bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Long-term assessment and serial evaluation of cardiorespiratory exercise performance and cardiac function in patients with atrial switch operation for complete transposition
Authors: Reybrouck Tony , Mertens Luc , Brown Steven , Eyskens Benedicte , Daenen Willem , Gewillig Marc 
Published: July 2011

AbstractBackground: At present, a considerable number of patients survive who underwent an atrial switch operation for correction of complete transposition. Our study aimed to assess their long-term exercise performance and the serial evolution of cardiac function.Methods: We studied 22 patients 5 to 17 years after an atrial switch operation, and followed them serially for 3.5 ± 2 years after the first evaluation. Cardiorespiratory exercise function was assessed by analysis of gas exhange and by determination of the ventilatory anaerobic threshold. Echocardiography was performed on all evaluations.Results: All patients were in Class I of the classification of the New York Heart Association at all assessments. Ventilatory anaerobic threshold, however, was significantly lower than normal. It averaged 77.9% ± 13.7 of the normal mean value at the initial evaluation, and remained stable when re-evaluated later (76.2 ± 13.7%). At the initial study, the increase in oxygen uptake during graded exercise was below the 95% confidence limit in 6 of the patients, and was below this level in 10 patients at re-assessment. The subnormal values for oxygen uptake during submaximal exercise were associated with moderate to severe haemodynamic dysfunction. At echocardiography, 15 of 17 patients studied twice had mild to moderate right ventricular dilation and tricuspidregurgiation, which remained virtually the same at reasssesment. A stable sinus rhythm was initially present in 17 patients, and persisted in 15 patients during follow-up.Conclusion: At medium term follow-up, cardiorespiratory exercise performance remains stable in patients after atrial switch repair. Serial exercise testing appears useful, because in individual patients in the present study, a decreasing exercise tolerance correlated with development of haemodynamic sequels.
Outcomes of transcatheter balloon angioplasty of obstruction in the neo-aortic arch after the Norwood operation
Authors: Soongswang Jarupim , McCrindle Brian W. , Jones Thomas K. , Vincent Robert N. , Hsu Daphne T. , Kuhn Michael A. , Moskowitz William B. , Cheatham John R. , Kholwadwala Dipak H. , Benson Lee N. , Nykanen David G. 
Published: July 2011

AbstractObstruction of the reconstructed aortic arch, or the neoaortic arch, is now known to be an important factor increasing mortality after the Norwood operation for hypoplastic left heart syndrome. Transcatheter balloon angioplasty has been shown to provide effective relief of both native aortic coarctation and obstructions of the aortic arch occurring subsequent to therapeutic intervention. We sought to determine the outcomes of balloon angioplasty used as an initial treatment for obstruction of the neoaortic arch occurring after the Norwood operation. We gathered the characteristics of 58 patients with such obstruction from 8 institutions, noting procedural factors and outcomes of initial balloon dilation. Obstruction occurred at a median interval of 4 months, with a range from 1.5 months to 6.3 years, after a Norwood operation. Ventricular dysfunction was present before dilation in 13 patients. Mean peak to peak systolic pressure gradients were acutely reduced from 31±20 mm Hg to 6±9 mmHg (p<0.001), with outcome subjectively judged to be successful in 89%- Three patients with pre-existing ventricular dysfunction died within 48 hours of dilation. There were 10 additional deaths during the period of followup, with Kaplan Meier estimates of survival after intervention of 87% at 1 month, 77% at 12 months, and 72% after 15 months. In addition, 9 patients required re-intervention during the period of follow-up, with Kaplan Meier estimates of freedom from re-intervention after dilation of 87% at 6 months, 78% at 12 months and 74% after 18 months. Although transcatheter dilation of neoaortic arch obstructions after Norwood operation is successful, there is a high risk of re-intervention and ongoing mortality in this subgroup of patients. Close follow-up is recommended.
The spectrum of fetal cardiac malformations
Authors: Cook Andrew C. 
Published: July 2011

AbstractIncreasingly, paediatric cardiologists are called upon to diagnose cardiac malformations prenatally. In the main, the types of malformation seen during fetal life will be similar to those documented postnatally, but the frequency with which they are encountered, as well as the views that can be used for diagnosis, will be different. This review aims to describe the anatomic spectrum of malformations seen in 917 fetal hearts examined consecutively following prenatal diagnosis. The distribution of anomalies is illustrated in terms of a simple sweep through the fetal thorax passing from the four-chamber plane to the outflow tracts, and then to more cranial views of the mediastinum. Two-thirds of the anomalies described would have been detectable in the four-chamber plane. Some, such as tricuspid valvar abnormalities, will alter the normal appearances of the four-chambers dramatically. In terms of the overall spectrum, however, such obvious abnormalities only form a minor part of the total number. Others, such as atrioventricular septal defect, will often require closer inspection of intracardiac anatomy, but will make up a large proportion of the entire cohort. Up to one third of the anomalies in the series would have required views more cranial to the four-chamber plane of section. In these, it would have been necessary to examine the nature of the left ventricular outflow tract, the crossing of the two outflows, or else the arterial arches in order to secure detection. In the fetus, these and other planes must be considered by the echocardiographer in order completely to detect and document the entire spectrum of cardiac abnormalities likely to be encountered.
The left-sided aortic arch in humans, viewed as the end-result of natural selection during vertebrate evolution
Authors: Muster Alexander J. , Idriss Rachid F. , Backer Carl L. 
Published: July 2011

