julilili42/papers huggingface dataset:
Abstract 13606: Platelet Activation is Less Enhanced in the New Balloon Expandable Edwards Sapien 3 Valve Compared to Its Predecessor Model (Edwards Sapien XT)
2015-11-10

Aim of the study: Stroke and thromboembolic events after transfemoral aortic valve replacement (TAVR) continue to be a problem. The aim of our study was to compare platelet aggregation (Agg) and platelet activation (PA) observed with two different catheter valves, the ESV-XT and the newer ESV-3 valve in patients (pts) undergoing TAVR on dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT). Methods and results: 174 pts with severe aortic stenosis and high surgical risk underwent successfully TAVR (60 ESV-XT; 114 ESV-3). Platelet Agg and PA (CD62P expression) were evaluated before and for the following 3 days after TAVR under DAPT. Platelet Agg was inhibited to the same extent in both valve types and there was no significant difference in platelet drop between both valve types between day 0 and day 3 [ESV-XT versus ESV-3: median (25th-75th percentile): platelet count (x 1000 ): 55 (42-74) versus 61(42-93), p=0.280]. However there was an enhanced CD62P expression directly after TAVR with the ESV-XT compared to the ESV-3 [CD62P (MIF): 7.4 (6.8-8.6) versus 6.6 (6-7.9), p=0.014 ]. Surface expression of platelet CD62P was associated with the occurrence of residual aortic regurgitation (AR) and was significantly higher in pts with residual AR [ CD62P (Mild AR) versus CD 62 P (no or trace AR): 7.9 (7.3-9.1) versus 7.1 (6.4 -8.0), p &lt; 0.001)]. Conclusion: Although platelet inhibition was similar in both valve types, platelet activation was significantly enhanced in pts with the ESV-XT compared to the ESV-3 valve and was associated to the amount of residual AR which was significantly reduced by ESV-3, which may have implications for thromboischemic events following TAVR procedure.
Behavioral Bias for Food Reflected in Hand Movements: A Preliminary Study with Healthy Subjects
2015-11-12

Palatable food induces general approach tendencies when compared to nonfood stimuli. For eating disorders, the modification of an attention bias toward food was proposed as a treatment option. Similar approaches have been efficient for other psychiatric conditions and, recently, successfully incorporated approach motivation. The direct impact of attentional biases on spontaneous natural behavior has hardly been investigated so far, although actions may serve as an intervention target, especially seeing the recent advances in the field of embodied cognition. In this study, we addressed the interplay of motor action execution and cognition when interacting with food objects. In a Virtual Reality (VR) setting, healthy participants repeatedly grasped or warded high-calorie food or hand-affordant ball objects using their own dominant hand. This novel experimental paradigm revealed an attention-like bias in hand-based actions: 3D objects of food were collected faster than ball objects, and this difference correlated positively with both individual body mass index and diet-related attitudes. The behavioral bias for food in hand movements complements several recent experimental and neurophysiological findings. Implications for the use of VR in the treatment of eating-related health problems are discussed.
Collision Detection for Deformable Objects
2015-11-12

Interactive environments for dynamically deforming objects play an important role in surgery simulation and entertainment technology. These environments require fast deformable models and very efficient collision handling techniques. While collision detection for rigid bodies is well-investigated, collision detection for deformable objects introduces additional challenging problems. This paper focusses on these aspects and summarizes recent research in the area of deformable collision detection. Various approaches based on bounding volume hierarchies, distance fields, and spatial partitioning are discussed. Further, image-space techniques and stochastic methods are considered. Applications in cloth modeling and surgical simulation are presented.
Rendering and Visualization in Parallel Environments
2015-11-12

