bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Impact of the Thoracoabdominal Approach on Peri‐ and Postoperative Outcomes of Hepatectomy for Hepatocellular Carcinoma
Authors: Okamura Yukiyasu , Takeda Shin , Fujii Tsutomu , Sugimoto Hiroyuki , Nomoto Shuji , Nakao Akimasa 
Published: March 2011

AbstractBackgroundResection of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) located in the right liver often requires hepatic mobilization. However, exposure of the HCC may be restricted when using the conventional abdominal approach (AA). In such cases, a thoracoabdominal approach (TA) can provide a good operating field. Although several studies have reported on the TA for hepatectomy for HCC, none have been published since 2003. Accordingly, this issue seemed to have been resolved, based on the advantages of this approach. However, surgical instruments are constantly improving and hepatectomy may be possible without the TA.MethodsData were retrospectively collected from 284 consecutive patients who underwent primary hepatectomy for HCC located in the right liver between January 1991 and December 2009. We compared the perioperative outcomes between patients who underwent the TA (n = 111) and those who underwent the AA (n = 173).ResultsPatient characteristics of both groups were comparable. The morbidity rate (Clavien grade ≥ 1) was significantly greater with the TA than with the AA (64.2 vs. 49.2%, p = 0.01), as was operative time (median = 370 vs. 315 min, p = 0.001) and hospital stay (median = 25 vs. 21 days, p = 0.005). There were no differences in hospital mortality or overall or disease‐free survival.ConclusionsThe TA provides no additional benefits over the AA in terms of safety and postoperative outcomes. We recommend that the TA should be used in exceptional circumstances because it resulted in a higher morbidity rate and longer operative time and postoperative hospitalization compared with the AA.
VEGF‐D Correlates with Metastatic Disease in Gastric Cancer Patients Undergoing Surgery
Authors: Schimanski Carl C. , Schlaegel Friederike , Jordan Mareike , Moehler Markus , Sgourakis George , Drescher Daniel G. , Galle Peter R. , Lang Hauke , Gockel Ines 
Published: March 2011

AbstractBackgroundThe present study was designed to evaluate the impact of the tyrosine kinase ligands VEGF‐A/C/D, PDGF‐A/B on tumor dissemination and survival in gastric cancer. This is the first study analyzing all these parameters in a homogeneous patient population undergoing surgery.MethodsThe expression pattern of VEGF‐A/C/D and PDGF‐A/B was analyzed by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT‐PCR) in 69 samples of human gastric adenocarcinoma and correlated with tumor stage and survival.ResultsExpression of the ligand VEGF‐D significantly correlated with distant metastatic disease (P = 0.00001) but not with patient survival. However, VEGF‐A inversely correlated with M1 and grading, PDGF‐A inversely correlated with pT and pN category. In contrast, VEGF‐C and PDGF‐B did not have an impact on clinicopathological parameters.ConclusionsThe ligand VEGF‐D, rather than the other ligands or tyrosine kinase receptors analyzed, is associated with progressive disease in gastric cancer patients undergoing surgery. The VEGF‐D ligand might be a helpful marker indicating disseminated disease, and targeting VEGF‐D may be a potential therapeutic strategy, although limitations imposed by the selected sample population have to be considered critically.
Tolerance of two invasive thistles to repeated disturbance
Authors: Zhang Rui , Heberling J. Mason , Haner Emily , Shea Katriona 
Published: March 2011

