, P<0·0001). Acute addition of Hb‐200 (0·2 or 2 g/L) significantly increased tension in pre‐constricted arteries (P=0·0059) and reversed relaxation in pre‐dilated arteries (P=0·0005). These acute responses were abolished in endothelium‐denuded arteries and arteries incubated with L‐NAME. Responses to Hb‐200 were unaffected by incubation with charybdotoxin and apamin, BQ‐788, or superoxide dismutase.

CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE

Low concentrations of Hb‐200 enhance vasoconstriction in isolated canine saphenous artery, primarily by antagonism of nitric oxide. This effect may be detrimental in some dogs (e.g. those at risk of volume overload) but beneficial in others (e.g. those in septic shock).
Female Partner's Perception of Premature Ejaculation and Its Impact on Relationship Breakups, Relationship Quality, and Sexual Satisfaction
Authors: Burri Andrea , Giuliano François , McMahon Chris , Porst Hartmut
Published: April 2014

Introduction

Women's perceptions of the men's ejaculatory behavior, as well as the impact premature ejaculation (PE) has on the couple's functioning, are important factors that need to be considered.

Aim

This survey investigated women's perception and importance of ejaculatory function, as well as the specific aspects of PE that cause distress. In addition, the survey further identified the factors with a greater impact on intimacy, relationship, and sexual behavior.

Methods

The 1,463 females belonging to a web panel from three different countries (Mexico, Italy, and South Korea), aged 20–50 years, participated in the survey. A combination of validated and self-constructed questionnaires to assess women's perception of PE, relationship satisfaction and quality, and sexual functioning and satisfaction were used.

Main Outcome Measures

Descriptive statistics in form of proportions and percentages, correlation, and regression analyses.

Results

A significant correlation between the importance of ejaculatory control and felt distress could be observed (rho = 0.55, P < 0.001). Women reporting less sexual problems considered ejaculatory control more important and reported more PE-related distress (rho = 0.23 and 0.11, respectively; P < 0.001 for both). The male's lack of attention and focus on performance was the most frequently reported reasons for sexual distress (47.6%) followed by “the short time between penetration and ejaculation” (39.9%), and “the lack of ejaculatory control” (24.1%). Almost a quarter of women reported that the man's ejaculatory problem had previously led to relationship breakups (22.8%). Women considering duration to be important were more likely to report breakups.

Conclusions

The study highlights the detrimental effects of PE on relationship and sexual satisfaction in the female partner and how it can lead to the termination of the relationship. Most notably, this is the first study to report that an important source of female distress are not only parameters related to performance such as control or duration but rather inappropriate attention focus and the negligence of other forms of sexual activities.
Population size and migratory connectivity of humpback whales wintering in Las Perlas Archipelago, Panama
Authors: Guzman Hector M. , Condit Richard , Pérez‐Ortega Betzi , Capella Juan J. , Stevick Peter T.
Published: April 2014

From 2003 to 2009, we surveyed Las Perlas Archipelago off the Pacific coast of Panama 53 times between the months of August and October to estimate abundance of humpback whales and to test for a migratory connection with populations from the southern hemisphere. We identified 295 individuals using photo‐identification of dorsal fins, including 58 calves, and the population estimate for a single season was 100–300 solitary adults plus 25–50 mothers with calves; the estimated population of animals across all seasons using a mark and recapture model was over 1,000. Eight of the 139 fluke identifications were matched to whales in photograph catalogues from the Antarctic Peninsula and a ninth was matched to a whale sighted in Chilean waters; four of these nine individuals have also been sighted in Colombia. We conclude that Panama (Las Perlas Archipelago in particular) is an important calving area for humpback whales in the Southern Hemisphere. These data should provide a foundation for monitoring of population change and to increase awareness in Panama about the need to manage vessel traffic and tourism related to the whales at Las Perlas.
Facilitation of fisheries by natural predators depends on life history of shared prey
Authors: Huss Magnus , de Roos André M. , Van Leeuwen Anieke , Gårdmark Anna
Published: April 2014

Predators commonly share prey with human exploiters, intuitively suggesting that there is an inherent human–predator conflict through competition for prey. Here we studied the effects of fishing and predation mortality on biomass distributions and yields of shared prey using a size‐structured model of competing populations, describing the life histories of Baltic Sea sprat and herring. Whereas both species responded in a similar fashion to increased fishing mortality, with decreasing juvenile and adult biomasses, we found that responses to predation mortality differed between species. Sprat only display weak compensatory responses with increasing predation mortality, while over a substantial range of mortalities there was a strong increase in adult (and total) herring biomass, i.e. overcompensation. The observed biomass overcompensation results from relaxed intraspecific competition as predation mortality increased, allowing for faster individual growth rates that in turn lead to a change in population composition (juvenile:adult biomass ratio). Our results suggest that the potential for biomass overcompensation is higher for species exhibiting substantial growth after maturation. Differences in size‐selectivity of predators and fishing mortality resulted in a positive effect of predation mortality on fisheries yields, which can be explained by an overcompensatory response in adult herring biomass. Thus, somewhat counter intuitive, our results suggest that fishermen, depending on prey life history, may actually benefit from allowing for a higher abundance of predators, despite competing for shared prey.
Interactive prey and predator diversity effects drive consumption rates
Authors: Knop Eva , Zünd Jan , Sanders Dirk
Published: April 2014