The continuing commoditization of the computer market has precipitated a qualitative change. Increasingly powerful processors, large memories, big harddisk, high-speed networks, and fast 3D rendering hardware are now affordable without a large capital outlay. Clusters of workstations and SMP-servers are utilizing these technologies to drive interactive applications like large graphical display walls (i.e., Powerwall or CAVE systems). In this tutorial, attendees will learn how to understand and leverage (technical and personal) workstation- and serverbased systems as components for parallel rendering. The goal of the tutorial is twofold: Attendees will thoroughly understand the important characteristics workstations architectures. We will present an overview of different workstation (Intel-based and others) and server architectures (including graphics hardware), addressing both single-processors as well as SMP architectures. We will also introduce important methods of programming in parallel environment with special attention how such techniques apply to developing cluster-based parallel renderers. Attendees will learn about different approaches to implement parallel renderers. The tutorial will cover parallel polygon and volume rendering. We will explain the underlying concepts of workload characterization, workload partitioning, and static, dynamic, and adaptive load balancing. We will then apply these concepts to characterize various parallelization strategies reported in the literature for polygon and volume rendering. We abstract from the actual implementation of these strategies and instead focus on a comparison of their benefits and drawbacks. Case studies will provide additional material to explain the use of these techniques. The tutorial will be structured into three main sections: We will first discuss the fundamentals of parallel programming and parallel machine architectures. Topics include message passing vs. shared memory, thread programming, a review of different SMP architectures, clustering techniques, PC architectures for personal workstations, and graphics hardware architectures. The second section builds on this foundation to describe key concepts and particular algorithms for parallel polygon and volume rendering. These concepts are supplemented with concrete parallel rendering implementations
Conditions for exchangeable coalescents to come down from infinity
2015-11-12

An improved condition to come down from infinity for exchangeable coalescent processes with simultaneous multiple collisions of ancestral lineages is provided. For non-critical coalescents this leads to an improved necessary and sufficient condition for the coalescent to come down from infinity. Ananalog con- jecture for the full class of exchangeable coalescents is presented. New examples of critical coalescents are studied in detail. The results extend those obtained by J. Schweinsberg in Section 5.5 of 'Coalescents with simultaneous multiple collisions', Electron. J. Probab. 5, 1-50.
Fast Distance Field Interpolation for Reconstruction of Surfaces from Contours
2015-11-12

One simple and robust way to get a reconstruction of surfaces from a given contour stack dealing well with branching and other problems which are generally difficult to solve is based on the well known MC-algorithm. To overcome the staircase artefacts produced by the MC-algorithm Jones et. al. 3 proposed to use a distance field interpolation between the slices and to run the MC-algorithm on this distance field. The main problem of this approach is the distance field computation as it is very time consuming especially if high resolution grids (e.g. 10241024 are used. Therefore, in the original algorithm the resolution of the chosen grid is much less than the resolution of the given contour sacrificing accuracy of the resulting surface. Especially in medical applications this is not accepted by the doctors. In this paper we introduce a new method for the computation of the discrete distance field, which is a breaktrough in terms of speed and accuracy. This new method allows us to reconstruct surfaces from contour stacks with guaranteed accuracy in reasonable time. Several examples show the power of this approach.
Virtual Endoscopy in Research and Clinical Practice
2015-11-12

Virtual endoscopy is among the most active topics in virtual medicine and medical imaging. It focuses on the virtual representation of minimally invasive procedures for training, planning, and diagnosis without an actual invasive intervention. In the past few years, virtual endoscopy modes have been transferred from research systems in virtually every commercial medical imaging software, but with a varying quality and flexibility. This report covers concepts used in current systems in research and products, and how they might be applied to daily practice in health-care. Specifically, I will start with an introduction into virtual endoscopy and the related medical field. This will also include typical scenarios of virtual endoscopy applications as they appear in clinical practice. This part will be followed by a discussion of the technical issues of virtual endoscopy and how are addressed in currently available systems. Among these issues are navigation through the respective body organ and the orientation aids for the users. Furthermore, I will highlight the different rendering techniques used and its impact on render speed and quality.
Analysis of HST/COS spectra of the bare C–O stellar core H1504+65 and a high-velocity twin in the Galactic halo
2015-11-13