AbstractMany invasive species have short life cycles, high reproduction, and easily dispersed offspring that make them good ruderal species under disturbance. However, the tolerance of such ruderal species to disturbance is often overlooked. In a 2‐year mowing study, we applied frequent intense disturbances to examine the tolerance of two congeneric invasive thistles, Carduus acanthoides and Carduus nutans, and potential differences in their responses. Our results show that both species can survive multiple mowing events, with C. acanthoides surviving repeated intense mowing through a whole season. Furthermore, C. acanthoides was found to adjust its growth form to the disturbance regime, and successfully overwintered and reproduced in the subsequent growing season if the disturbance was terminated. Our results support the idea that tolerance to disturbance should be considered when examining invasions by short‐lived monocarpic species, since avoidance of disturbance via rapid life cycle completion and seed production, and tolerance of disturbance via regrowth can co‐occur in these species. Consequently, management of short‐lived invasives should take both life history strategies into account.
Item Screening in Graphical Loglinear Rasch Models
Authors: Kreiner Svend , Christensen Karl Bang 
Published: March 2011

AbstractIn behavioural sciences, local dependence and DIF are common, and purification procedures that eliminate items with these weaknesses often result in short scales with poor reliability. Graphical loglinear Rasch models (Kreiner & Christensen, in Statistical Methods for Quality of Life Studies, ed. by M. Mesbah, F.C. Cole & M.T. Lee, Kluwer Academic, pp. 187–203, 2002) where uniform DIF and uniform local dependence are permitted solve this dilemma by modelling the local dependence and DIF. Identifying loglinear Rasch models by a stepwise model search is often very time consuming, since the initial item analysis may disclose a great deal of spurious and misleading evidence of DIF and local dependence that has to disposed of during the modelling procedure.Like graphical models, graphical loglinear Rasch models possess Markov properties that are useful during the statistical analysis if they are used methodically. This paper describes how. It contains a systematic study of the Markov properties and the way they can be used to distinguish spurious from genuine evidence of DIF and local dependence and proposes a strategy for initial item screening that will reduce the time needed to identify a graphical loglinear Rasch model that fits the item responses. The last part of the paper illustrates the item screening procedure on simulated data and on data on the PF subscale measuring physical functioning in the SF36 Health Survey inventory.
Mild musculoskeletal and locomotor alterations in adult rats with white matter injury following prenatal ischemia
Authors: Delcour Maxime , Russier Michael , Xin Dong L. , Massicotte Vicky S. , Barbe Mary F. , Coq Jacques‐Olivier 
Published: March 2011

AbstractEarly brain injury including white matter damage (WMD) appears strongly correlated to perinatal hypoxia‐ischemia and adverse neurological outcomes in preterm survivors. Indeed, WMD has been widely associated with subtle to major motor disturbances, sensory, behavioral and cognitive impairments in preterm infants who afterward develop cerebral palsy (CP). Prenatal ischemia (PI) has been shown to reproduce the main features of WMD observed in preterm infants. The present study was aimed at determining in adult rats the impact of PI on brain axons, musculoskeletal histology and locomotor activity. PI was induced by unilateral intrauterine artery ligation at E17 in pregnant rats. We found axonal degeneration and reactive astrogliosis in several white matter regions of adult PI rats. We found mild myopathic and secondary joint changes, including increased variability in myofiber size in several hind limb muscles, decreased myofibers numbers but increased Pax 7 cells and myofiber size in the gastrocnemius, and mild knee and ankle chondromalacia. Although treadmill locomotion appeared normal, several kinematic parameters, such as stride length, amplitude, velocity and leg joint angles were altered in adult PI rats compared to shams. Using intra‐ and inter‐group variability of kinematic parameters, PI seemed to impair the maturation of locomotion on the treadmill. In addition, PI rats exhibited spontaneous hyperactivity in open‐field test. Musculoskeletal changes appeared concomitant with mild impairments in gait and posture. Our rodent model of WMD based on PI reproduces the mild motor deficits and musculoskeletal changes observed in many preterm infants with a perinatal history of hypoxia‐ischemia, and contributes towards a better understanding of the interplay between brain injury, musculoskeletal histopathology and gait disturbances encountered subsequently.
Neonatal exposure to genistein ameliorates high-fat diet-induced non-alcoholic steatohepatitis in rats
Authors: Huang Chengfei , Qiao Xubai , Dong Bing 
Published: March 2011

Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is becoming a prevalent disease in developing countries with no effective therapy. Isoflavones such as genistein have been shown to prevent NASH in a rat model, but the effects of neonatal exposure to genistein on lipid metabolism have been rarely studied. In the present study, three doses of genistein (30, 300 or 1200 μg/rat per d) were injected (subcutaneously) into neonatal male Sprague–Dawley rats at postnatal days 1–5. After weaning, these rats were allowed free access to a high-fat diet for 6 weeks. The results demonstrate that NASH was induced by high fat feeding in the control rats, whereas genistein-treated rats displayed smaller body weight, and lower hepatic inflammation and steatosis. The mid dose of genistein was most effective. Neonatal exposure to genistein also resulted in a lower incidence of apoptotic cells in the liver. Additionally, neonatal genistein-treated rats showed lower hepatic expression of fatty acid synthase and sterol regulatory element-binding protein-1, but higher expression of PPARα, indicative of lower rates of lipid synthesis and higher rates of β-oxidation. These results indicate that neonatal treatment with genistein has a prolonged effect on hepatic lipid metabolism that is maintained post-weaning, offering a potential approach for the prevention of hepatic steatosis and NASH.
Arabic influences on Tigre: A preliminary evaluation
Authors: Bulakh Maria , Kogan Leonid 
Published: March 2011

AbstractTigre, an Ethio-Semitic language spoken in Eritrea by a predominantly Muslim population, is known to have remained in intensive contact with Arabic since at least the nineteenth century. In the present article we attempt to survey the lexical and grammatical features of Tigre which are potentially attributable to Arabic influence. The genealogical proximity of Arabic and Ethio-Semitic complicates the task, as borrowed features and common retentions are not always easily distinguishable. In the lexical domain, the Arabic impact is undoubtedly conspicuous: thus, even in the core vocabulary Arabic loanwords are more prominent than in any other Ethio-Semitic language. Nevertheless, for many individual lexemes the borrowing hypothesis remains to be substantiated. Recent Arabic influence is probably responsible for a few relatively superficial features of Tigre phonetics and morphology. Several more deeply-rooted features may in principle be due to a more ancient and more intensive contact with Arabic: the specific influence of the ejectives on the vowels; the grammatical categories of singulative and diminutive; the diversity of verbal noun patterns in the basic stem; and several types of broken plural formation.
Medieval Arabic accounts of the conquest of Cordoba: Creating a narrative for a provincial capital
Authors: Clarke Nicola 
Published: March 2011

AbstractLike most early Islamic history writing, the tradition surrounding the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in 711 is the product of later debates and priorities rather than a true reflection of eighth-century circumstances. Rather than seek to reconstruct what is lost, this article explores what the sources have to tell us about these later priorities: that is, what the authors, their patrons and their wider environment valued in the history that they retold. Its focus is the conquest of Cordoba, narratives about which entered the tradition in the tenth century, as a result of the patronage of history writing by the Umayyad caliphsʿAbd al-Raḥmān III (r. 912–61) and al-Ḥakam II (r. 961–76). These tenth-century narratives are expressions of both caliphal ideology and the writers' own status in their society.
Young children's understanding of markedness in non-verbal communication*
Authors: LIEBAL KRISTIN , CARPENTER MALINDA , TOMASELLO MICHAEL 
Published: March 2011

ABSTRACTSpeakers often anticipate how recipients will interpret their utterances. If they wish some other, less obvious interpretation, they may ‘mark’ their utterance (e.g. with special intonations or facial expressions). We investigated whether two- and three-year-olds recognize when adults mark a non-verbal communicative act – in this case a pointing gesture – as special, and so search for a not-so-obvious referent. We set up the context of cleaning up and then pointed to an object. Three-year-olds inferred that the adult intended the pointing gesture to indicate that object, and so cleaned it up. However, when the adult marked her pointing gesture (with exaggerated facial expression) they took the object's hidden contents or a hidden aspect of it as the intended referent. Two-year-olds' appreciation of such marking was less clear-cut. These results demonstrate that markedness is not just a linguistic phenomenon, but rather something concerning the pragmatics of intentional communication more generally.
Kant On Moral Agency and Women's Nature
Authors: Mikkola Mari 
Published: March 2011