The positive relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning is mainly derived from studies concerning primary producers, whereas a generalization of this relationship for higher trophic levels is more difficult. Furthermore, most evidence of the biodiversity–ecosystem functioning relationship is derived from experiments manipulating only one trophic level and, as a consequence, interactive diversity effects at multiple trophic levels have mostly been ignored. Here, we performed a mesocosm experiment in which we manipulated functional group diversity at two trophic levels (primary and secondary consumers) applying a full‐factorial design. More specifically, we asked whether 1) predator functional diversity affects prey mortality rates, 2) prey functional diversity affects prey mortality rates, 3) whether there are interactive effects of simultaneous diversity changes at both trophic levels. For each trophic level we used two functional groups, i.e. organisms belonging to two different habitat domains: at the higher trophic position 1) a ground foraging spider species and 2) a spider species foraging in the vegetation canopy and at the lower trophic position 3) a ground living cricket species and 4) leafhoppers living in the vegetation canopy. Increasing predator functional group diversity increased prey mortality by 53%, and increasing prey functional group diversity increased prey mortality by 24%. Further, prey mortality was highest at the uppermost level of functional group diversity (142% increase in prey mortality compared to single prey and predator functional diversity), most likely due to resource partitioning between the predators. This finding demonstrates that a multi‐trophic perspective is necessary, and that previous studies focusing on only one trophic level have most likely underestimated the strength of the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.
Cartilaginous choristoma of the lower lip: report of a case and review of the literature
Authors: Halley D. , Dargue A. , Pring M.
Published: April 2014

A choristoma is a tumour‐like mass of histologically normal tissue arising in an ectopic location. A cartilaginous choristoma is a rare finding within the oral cavity and most commonly presents in the tongue. We present an unusual case of a cartilaginous choristoma arising in the lower lip. To our knowledge, this is only the third case reported in the literature to date. The current literature is reviewed and the clinical presentation, differential diagnosis and management of this patient are discussed together with the possible histogenesis.
Revenue Diversification in Public Higher Education: Comparing the University and Polytechnic Sectors
Authors: Teixeira Pedro N. , Rocha Vera , Biscaia Ricardo , Cardoso Margarida Fonseca
Published: April 2014

Financial stringency has been an increasing concern in the higher education sector, especially in the aftermath of the financial crisis. As a result, public higher education institutions have been under increasing pressure to diversify their funding sources through tuition fees and other nonpublic revenues. This article reflects on the institutional impact of those changes by analyzing a panel of 30 higher education institutions from the Portuguese public university and polytechnic sectors for the period between 2003 and 2009. The authors explore the relevance of institutional characteristics such as enrollments in undergraduate and postgraduate programs, the qualifications of academic staff, and the regional environment where institutions are located. Results suggest that certain institutional characteristics related to mission differentiation and the path of development of binary systems are important determinants of higher education institutions’ ability to earn income from tuition fees and other nonpublic sources.
Early communicative gestures and play as predictors of language development in children born with and without family risk for dyslexia
Authors: Unhjem Astrid , Eklund Kenneth , Nergård‐Nilssen Trude
Published: April 2014

The present study investigated early communicative gestures, play, and language skills in children born with family risk for dyslexia (FR) and a control group of children without this inheritable risk at ages 12, 15, 18, and 24 months. Participants were drawn from the Tromsø Longitudinal study of Dyslexia (TLD) which follows children's cognitive and language development from age 12 months through Grade 2 in order to identify early markers of developmental dyslexia. Results showed that symbolic play and parent reported play at age 12 months and communicative gestures at age 15 months explained 61% of the variance in productive language at 24 months in the FR group. These early nonlinguistic measures seem to be potentially interesting markers of later language development in children born at risk for dyslexia.
Reorganization of personal identity in the context of motivational dynamics and internal dialogical activity
Authors: Batory Anna
Published: April 2014