H1504+65 is an extremely hot white dwarf (effective temperature Teff = 200 000 K) with a carbon-oxygen dominated atmosphere devoid of hydrogen and helium. This atmospheric composition was hitherto unique among hot white dwarfs (WDs), and it could be related to recently detected cooler WDs with C or O dominated spectra. The origin of the H and He deficiency in H1504+65 is unclear. To further assess this problem, we performed ultraviolet spectroscopy with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) aboard the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). In accordance with previous far-ultraviolet spectroscopy performed with the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer, the most prominent lines stem from C iv, O v–vi, and Ne vi–viii. Archival HST/COS spectra are utilized to prove that the supersoft X-ray source RX J0439.8−6809 is, considering the exotic composition, a twin of H1504+65 that is even hotter (Teff = 250 000 K). In contrast to earlier claims, we find that the star is not located in the Large Magellanic Cloud but a foreground object in the Galactic halo at a distance of 9.2 kpc, 5.6 kpc below the Galactic plane, receding with vrad = +220 km s-1.
Communication: Dynamical density functional theory for dense suspensions of colloidal hard spheres
2015-11-13

We study structural relaxation of colloidal hard spheres undergoing Brownian motion using dynamical density functional theory. Contrary to the partial linearization route [D. Stopper et al., Phys. Rev. E 92, 022151 (2015)] which amounts to using different free energy functionals for the self and distinct part of the van Hove function G(r, t), we put forward a unified description employing a single functional for both components. To this end, interactions within the self part are removed via the zero-dimensional limit of the functional with a quenched self component. In addition, we make use of a theoretical result for the long-time mobility in hard-sphere suspensions, which we adapt to the inhomogeneous fluid. Our results for G(r, t) are in excellent agreement with numerical simulations even in the dense liquid phase. In particular, our theory accurately yields the crossover from free diffusion at short times to the slower long-time diffusion in a crowded environment.
Transition-Metal Phthalocyanines on Transition-Metal Oxides: Iron and Cobalt Phthalocyanine on Epitaxial MnO and TiOx Films
2015-11-13

The interaction at interfaces between transition-metal phthalocyanines and ultrathin transition-metal oxide films is studied by means of photoemission (PES) and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS). Our results are compared to the recently investigated system CoPc on MnO. A flat-lying adsorption geometry of iron and cobalt phthalocyanines (FePc and CoPc) on the different oxide substrates was observed: ultrathin epitaxially grown MnO films and ultrathin TiOx films. A charge transfer from the MnO, in particular, to the Fe atom of the FePc molecule is observed by both PES and XAS. X-ray absorption spectra of the N K-edge of FePc do not hint at a nitrogen involvement in the interaction process. As a consequence of the charge transfer, a shift of the Fermi level of the semiconducting MnO films is observed, which is visible as a shift of MnO related core levels to lower binding energy. In contrast, CoPc and FePc deposited on TiOx show no hints for a charge transfer, although the flat-lying adsorption geometry allows in principle a maximum interaction between the π-system and the substrate. Increased surface roughness (compared to MnO) and an oxygen termination of the surface of the TiOx films is considered to suppress a possible strong interaction between the organic molecules and the substrate.
Mycophenolate sodium for the treatment of chronic non-infectious uveitis of childhood
2015-11-13

Our data suggest that MPS is useful and well tolerated in children with chronic uveitis. MPS seems to be an effective drug for the treatment of chronic non-infectious uveitis of childhood and may be preferred as a first-line steroid-sparing agent in this form of uveitis.
Soldiers in a Stingless Bee
2015-11-16