AbstractAt some point during vertebrate evolution from species dwelling in water to living on land, the ancestral double or right aortic arches became single and left-sided in mammals, including humans, as the result of synchronous developments in cardiovascular and respiratory embryogenesis. Since left-sided aortic arches are unique to mammals, hemodynamics related to the placenta, specifically the requirement for a large arterial duct connecting to the descending aorta, may have led to switching from the right-sided to the left-sided arch. Additionally, development of a trilobar right lung and its bronchial tree, also unique to mammalian evolution, restricted the space above the high eparterial bronchus to a single large vessel. Consequently, mammals that mutated to the left-sided aortic arch avoided respiratory, digestive or circulatory problems that are often associated with an isolated right-sided aortic arch – something which could be considered a successful mistake. Due to natural selection, and survival of the fittest, the left-sided arch became the norm in mammals.In congenital cardiac malformations where a large arterial duct is not mandatory in fetal life, as in Fallot's tetralogy or common arterial trunk, a right-sided aortic arch continues to occur, perhaps as an atavistic reversion to the anatomy seen in ancestral vertebrates.
Exploring the potential for sustainable weed control with integrated rice−fish culture for smallholder irrigated rice agriculture in the Maranhão Lowlands of Amazonia
Authors: de Sousa Aurea Maria Barbosa , Santos Raimundo Reginaldo Soares , Moraes Flávio Henrique Reis , Gehring Christoph 
Published: July 2011

AbstractCombining existing traditions of rice and of fish in an integrated rice−fish (IRF) culture is a promising strategy for sustainably increasing land productivity and diminishing the need for external inputs in smallholder agriculture of Amazonia. This study evaluates the potential of IRF for weed control in irrigated rice production. It was conducted from August 18 to December 5, 2008 in the Maranhão lowlands in the eastern periphery of Amazonia. We compared weed communities in four 3-year-old IRF and four adjacent ‘conventional’ irrigated rice (CIR) fields at 20 and 40 days after transplanting (DAT), at the mid-vegetative stage and at the onset of flowering, which served as an indicator of potential grain yield. Rice–fish fields contained differing mixtures of herbivore and omnivore fish species totaling 4000 fish per ha or 1.7 fish per m3. Total weed density was reduced in the IRF system, particularly early in the season, the most critical stage for rice development. The integration of fish into irrigated rice cultivation affected weed species composition, with fish-weeding preferentially reducing monocotyledonous Cyperaceae, one of the more aggressive and problematic weed families in this region. Monocot weed density was negatively correlated with rice aboveground biomass at 40 DAT rice. Although floristic similarity between IRF and CIR fields was low, the impacts of IRF on weed species diversity and weed species richness were not significant. Thus, IRF was not associated with a simplification of the weed community. We conclude that fish-weeding may substitute for manual or chemical weeding in irrigated rice agriculture, an important consideration for resource-poor smallholder agriculture in environmentally sensitive riverine or delta areas of eastern Amazonia.
Still Crazy about Teaching after All These Years: An Interview with Dick Gorman
Authors: Burke Brian L. 
Published: July 2011

Richard Gorman received his BA in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame and his PhD in educational psychology from Fordham University. Over the years, he has taught at several colleges and universities—both in the east and west—and is currently a member of the Psychology Department at Central New Mexico Community College. He has taught courses in developmental, educational, and cognitive psychology, but is currently concentrating on the introductory psychology course. His publications include a text in the psychology of classroom learning, an introduction to Piaget's theory for teachers, and, more recently, an introductory psychology text. He has given presentations and workshops on discovery learning to various audiences including the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology (NITOP). Brian L. Burke is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Fort Lewis College, a public liberal arts college in Durango, Colorado. He is a licensed clinical psychologist whose principal academic interests include motivational interviewing and college teaching. He regularly attends teaching conferences, twice winning the Doug Bernstein Award for innovative teaching ideas (NITOP 2004, 2005). He also won the New Faculty Teaching Award at Fort Lewis College in 2005. He teaches a wide variety of courses, including introductory psychology, personality, abnormal, counseling, research methods, history of psychology (via a European trip), and forensic psychology. Brian hails originally from Montreal, Canada, and received his PhD from the University of Arizona in 2003.
Investigating the influence of the operating frequency on the gas phase emitter effect of dysprosium in ceramic metal halide lamps
Authors: Reinelt J , Westermeier M , Ruhrmann C , Bergner A , Luijks G M J F , Awakowicz P , Mentel J 
Published: July 2011