Identity is constantly constructed and reconstructed. It may be assumed that there are six fundamental motivational goals according to which it is organized: self‐esteem, self‐efficacy, continuity, distinctiveness, belonging, and meaning (Vignoles, ). Moreover, identity is shaped by its dialogical nature (Hermans, ; van Halen & Janssen, ). The longitudinal study was conducted to examine both the motivational and the dialogical basis of identity structure dynamics. The results showed that the more the identity element was connected with a sense of continuity and the more dialogical it was, the greater the perceived centrality of this element was after two months. Furthermore, the more the identity element satisfied the self‐esteem and belonging motives, the more positive was the affect ascribed to it. In the behavioral domain of identity, participants more strongly manifested those identity aspects that were earlier rated as more dialogical and satisfying the motive of belonging. The results showed that the motivational underpinnings of identity along with its dialogical nature explain changes in identity structure.
Enriching Surveys with Supplementary Data and its Application to Studying Wage Regression
Authors: Leung Denis Heng Yan , Yamada Ken , Zhang Biao
Published: April 2014

We consider the problem of supplementing survey data with additional information from a population. The framework we use is very general; examples are missing data problems, measurement error models and combining data from multiple surveys. We do not require the survey data to be a simple random sample of the population of interest. The key assumption we make is that there exists a set of common variables between the survey and the supplementary data. Thus, the supplementary data serve the dual role of providing adjustments to the survey data for model consistencies and also enriching the survey data for improved efficiency. We propose a semi‐parametric approach using empirical likelihood to combine data from the two sources. The method possesses favourable large and moderate sample properties. We use the method to investigate wage regression using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth Study.
Self‐Harm in Young Offenders
Authors: Borschmann Rohan , Coffey Carolyn , Moran Paul , Hearps Stephen , Degenhardt Louisa , Kinner Stuart A. , Patton George
Published: April 2014

The prevalence and correlates of self‐harm and suicidal behavior in 515 young offenders (mean age 17.3 years, SD = 1.7) serving community‐based orders (CBOs; n = 242) or custodial sentences (n = 273) in Victoria, Australia, are described. Results from structured interviews showed that 83 (16.1%) participants reported self‐harming in the previous 6 months, and this was more common among those serving custodial sentences than those serving CBOs (19.4% vs. 12.4%; OR 3.10, 95% CI: 1.74–5.55). Multiple incidents were more common in females and 24% (95% CI: 19–39) of participants who had self‐harmed reported having done so with suicidal intent. Self‐harm was associated with recent bullying victimization, expulsion from school, past year violent victimization, cannabis dependence, and risk‐taking behavior in the preceding year. The epidemiological profile of self‐harm in this population appears to be distinct from that seen in the general population. Young offenders who self‐harm are a vulnerable group with high rates of psychiatric morbidity, substance misuse problems, and social risk factors. They may benefit from targeted psychological interventions designed specifically to address impulsivity, delivered both within–and during the transition from–the youth justice system.
Explaining Different Paths in Social Health Insurance Countries – Health System Change and Cross‐border Lesson‐drawing between Germany, Austria and the Netherlands
Authors: Leiber Simone , Greß Stefan , Heinemann Stephanie
Published: April 2014

The issues of ‘policy diffusion’ or ‘policy transfer’ and ‘mutual learning’ have become important topics in comparative research on social policy and health systems. In current debates on explaining reform in ‘Bismarckian’ social (health) insurance systems, however, these issues have been neglected. In particular, the role of ‘negative lesson‐drawing’ in the sense of avoiding mistakes of others has not often been considered. This article compares health system change in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, three countries with health systems of the social insurance type. In contrast to the existing literature, our analysis stresses that these countries have taken different reform paths since the 1990s. By applying a most similar systems design, we analyze how far cross‐border lesson‐drawing has contributed to health system divergence in the three countries. The empirical basis of the analysis is semi‐structured qualitative expert interviews, a method appropriate for tracing processes of lesson‐drawing. We argue that in order to fully understand the diverging reform trajectories, we need to take into account how political decision‐makers refer to (negative) experiences of other countries. Generally, national driving forces for health system change were at the heart of many crucial reforms during the period studied. Nevertheless, we claim that it was the German bad practice role model that kept the reform paths of Austria and Germany apart in the Austrian health reform discussion between 2000 and 2005.
Comparative analysis of Arabidopsis UGT74 glucosyltransferases reveals a special role of UGT74C1 in glucosinolate biosynthesis
Authors: Grubb C. Douglas , Zipp Brandon J. , Kopycki Jakub , Schubert Melvin , Quint Marcel , Lim Eng‐Kiat , Bowles Dianna J. , Pedras M. Soledade C. , Abel Steffen
Published: April 2014