The differentiation of workers into morphological subcastes (e.g., soldiers) represents an important evolutionary transition and is thought to improve division of labor in social insects. Soldiers occur in many ant and termite species, where they make up a small proportion of the workforce. A common assumption of worker caste evolution is that soldiers are behavioral specialists. Here, we report the first test of the "rare specialist" hypothesis in a eusocial bee. Colonies of the stingless bee Tetragonisca angustula are defended by a small group of morphologically differentiated soldiers. Contrary to the rare specialist hypothesis, we found that soldiers worked more (+34%-41%) and performed a greater variety of tasks (+23%-34%) than other workers, particularly early in life. Our results suggest a "rare elite" function of soldiers in T. angustula, that is, that they perform a disproportionately large amount of the work. Division of labor was based on a combination of temporal and physical castes, but soldiers transitioned faster from one task to the next. We discuss why the rare specialist assumption might not hold in species with a moderate degree of worker differentiation.
‘Forget me (not)?’ – Remembering Forget-Items Versus Un-Cued Items in Directed Forgetting
2015-11-16

Humans need to be able to selectively control their memories. This capability is often investigated in directed forgetting (DF) paradigms. In item-method DF, individual items are presented and each is followed by either a forget- or remember-instruction. On a surprise test of all items, memory is then worse for to-be-forgotten items (TBF) compared to to-be-remembered items (TBR). This is thought to result mainly from selective rehearsal of TBR, although inhibitory mechanisms also appear to be recruited by this paradigm. Here, we investigate whether the mnemonic consequences of a forget instruction differ from the ones of incidental encoding, where items are presented without a specific memory instruction. Four experiments were conducted where un-cued items (UI) were interspersed and recognition performance was compared between TBR, TBF, and UI stimuli. Accuracy was encouraged via a performance-dependent monetary bonus. Experiments varied the number of items and their presentation speed and used either letter-cues or symbolic cues. Across all experiments, including perceptually fully counterbalanced variants, memory accuracy for TBF was reduced compared to TBR, but better than for UI. Moreover, participants made consistently fewer false alarms and used a very conservative response criterion when responding to TBF stimuli. Thus, the F-cue results in active processing and reduces false alarm rate, but this does not impair recognition memory beyond an un-cued baseline condition, where only incidental encoding occurs. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.
Supranormal orientation selectivity of visual neurons in orientation-restricted animals
2015-11-16

Abstract Altered sensory experience in early life often leads to remarkable adaptations so that humans and animals can make the best use of the available information in a particular environment. By restricting visual input to a limited range of orientations in young animals, this investigation shows that stimulus selectivity, e.g., the sharpness of tuning of single neurons in the primary visual cortex, is modified to match a particular environment. Specifically, neurons tuned to an experienced orientation in orientation-restricted animals show sharper orientation tuning than neurons in normal animals, whereas the opposite was true for neurons tuned to non-experienced orientations. This sharpened tuning appears to be due to elongated receptive fields. Our results demonstrate that restricted sensory experiences can sculpt the supranormal functions of single neurons tailored for a particular environment. The above findings, in addition to the minimal population response to orientations close to the experienced one, agree with the predictions of a sparse coding hypothesis in which information is represented efficiently by a small number of activated neurons. This suggests that early brain areas adopt an efficient strategy for coding information even when animals are raised in a severely limited visual environment where sensory inputs have an unnatural statistical structure.
Controlling length-scales of the phase separation to optimize organic semiconductor blends
2015-11-16

The length-scale of phase separation in organic semiconductor donor-acceptor mixtures, while being crucially important for applications, is a non-trivial parameter to control in non-equilibrium thin film growth. We present a comprehensive study of all the important parameters that can be used to tailor the length-scale of phase separation in organic semiconductor mixtures. We employed different substrate temperatures, different growth rates, time-dependent deposition rates, and surface functionalization layers. We found not only that the substrate temperature is most prominent in influencing the length-scale of phase separation in the studied parameter range, but also that other routes can be used to tailor this length-scale.
Influence of immobilization and sensory re-education on the sensory recovery after reconstruction of digital nerves with direct suture or muscle-in-vein conduits
2015-11-16