On page 4 in the second paragraph, the first sentence should read:The delay time of the current source, which is realized by an electronic device, varies so much in dependence on the operating parameters that the 'sync' output of the signal generator, by which the current source is controlled, is unsuitable to provide an appropriate trigger pulse.
A statistical framework for biomarker discovery in metabolomic time course data
Authors: Berk Maurice , Ebbels Timothy , Montana Giovanni 
Published: July 2011

Abstract
Motivation: Metabolomics is the study of the complement of small molecule metabolites in cells, biofluids and tissues. Many metabolomic experiments are designed to compare changes observed over time under two experimental conditions or groups (e.g. a control and drug-treated group) with the goal of identifying discriminatory metabolites or biomarkers that characterize each condition. A common study design consists of repeated measurements taken on each experimental unit thus producing time courses of all metabolites. We describe a statistical framework for estimating time-varying metabolic profiles and their within-group variability and for detecting between-group differences. Specifically, we propose (i) a smoothing splines mixed effects (SME) model that treats each longitudinal measurement as a smooth function of time and (ii) an associated functional test statistic. Statistical significance is assessed by a non-parametric bootstrap procedure.
Results: The methodology has been extensively evaluated using simulated data and has been applied to real nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy data collected in a preclinical toxicology study as part of a larger project lead by the COMET (Consortium for Metabonomic Toxicology). Our findings are compatible with the previously published studies.
Availability: An R script is freely available for download at http://www2.imperial.ac.uk/~gmontana/sme.htm.
Contact: g.montana@imperial.ac.uk
Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Rescue, Amplification, and Large-Scale Production of Helper-Dependent Adenoviral Vectors
Authors: Palmer Donna J. , Ng Philip 
Published: July 2011

INTRODUCTIONThis protocol describes in detail the rescue, amplification, and large-scale production of helper-dependent adenoviral vectors (HDAds) for gene transfer and gene therapy.Production of HDAd can be divided into three parts: (1) rescue, which involves converting pHDAd (plasmid form) to HDAd (viral form); (2) amplification, in which the amount of HDAd is increased by serial coinfections (passages) of the producer cells with the HDAd and the helper virus; and (3) large-scale production to generate large quantities of HDAd. HDAds (also referred to as gutless, gutted, mini, fully deleted, high-capacity, Δ, pseudo) are deleted of all virus-coding sequences. HDAds retain the advantages of early-generation Ad vectors including high-efficiency in vivo transduction and high-level transgene expression. However, the absence of viral gene expression in transduced cells permits long-term transgene expression in the absence of chronic toxicity. Moreover, the deletion of the viral sequences permits a cloning capacity of ∼37 kb. This allows for the delivery of whole-genomic loci, multiple transgenes, and large cis-acting elements to enhance, prolong, and regulate transgene expression. In addition, because the vector genome exists episomally in transduced cells, the risks of germ-line transmission and insertional mutagenesis leading to oncogenic transformation are negligible.
Electrophysiological Recording from Drosophila Taste Sensilla
Authors: Benton Richard , Dahanukar Anupama 
Published: July 2011

INTRODUCTIONThe chemical senses smell and taste, detect and discriminate an enormous diversity of environmental stimuli and provide fascinating but challenging models to investigate how sensory cues are represented in the brain. Important stimulus-coding events occur in peripheral sensory neurons, which express specific combinations of chemosensory receptors with defined ligand-response profiles. These receptors convert ligand recognition into spatial and temporal patterns of neural activity that are transmitted to and interpreted in central brain regions. Drosophila provides an attractive model to study chemosensory coding, because it possesses relatively simple peripheral olfactory and gustatory systems that display many organizational parallels to those of vertebrates. Moreover, virtually all of the peripheral chemosensory neurons are easily accessible for physiological analysis, as they are exposed on the surface of sensory organs in specialized sensory hairs called sensilla. In recent years, improvements in microscopy and instrumentation for electrode manipulation have opened up the much smaller Drosophila system to electrophysiological techniques, powerfully complementing many years of molecular genetic studies. As with most electrophysiological methods, there is probably no substitute for learning this technique directly from a laboratory in which it is already established. This protocol describes the basics of setting up the electrophysiology rig and stimulus delivery device, sample preparation, and performing and analyzing recordings of stimulus-evoked activity from Drosophila taste sensilla.
Setup and Demonstration of a Nanoelectrospray Ionization Source and Tandem Mass Spectrometry
Authors: Link Andrew J. , LaBaer Joshua 
Published: July 2011