The study of glucosinolates and their regulation has provided a powerful framework for the exploration of fundamental questions about the function, evolution, and ecological significance of plant natural products, but uncertainties about their metabolism remain. Previous work has identified one thiohydroximate S‐glucosyltransferase, UGT74B1, with an important role in the core pathway, but also made clear that this enzyme functions redundantly and cannot be the sole UDP‐glucose dependent glucosyltransferase (UGT) in glucosinolate synthesis. Here, we present the results of a nearly comprehensive in vitro activity screen of recombinant Arabidopsis Family 1 UGTs, which implicate other members of the UGT74 clade as candidate glucosinolate biosynthetic enzymes. Systematic genetic analysis of this clade indicates that UGT74C1 plays a special role in the synthesis of aliphatic glucosinolates, a conclusion strongly supported by phylogenetic and gene expression analyses. Finally, the ability of UGT74C1 to complement phenotypes and chemotypes of the ugt74b1‐2 knockout mutant and to express thiohydroximate UGT activity in planta provides conclusive evidence for UGT74C1 being an accessory enzyme in glucosinolate biosynthesis with a potential function during plant adaptation to environmental challenge.
The chromatin landscape of the moss Physcomitrella patens and its dynamics during development and drought stress
Authors: Widiez Thomas , Symeonidi Aikaterini , Luo Chongyuan , Lam Eric , Lawton Michael , Rensing Stefan A.
Published: April 2014

The moss Physcomitrella patens is an important model organism for evo‐devo studies. Here, we determined the genome‐wide chromatin landscape of five important histone three (H3) modifications (H3K4me3, H3K27me3, H3K27Ac, H3K9Ac and H3K9me2) and describe the changes to these histone marks in two contrasted situations, developmental transition and abiotic (drought) stress. Integrative analysis of these histone H3 modifications revealed their preferential association into 15 chromatin states (CS) in genic regions of the P. patens genome. Synergistic relationships that influence expression levels were revealed for the three activating marks H3K4me3, H3K27Ac and H3K9Ac, while an antagonistic relationship was found between CS containing the H3K27me3 and H3K27Ac marks, suggesting that H3K27 is a key indexing residue regarding transcriptional output. Concerning the alteration of histone marks in response to developmental transition (juvenile to adult) and drought stress, the three activating marks H3K4me3, H3K27Ac and H3K9Ac show significant changes in both situations. However, changes to H3K27me3 are central only for genes differentially expressed during development. Interestingly, genes induced during drought stress show significant histone mark toggling during developmental transition. This situation suggests that drought induced adult (gametophore expressed) genes are primed to respond to this stress during the juvenile to adult transition.
A New Approach to Planning Plungers Paths for Efficient 2½-Axis Computer Numerically Controlled Plunge Milling of Complex Pockets With Islands
Authors: Chen Zezhong C. , Abdelkhalek Sherif
Published: April 2014

Plunge milling is an effective roughing operation, especially in pockets roughing, because it can efficiently remove a large amount of stock material without high manufacturing costs. However, plunge milling of complex pockets with islands, whose boundaries could be designed with free-form curves, is quite challenging for multiple plungers have to be used including small plungers to cut necks between islands and their plungers paths are expected to have fewer times of plunging and shorter travel to achieve efficient machining. Unfortunately, little research on this topic was carried out in the past, and the challenge has not been addressed yet. In this research, a new approach is proposed to generate plunger paths for efficient plunge milling of the complex pockets. Its main features include (1) packing plunger circles at a minimum number of locations inside the pocket for fewer times of plunging, (2) placing plunger circles to cover the areas enclosed by the afore-packed circles to clear out the interior pocket material, and (3) planning the shortest paths to connect plunger locations for less traveling time. The advantages of this new approach over the overlapped circles filling (OCfill) and the Catia methods are demonstrated with two examples, and it can be directly used for pocket plunge milling in industry.
Extreme Response Statistics of Fixed Offshore Structures Subjected to Ringing Loads
Authors: Gaidai Oleg , Krokstad Jørgen
Published: April 2014

This paper describes an efficient Monte Carlo based method for prediction of extreme response statistics of fixed offshore structures subjected to random seas. The nonlinear structural response known as “ringing” is studied, which is caused by the wave impact force on structural support units. Common challenge for design of such structures is a sound estimate of the hydrodynamic load including diffraction effects. The aim of the work was to develop specific methods which make it possible to extract the necessary information about the extreme response from relatively short time histories. The method proposed in this paper opens up the possibility to predict simply and efficiently both short-term and long-term extreme response statistics. The results presented are based on extensive simulation results for the large fixed platform operating on the Norwegian continental shelf. Structural response time histories, measured in MARINTEK (MT) wave basin lab, were used to validate numerical results.
Two-photon polymerization of 3-D zirconium oxide hybrid scaffolds for long-term stem cell growth
Authors: Skoog Shelby A. , Nguyen Alexander K. , Kumar Girish , Zheng Jiwen , Goering Peter L. , Koroleva Anastasia , Chichkov Boris N. , Narayan Roger J.
Published: April 2014