AbstractSome commentators have condemned Kant's moral project from a feminist perspective based on Kant's apparently dim view of women as being innately morally deficient. Here I will argue that although his remarks concerning women are unsettling at first glance, a more detailed and closer examination shows that Kant's view of women is actually far more complex and less unsettling than that attributed to him by various feminist critics. My argument, then, undercuts the justification for the severe feminist critique of Kant's moral project.
The Moral Value of Artistic Beauty in Kant
Authors: Cannon Joseph 
Published: March 2011

AbstractIn the thirdCritique, Kant argues that it is “always the mark of a good soul” to take an immediate interest in natural beauty, because it indicates an interest in harmony between nature and moral freedom. He, however, denies that there can be a similarly significant interest in artistic beauty. I argue that Kant ought not to deny this value to artistic beauty because his account of fine art as the joint product of the “natural gift” of genius and the discipline of taste commits him to the claim that artistic beauty expresses such a harmony between nature and freedom.
Double-lock ratchet mechanism revealing the role of αSER-344 in F
o
F
1
ATP synthase
Authors: Beke-Somfai Tamás , Lincoln Per , Nordén Bengt 
Published: March 2011

In a majority of living organisms, F
o
F
1
ATP synthase performs the fundamental process of ATP synthesis. Despite the simple net reaction formula, ADP + P
i
→ ATP + H
2
O, the detailed step-by-step mechanism of the reaction yet remains to be resolved owing to the complexity of this multisubunit enzyme. Based on quantum mechanical computations using recent high resolution X-ray structures, we propose that during ATP synthesis the enzyme first prepares the inorganic phosphate for the
γ
P-O
ADP
bond-forming step via a double-proton transfer. At this step, the highly conserved αS344 side chain plays a catalytic role. The reaction thereafter progresses through another transition state (TS) having a planar

ion configuration to finally form ATP. These two TSs are concluded crucial for ATP synthesis. Using stepwise scans and several models of the nucleotide-bound active site, some of the most important conformational changes were traced toward direction of synthesis. Interestingly, as the active site geometry progresses toward the ATP-favoring tight binding site, at both of these TSs, a dramatic increase in barrier heights is observed for the reverse direction, i.e., hydrolysis of ATP. This change could indicate a “ratchet” mechanism for the enzyme to ensure efficacy of ATP synthesis by shifting residue conformation and thus locking access to the crucial TSs.
Structure of bacteriophage
ϕ
29 head fibers has a supercoiled triple repeating helix-turn-helix motif
Authors: Xiang Ye , Rossmann Michael G. 
Published: March 2011

The tailed bacteriophage
ϕ
29 capsid is decorated with 55 fibers attached to quasi-3-fold symmetry positions. Each fiber is a homotrimer of gene product 8.5 (gp8.5) and consists of two major structural parts, a pseudohexagonal base and a protruding fibrous portion that is about 110 Å in length. The crystal structure of the C-terminal fibrous portion (residues 112–280) has been determined to a resolution of 1.6 Å. The structure is about 150 Å long and shows three distinct structural domains designated as head, neck, and stem. The stem region is a unique three-stranded helix-turn-helix supercoil that has not previously been described. When fitted into a cryoelectron microscope reconstruction of the virus, the head structure corresponded to a disconnected density at the distal end of the fiber and the neck structure was located in weak density connecting it to the fiber. Thin section studies of
Bacillus subtilis
cells infected with fibered or fiberless
ϕ
29 suggest that the fibers might enhance the attachment of the virions onto the host cell wall.
Genetic elimination of dengue vector mosquitoes
Authors: Wise de Valdez Megan R. , Nimmo Derric , Betz John , Gong Hong-Fei , James Anthony A. , Alphey Luke , Black William C. 
Published: March 2011