INTRODUCTIONIn this protocol, an electrospray ionization source is assembled and an empty pulled microcapillary column is connected to the assembly for infusion of a peptide sample. The microcapillary column is positioned directly in front of the opening to the mass spectrometer. Angiotensin I peptide is infused using a nanoelectrospray ionization (nanoESI) source to demonstrate the fundamentals of electrospray ionization and tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS). The setup can also be used to tune the mass spectrometer for liquid chromatography (LC)-MS/MS experiments. After being tuned, the ion trap mass spectrometer is operated manually so that precursor scans can be performed to detect and analyze precursor ions. A selected ion is trapped and fragmented to demonstrate the principles of MS/MS.
Facilitative and antagonistic interactions between plant viruses in mixed infections
Authors: SYLLER JERZY 
Published: July 2011

SUMMARYMixed infections of plant viruses are common in nature, and a number of important virus diseases of plants are the outcomes of interactions between causative agents. Multiple infections lead to a variety of intrahost virus–virus interactions, many of which may result in the generation of variants showing novel genetic features, and thus change the genetic structure of the viral population. Hence, virus–virus interactions in plants may be of crucial significance for the understanding of viral pathogenesis and evolution, and consequently for the development of efficient and stable control strategies. The interactions between plant viruses in mixed infections are generally categorized as synergistic or antagonistic. Moreover, mixtures of synergistic and antagonistic interactions, creating usually unpredictable biological and epidemiological consequences, are likely to occur in plants. The mechanisms of some of these are still unknown. This review aims to bring together the current knowledge on the most commonly occurring facilitative and antagonistic interactions between related or unrelated viruses infecting the same host plant. The best characterized implications of these interactions for virus–vector–host relationships are included. The terms ‘synergism’ and ‘helper dependence’ for facilitative virus–virus interactions, and ‘cross‐protection’ and ‘mutual exclusion’ for antagonistic interactions, are applied in this article.
The tomato UV‐damaged DNA‐binding protein‐1 (DDB1) is implicated in pathogenesis‐related (PR) gene expression and resistance to Agrobacterium tumefaciens
Authors: LIU JIKAI , LI HANJING , MIAO MIN , TANG XIAOFENG , GIOVANNONI JIM , XIAO FANGMING , LIU YONGSHENG 
Published: July 2011

SUMMARYPlants defend themselves against potential pathogens via the recognition of pathogen‐associated molecular patterns (PAMPs). However, the molecular mechanisms underlying this PAMP‐triggered immunity (PTI) are largely unknown. In this study, we show that tomato HP1/DDB1, coding for a key component of the CUL4‐based ubiquitin E3 ligase complex, is required for resistance to Agrobacterium tumefaciens. We found that the DDB1‐deficient mutant (high pigment‐1, hp1) is susceptible to nontumorigenic A. tumefaciens. The efficiency of callus generation from the hp1 cotyledons was extremely low as a result of the necrosis caused by Agrobacterium infection. On infiltration of nontumorigenic A. tumefaciens into leaves, the hp1 mutant moderately supported Agrobacterium growth and developed disease symptoms, but the expression of the pathogenesis‐related gene SlPR1a1 and several PTI marker genes was compromised at different levels. Moreover, exogenous application of salicylic acid (SA) triggered SlPR1a1 gene expression and enhanced resistance to A. tumefaciens in wild‐type tomato plants, whereas these SA‐regulated defence responses were abolished in hp1 mutant plants. Thus, HP1/DDB1 may function through interaction with the SA‐regulated PTI pathway in resistance against Agrobacterium infection.
The challenge of haemoglobinopathies in resource‐poor countries
Authors: Weatherall David J. 
Published: July 2011

SummaryThe haemoglobinopathies, inherited disorders of the structure or synthesis of haemoglobin, are the commonest monogenic diseases. Approximately 80% of the annual births of babies with these conditions occur in low‐or middle‐income countries, many of which have extremely limited facilities for their control and management. Given that the population size of many of them is growing and, as social and public health facilities improve, increasing numbers of these babies will survive to present for diagnosis and treatment. Hence, the haemoglobinopathies will constitute an increasing global health burden. Hitherto, they have been largely ignored by governments of high‐frequency countries and by the international health agencies. However, a start has been made in developing control programmes in some low‐income countries and there is already considerable evidence that much can be done to improve the situation by the development of partnerships between groups in richer countries and centres in low‐income countries. The natural extension of this approach is the further development of partnerships between countries where expertise in this field has been developed and adjacent countries where no such expertise exists. It is vital that the haematology community of the richer countries becomes involved in programmes of this type while, at the same time, putting pressure on their governments and on international health agencies for support for this work.