Two-photon polymerization is a technique that involves simultaneous absorption of two photons from a femtosecond laser for selective polymerization of a photosensitive material. In this study, two-photon polymerization was used for layer-by-layer fabrication of 3-D scaffolds composed of an inorganic–organic zirconium oxide hybrid material. Four types of scaffold microarchitectures were created, which exhibit layers of parallel line features at various orientations as well as pores between the line features. Long-term cell culture studies involving human bone marrow stromal cells were conducted using these 3-D scaffolds. Cellular adhesion and proliferation were demonstrated on all of the scaffold types; tissuelike structure was shown to span the pores. This study indicates that two-photon polymerization may be used to create microstructured scaffolds out of an inorganic–organic zirconium oxide hybrid material for use in 3-D tissue culture systems.
Actinic critical dimension measurement of contaminated extreme ultraviolet mask using coherent scattering microscopy
Authors: Uk Lee Jae , Hong Seongchul , Ahn Jinho , Doh Jonggul , Jeong SeeJun
Published: April 2014

The authors evaluated the feasibility of using coherent scattering microscopy (CSM) as an actinic metrology tool by employing it to determine the critical dimension (CD) and normalized image log-slope (NILS) values of contaminated extreme ultraviolet (EUV) masks. CSM was as effective as CD scanning electron microscopy (CD-SEM) in measuring the CD values of clean EUV masks in the case of vertical patterns (nonshadowing effect); however, only the CSM could detect shadowing effect for horizontal patterns resulting in smaller clear mask CD values. Owing to weak interaction between the low-density contaminant layer and EUV radiation, the CSM-based CD measurements were not as affected by contamination as were those made using CD-SEM. Furthermore, CSM could be used to determine the NILS values under illumination conditions corresponding to a high-volume manufacturing tool.
Proteome-Wide Identification of SUMO2 Modification Sites
Authors: Tammsalu Triin , Matic Ivan , Jaffray Ellis G. , Ibrahim Adel F. M. , Tatham Michael H. , Hay Ronald T.
Published: April 2014

A novel method for the enrichment of SUMO2-modified peptides reveals more than 1000 sites of modification in human cells.
Trapped in Fat
Authors: Wong Wei
Published: April 2014

Netrin and its receptor Unc5b contribute to obesity-induced inflammation by promoting the retention of macrophages in adipose tissue.
The T2 Mycobacterium tuberculosis Genotype, Predominant in Kampala, Uganda, Shows Negative Correlation with Antituberculosis Drug Resistance
Authors: Lukoye Deus , Katabazi Fred A. , Musisi Kenneth , Kateete David P. , Asiimwe Benon B. , Okee Moses , Joloba Moses L. , Cobelens Frank G. J.
Published: April 2014

Surveillance of the circulating
Mycobacterium tuberculosis
complex (MTC) strains in a given locality is important for understanding tuberculosis (TB) epidemiology. We performed molecular epidemiological studies on sputum smear-positive isolates that were collected for anti-TB drug resistance surveillance to establish the variability of MTC lineages with anti-TB drug resistance and HIV infection. Spoligotyping was performed to determine MTC phylogenetic lineages. We compared patients' MTC lineages with drug susceptibility testing (DST) patterns and HIV serostatus. Out of the 533 isolates, 497 (93.2%) had complete DST, PCR, and spoligotyping results while 484 (90.1%) participants had results for HIV testing. Overall, the frequency of any resistance was 75/497 (15.1%), highest among the LAM (34.4%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 18.5 to 53.2) and lowest among the T2 (11.5%; 95% CI, 7.6 to 16.3) family members. By multivariate analysis, LAM (adjusted odds ratio [OR
adj
], 5.0; 95% CI, 2.0 to 11.9;
P
< 0.001) and CAS (OR
adj
, 2.9; 95% CI, 1.4.0 to 6.3;
P
= 0.006) families were more likely to show any resistance than was T2. All other MTC lineages combined were more likely to be resistant to any of the anti-TB drugs than were the T2 strains (OR
adj
, 1.7; 95% CI, 1.0 to 2.9;
P
= 0.040). There were no significant associations between multidrug resistance and MTC lineages, but numbers of multidrug-resistant TB strains were small. No association was established between MTC lineages and HIV status. In conclusion, the T2 MTC lineage negatively correlates with anti-TB drug resistance, which might partly explain the reported low levels of anti-TB drug resistance in Kampala, Uganda. Patients' HIV status plays no role with respect to the MTC lineage distribution.
In Silico
Detection and Typing of Plasmids using PlasmidFinder and Plasmid Multilocus Sequence Typing
Authors: Carattoli Alessandra , Zankari Ea , García-Fernández Aurora , Voldby Larsen Mette , Lund Ole , Villa Laura , Møller Aarestrup Frank , Hasman Henrik
Published: April 2014