An approach based on mosquitoes carrying a conditional dominant lethal gene (release of insects carrying a dominant lethal, RIDL) is being developed to control the transmission of dengue viruses by vector population suppression. A transgenic strain, designated OX3604C, of the major dengue vector,
Aedes aegypti
, was engineered to have a repressible female-specific flightless phenotype. This strain circumvents the need for radiation-induced sterilization, allows genetic sexing resulting in male-only releases, and permits the release of eggs instead of adult mosquitoes. OX3604C males introduced weekly into large laboratory cages containing stable target mosquito populations at initial ratios of 8.5–10∶1 OX3604C∶target eliminated the populations within 10–20 weeks. These data support the further testing of this strain in contained or confined field trials to evaluate mating competitiveness and environmental and other effects. Successful completion of the field trials should facilitate incorporation of this approach into area-wide dengue control or elimination efforts as a component of an integrated vector management strategy.
Ion clustering in aqueous solutions probed with vibrational energy transfer
Authors: Bian Hongtao , Wen Xiewen , Li Jiebo , Chen Hailong , Han Suzee , Sun Xiuquan , Song Jian , Zhuang Wei , Zheng Junrong 
Published: March 2011

Despite prolonged scientific efforts to unravel the hydration structures of ions in water, many open questions remain, in particular concerning the existences and structures of ion clusters in 1∶1 strong electrolyte aqueous solutions. A combined ultrafast 2D IR and pump/probe study through vibrational energy transfers directly observes ion clustering in aqueous solutions of LiSCN, NaSCN, KSCN and CsSCN. In a near saturated KSCN aqueous solution (water/KSCN molar ratio = 2.4/1), 95% of the anions form ion clusters. Diluting the solution results in fewer, smaller, and tighter clusters. Cations have significant effects on cluster formation. A small cation results in smaller and fewer clusters. The vibrational energy transfer method holds promise for studying a wide variety of other fast short-range molecular interactions.
Leveraging Electronic Medical Records for Surveillance of Surgical Site Infection in a Total Joint Replacement Population
Authors: Inacio Maria C. S. , Paxton Elizabeth W. , Chen Yuexin , Harris Jessica , Eck Enid , Barnes Sue , Namba Robert S. , Ake Christopher F. 
Published: March 2011

Objective.TO evaluate whether a hybrid electronic screening algorithm using a total joint replacement (TJR) registry, electronic surgical site infection (SSI) screening, and electronic health record (EHR) review of SSI is sensitive and specific for SSI detection and reduces chart review volume for SSI surveillance.Design.Validation study.Setting.A large health maintenance organization (HMO) with 8.6 million members.Methods.Using codes for infection, wound complications, cellullitis, procedures related to infections, and surgeon-reported complications from the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification, we screened each TJR procedure performed in our HMO between January 2006 and December 2008 for possible infections. Flagged charts were reviewed by clinical-content experts to confirm SSIs. SSIs identified by the electronic screening algorithm were compared with SSIs identified by the traditional indirect surveillance methodology currently employed in our HMO. Positive predictive values (PPVs), negative predictive values (NPVs), and specificity and sensitivity values were calculated. Absolute reduction of chart review volume was evaluated.Results.The algorithm identified 4,001 possible SSIs (9.5%) for the 42,173 procedures performed for our TJR patient population. A total of 440 case patients (1.04%) had SSIs (PPV, 11.0%; NPV, 100.0%). The sensitivity and specificity of the overall algorithm were 97.8% and 91.5%, respectively.Conclusion.An electronic screening algorithm combined with an electronic health record review of flagged cases can be used as a valid source for TJR SSI surveillance. The algorithm successfully reduced the volume of chart review for surveillance by 90.5%.