The influence of duration of immobilization and postoperative sensory re-education on the final outcome after reconstruction of digital nerves with direct suture or muscle-in-vein conduits was investigated. The final sensory outcome of 35 patients with 41 digital nerve injuries, who either underwent a direct suture (DS) or a nerve reconstruction with muscle-in-vein conduits (MVC), was assessed the earliest 12 months postoperatively using static and moving two-point discrimination as well as Semmes-Weinstein monofilaments. There was no significant difference in sensory recovery in cases with an immobilization of 3-7 days versus 10 days in the DS or MVC group. Moreover, no statistically significant difference in sensory recovery was found in cases receiving postoperative sensory re-education versus those not receiving in the DS or MVC group. An early mobilization does not seem to have a negative impact on the final outcome after digital nerve reconstruction. The effect of sensory re-education after digital nerve reconstruction should be reconsidered.
The neuroimmune guidance cue netrin‐1 controls resolution programs and promotes liver regeneration
2015-11-17

Hepatic ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) is a major adverse reaction to liver transplantation, hemorrhagic shock, or resection. Recently, the anti‐inflammatory properties of the axonal guidance cue netrin‐1 were reported. Here, we demonstrate that netrin‐1 also impacts the resolution of inflammation and promotes hepatic repair and regeneration during liver I/R injury. In initial studies, we investigated the induction of netrin‐1 and its receptors in murine liver tissues after I/R injury. Hepatic I/R injury was performed in mice with a partial genetic netrin‐1 deficiency (Ntn1 +/− ) or wild‐type C57BL/6 treated with exogenous netrin‐1 to examine the endogenous and therapeutically administered impact of netrin‐1. These investigations were corroborated by studies determining the characteristics of intravascular leukocyte flow, clearance of apoptotic neutrophils (polymorphonuclear cells [PMNs]), production of specialized proresolving lipid mediators (SPMs), generation of specific growth factors contributing to the resolution of inflammation, and liver repair. Hepatic I/R was associated with a significant reduction of netrin‐1 transcript and protein in murine liver tissue. Subsequent studies in netrin‐1‐deficient mice revealed lower efficacies in reducing PMN infiltration, proinflammatory cytokine levels, and hepatic‐specific injury enzymes. Conversely, mice treated with exogenous netrin‐1 exhibited increased liver protection and repair, reducing neutrophil influx into the injury site, decreasing proinflammatory mediators, increasing efferocytosis of apoptotic PMNs, and stimulating local endogenous biosynthesis of SPMs and the generation of specific growth factors. Finally, genetic studies implicated the A2B adenosine receptor in netrin‐1‐mediated protection during hepatic I/R injury. Conclusion: The present study indicates a previously unrecognized role for netrin‐1 in liver protection and its contribution to tissue homeostasis and regeneration. (H epatology 2016;63:1689‐1705)
Versatile microsphere attachment of GFP-labeled motors and other tagged proteins with preserved functionality
2015-11-17

Microspheres are often used as handles for protein purification or force spectroscopy. For example, optical tweezers apply forces on trapped particles to which motor proteins are attached. However, even though many attachment strategies exist, procedures are often limited to a particular biomolecule and prone to non-specific protein or surface attachment. Such interactions may lead to loss of protein functionality or microsphere clustering. Here, we describe a versatile coupling procedure for GFP-tagged proteins via a polyethylene glycol linker preserving the functionality of the coupled proteins. The procedure combines well-established protocols, is highly reproducible, reliable, and can be used for a large variety of proteins. The coupling is efficient and can be tuned to the desired microsphere-to-protein ratio. Moreover, microspheres hardly cluster or adhere to surfaces. Furthermore, the procedure can be adapted to different tags providing flexibility and a promising attachment strategy for any tagged protein.