In the work presented here, we designed and developed two easy-to-use Web tools for
in silico
detection and characterization of whole-genome sequence (WGS) and whole-plasmid sequence data from members of the family
Enterobacteriaceae
. These tools will facilitate bacterial typing based on draft genomes of multidrug-resistant
Enterobacteriaceae
species by the rapid detection of known plasmid types. Replicon sequences from 559 fully sequenced plasmids associated with the family
Enterobacteriaceae
in the NCBI nucleotide database were collected to build a consensus database for integration into a Web tool called PlasmidFinder that can be used for replicon sequence analysis of raw, contig group, or completely assembled and closed plasmid sequencing data. The PlasmidFinder database currently consists of 116 replicon sequences that match with at least at 80% nucleotide identity all replicon sequences identified in the 559 fully sequenced plasmids. For plasmid multilocus sequence typing (pMLST) analysis, a database that is updated weekly was generated from
www.pubmlst.org
and integrated into a Web tool called pMLST. Both databases were evaluated using draft genomes from a collection of
Salmonella enterica
serovar Typhimurium isolates. PlasmidFinder identified a total of 103 replicons and between zero and five different plasmid replicons within each of 49
S
. Typhimurium draft genomes tested. The pMLST Web tool was able to subtype genomic sequencing data of plasmids, revealing both known plasmid sequence types (STs) and new alleles and ST variants. In conclusion, testing of the two Web tools using both fully assembled plasmid sequences and WGS-generated draft genomes showed them to be able to detect a broad variety of plasmids that are often associated with antimicrobial resistance in clinically relevant bacterial pathogens.
In Vitro
Activity of AZD5847 against Geographically Diverse Clinical Isolates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis
Authors: Werngren Jim , Wijkander Maria , Perskvist Nasrin , Balasubramanian V. , Sambandamurthy Vasan K. , Rodrigues Camilla , Hoffner Sven
Published: April 2014

The MIC of the novel antituberculosis (anti-TB) drug AZD5847 was determined against 146 clinical isolates from diverse geographical regions, including eastern Europe, North America, Africa, and Asia, using the automated Bactec Mycobacterial Growth Indicator Tube (MGIT) 960 system. These isolates originated from specimen sources such as sputum, bronchial alveolar lavage fluid, pleural fluid, abscess material, lung biopsies, and feces. The overall MIC
90
was 1.0 mg/liter (range, 0.125 to 4 mg/liter). The MICs of AZD5847 for isolates of
Mycobacterium tuberculosis
were similar among drug-sensitive strains, multidrug-resistant (MDR) strains, and extensively drug resistant (XDR) strains. The good
in vitro
activity of AZD5847 against
M. tuberculosis
and the lack of cross-resistance make this agent a promising anti-TB drug candidate.
Synergistic Effects of Clostridium perfringens Enterotoxin and Beta Toxin in Rabbit Small Intestinal Loops
Authors: Ma Menglin , Gurjar Abhijit , Theoret James R. , Garcia Jorge P. , Beingesser Juliann , Freedman John C. , Fisher Derek J. , McClane Bruce A. , Uzal Francisco A.
Published: April 2014

The ability of
Clostridium perfringens
type C to cause human enteritis necroticans (EN) is attributed to beta toxin (CPB). However, many EN strains also express
C. perfringens
enterotoxin (CPE), suggesting that CPE could be another contributor to EN. Supporting this possibility, lysate supernatants from modified Duncan-Strong sporulation (MDS) medium cultures of three CPE-positive type C EN strains caused enteropathogenic effects in rabbit small intestinal loops, which is significant since CPE is produced only during sporulation and since
C. perfringens
can sporulate in the intestines. Consequently, CPE and CPB contributions to the enteropathogenic effects of MDS lysate supernatants of CPE-positive type C EN strain CN3758 were evaluated using isogenic
cpb
and
cpe
null mutants. While supernatants of wild-type CN3758 MDS lysates induced significant hemorrhagic lesions and luminal fluid accumulation, MDS lysate supernatants of the
cpb
and
cpe
mutants caused neither significant damage nor fluid accumulation. This attenuation was attributable to inactivating these toxin genes since complementing the
cpe
mutant or reversing the
cpb
mutation restored the enteropathogenic effects of MDS lysate supernatants. Confirming that both CPB and CPE are needed for the enteropathogenic effects of CN3758 MDS lysate supernatants, purified CPB and CPE at the same concentrations found in CN3758 MDS lysates also acted together synergistically in rabbit small intestinal loops; however, only higher doses of either purified toxin independently caused enteropathogenic effects. These findings provide the first evidence for potential synergistic toxin interactions during
C. perfringens
intestinal infections and support a possible role for CPE, as well as CPB, in some EN cases.
Palliative medicine specialists’ causal explanations for depression in the palliative care setting: a qualitative in-depth interview study
Authors: Ng Felicity , Crawford Gregory B , Chur-Hansen Anna
Published: April 2014

Objective

Medical practitioners have different causal explanations for depression, and may have greater difficulty in explaining causality of depression in the palliative care setting. The objective of this study was to investigate and describe the causal explanations of depression in the palliative care setting, from the perspective of palliative medicine specialists.

Methods

Palliative medicine specialists practising in Australia were recruited and purposively sampled. Individual semistructured, in-depth interviews were conducted to explore their explanatory models of depression, including a focus on causal explanations. Nine participants were interviewed to reach data saturation. Interview transcripts were analysed for themes.

Results

Six themes for causal explanations of depression were identified: (1) Depression is inexplicable; (2) Biological explanations—primarily neurotransmitter depletion; (3) Psychological explanations—including reaction to circumstances, inability to accept illness and dying, diminished self, and coping mechanisms; (4) Social explanations—including inadequate social support, and contribution from modern medicine and societal norms; (5) Interrelationships between causal factors—mainly multifactoriality; (6) Different explanation for de novo and pre-existing depressions. Participants also articulated a link between causal explanations and clinical interventions.

Conclusions

Palliative medicine specialists hold causal explanations of depression that align with the biopsychosocial and vulnerability-stress models. They use multiple individual explanations with diverse theoretical underpinnings, and largely view depression as multifactorial in causality. Given that causal explanations are linked to clinical interventions, these findings have implications for clinical practice and medical education.
Delayed stenosis following stentriever use in acute stroke intervention
Authors: Macke Jeremy James , Bellew Michael P , Hellinger Frank R
Published: April 2014

We report two cases of delayed post-embolectomy stenosis—that is, a new stenosis in the vascular bed of a previous endovascular embolectomy. The first case was discovered incidentally in a patient returning after embolectomy for evaluation of cerebral aneurysms. The second case was discovered on an MR angiogram obtained to screen for stenosis. This was prompted by our experience with the first case. To our knowledge, this phenomenon has not been reported previously.
Zipf's law and phase transition
Authors: Lukierska-Walasek K. , Topolski K.
Published: April 2014

In this paper, we describe the link between the Zipf law and statistical distributions for the Fortuin–Kasteleyn clusters in Ising as well as Potts models. From these results, it is seen that Zipf's law can be a criterion of a phase transition, but it does not determine its order. We present the corresponding histograms for fixed domain configurations.
OPTIMAL CAPITAL STRUCTURE WITH SCALE EFFECTS UNDER SPECTRALLY NEGATIVE LÉVY MODELS
Authors: SURYA BUDHI ARTA , YAMAZAKI KAZUTOSHI
Published: April 2014

The optimal capital structure model with endogenous bankruptcy was first studied by Leland (1994) and Leland & Toft (1996), and was later extended to the spectrally negative Lévy model by Hilberink Rogers (2002) and Kyprianou Surya (2007). This paper incorporates scale effects by allowing the values of bankruptcy costs and tax benefits to be dependent on the firm's asset value. By using the fluctuation identities for the spectrally negative Lévy process, we obtain a candidate bankruptcy level as well as a sufficient condition for optimality. The optimality holds in particular when, monotonically in the asset value, the value of tax benefits is increasing, the loss amount at bankruptcy is increasing, and its proportion relative to the asset value is decreasing. The solution admits a semi-explicit form in terms of the scale function. A series of numerical studies are given to analyze the impacts of scale effects on the bankruptcy strategy and the optimal capital structure.
PromotionRank
Authors: Nurmi Petteri , Salovaara Antti , Forsblom Andreas , Bohnert Fabian , Floréen Patrik
Published: April 2014

We present PromotionRank, a technique for generating a personalized ranking of grocery product promotions based on the contents of the customer’s personal shopping list. PromotionRank consists of four phases. First, information retrieval techniques are used to map shopping list items onto potentially relevant product categories. Second, since customers typically buy more items than what appear on their shopping lists, the set of potentially relevant categories is expanded using collaborative filtering. Third, we calculate a rank score for each category using a statistical interest criterion. Finally, the available promotions are ranked using the newly computed rank scores. To validate the different phases, we consider 12 months of anonymized shopping basket data from a large national supermarket. To demonstrate the effectiveness of PromotionRank, we also present results from two user studies. The first user study was conducted in a controlled setting using shopping lists of different lengths, whereas the second study was conducted within a large national supermarket using real customers and their personal shopping lists. The results of the two studies demonstrate that PromotionRank is able to identify promotions that are considered both relevant and interesting. As part of the second study, we used PromotionRank to identify relevant promotions to advertise and measure the influence of the advertisements on purchases. The results of this evaluation indicate that PromotionRank is also capable of targeting advertisements, improving sales compared to a baseline that selects random advertisements.
Exploring Energy Scalability in Coprocessor-Dominated Architectures for Dark Silicon
Authors: Zheng Qiaoshi , Goulding-Hotta Nathan , Ricketts Scott , Swanson Steven , Taylor Michael Bedford , Sampson Jack
Published: April 2014

As chip designers face the prospect of increasingly dark silicon, there is increased interest in incorporating energy-efficient specialized coprocessors into general-purpose designs. For specialization to be a viable means of leveraging dark silicon, it must provide energy savings over the majority of execution for large, diverse workloads, and this will require deploying coprocessors in large numbers. Recent work has shown that automatically generated application-specific coprocessors can greatly improve energy efficiency, but it is not clear that current techniques will scale to
Coprocessor-Dominated Architectures
(
CoDAs
) with hundreds or thousands of coprocessors.

We show that scaling CoDAs to include very large numbers of coprocessors is challenging because of the energy cost of interconnects, the memory system, and leakage. These overheads grow with the number of coprocessors and, left unchecked, will squander the energy gains that coprocessors can provide. The article presents a detailed study of energy costs across a wide range of tiled CoDA designs and shows that careful choice of cache configuration, tile size, coarse-grain power management and transistor implementation can limit the growth of these overheads. For multithreaded workloads, designer must also take care to avoid excessive contention for coprocessors, which can significantly increase energy consumption. The results suggest that, for CoDAs that target larger workloads, amortizing shared overheads via multithreading can provide up to 3.8× reductions in energy per instruction, retaining much of the 5.3× potential of smaller designs.
Dynamic Behavior Specification and Dynamic Mapping for Real-Time Embedded Systems
Authors: Jung Hanwoong , Lee Chanhee , Kang Shin-Haeng , Kim Sungchan , Oh Hyunok , Ha Soonhoi
Published: April 2014

As the number of processors in a chip increases and more functions are integrated, the system status will change dynamically due to various factors such as the workload variation, QoS requirement, and unexpected component failure. A typical method to deal with the dynamics of the system is to decide the mapping decision at runtime, based on the local information of the system status. It is very challenging to guarantee any real-time performance of a certain application in such a dynamically varying system. To solve this problem, we propose a hybrid specification of dataflow and FSM models to specify the dynamic behavior of a system distinguishing inter- and intra-application dynamism. At the top level, each application is specified by a dataflow task and the dynamic behavior is modeled as a control task that supervises the execution of applications. Inside a dataflow task, we specify the dynamic behavior using a similar way as FSM-based SADF in which an application is specified by a synchronous dataflow graph for each mode of operation. It enables us to perform compile-time scheduling of each graph to maximize the throughput varying the number of allocated processors, and store the scheduling information. When a change in system state is detected at runtime, the number of allocated processors to the active tasks is determined dynamically utilizing the stored scheduling information of those tasks in order to meet the real-time requirements. The proposed technique is implemented in the HOPES design environment. Through preliminary experiments with a simple smartphone example, we show the viability of the proposed methodology.
Architecture Support for Domain-Specific Accelerator-Rich CMPs
Authors: Cong Jason , Ghodrat Mohammad Ali , Gill Michael , Grigorian Beayna , Reinman Glenn
Published: April 2014

This work discusses hardware architectural support for domain-specific accelerator-rich CMPs. First, we present a hardware resource management scheme for sharing of loosely coupled accelerators and arbitration of multiple requesting cores. Second, we present a mechanism for accelerator virtualization. This allows multiple accelerators to efficiently compose a larger virtual accelerator out of multiple smaller accelerators, as well as to collaborate as multiple copies of a simple accelerator. All of this work is supported by a fully automated simulation tool-chain for both accelerator generation and management. We present the applicability of our approach to four different application domains: medical imaging, commercial, computer vision, and navigation. Our results demonstrate large performance improvements and energy savings over a software implementation. We also show additional improvements that result from enhanced load balancing and simplification of the communication between the core and the arbitration mechanism.
A Cross-Layer Reliability Design Methodology for Efficient, Dependable Wireless Receivers
Authors: Gimmler-Dumont Christina , Wehn Norbert
Published: April 2014

Continued progressive downscaling of CMOS technologies threatens the reliability of chips for future embedded systems. We developed a novel design methodology for dependable wireless communication systems which exploits the mutual trade-offs of system performance, hardware reliability, and implementation complexity. Our cross-layer approach combines resilience techniques on hardware level with algorithmic techniques exploiting the available flexibility in the receiver. The overhead is minimized by recovering only from those hardware errors that have a strong impact on the system behavior. We apply our new methodology on a double-iterative MIMO-BICM receiver which belongs to the most complex systems in current communication standards.
Thermal Optimization in Network-on-Chip-Based 3D Chip Multiprocessors Using Dynamic Programming Networks
Authors: Dahir Nizar , Al-Dujaily Ra'ed , Mak Terrence , Yakovlev Alex
Published: April 2014

The substantial silicon density in 3D VLSI, albeit its numerous advantages, introduces serious thermal threats that would lead to faults and system failures. This article introduces a new strategy to effectively diffuse heat from NoC-based 3D CMPs. Runtime Dynamic Programming Network (DPN) is proposed to optimize routing directions and provide silicon temperature moderation. Both on-chip reliability and computational performance have been improved by 63% and 27%, respectively, with the DPN approach. This work enables a new avenue to explore the adaptability for future large-scale 3D integration.