Increased release of nitric oxide in ischemic hearts after exercise in patients with effort angina

AbstractObjectives. The aim of this study was to determine whether the release of nitric oxide (NO) from the ischemic heart increases during exercise in patients with effort angina.Background. Myocardial ischemia increases NO production in the canine heart, but no such increase has been demonstrated in the ischemic human heart.Methods. Fifteen patients with effort angina underwent supine ergometer exercise tests. All patients had severe proximal stenosis (>90%) in the left anterior descending coronary artery. The control group consisted of 17 subjects without coronary artery disease or systemic hemodynamic abnormalities.Results. Neither the lactate extraction ratio (LER) nor the difference in NO concentration between coronary venous and arterial blood (ΔVA[NO]) was affected by exercise in the control subjects. In patients with effort angina, neither variable differed from that in the control group at rest; however, exercise markedly decreased LER and significantly increased ΔVA(NO) (from 4.7 ± 0.3 to 16.5 ± 1.6 μmol/liter, p < 0.001) in the patient group. The extent of decrease in LER was significantly correlated with the extent of increase in ΔVA(NO) in the patients with effort angina (r2= −0.837, p < 0.001).Conclusions. Provocation of myocardial ischemia by exercise stress increases NO production in the hearts of patients with effort angina

CNVs in Three Psychiatric Disorders

BACKGROUND: We aimed to determine the similarities and differences in the roles of genic and regulatory copy number variations (CNVs) in bipolar disorder (BD), schizophrenia (SCZ), and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). METHODS: Based on high-resolution CNV data from 8708 Japanese samples, we performed to our knowledge the largest cross-disorder analysis of genic and regulatory CNVs in BD, SCZ, and ASD. RESULTS: In genic CNVs, we found an increased burden of smaller (500 kb) exonic CNVs in SCZ/ASD. Pathogenic CNVs linked to neurodevelopmental disorders were significantly associated with the risk for each disorder, but BD and SCZ/ASD differed in terms of the effect size (smaller in BD) and subtype distribution of CNVs linked to neurodevelopmental disorders. We identified 3 synaptic genes (DLG2, PCDH15, and ASTN2) as risk factors for BD. Whereas gene set analysis showed that BD-associated pathways were restricted to chromatin biology, SCZ and ASD involved more extensive and similar pathways. Nevertheless, a correlation analysis of gene set results indicated weak but significant pathway similarities between BD and SCZ or ASD (r = 0.25–0.31). In SCZ and ASD, but not BD, CNVs were significantly enriched in enhancers and promoters in brain tissue. CONCLUSIONS: BD and SCZ/ASD differ in terms of CNV burden, characteristics of CNVs linked to neurodevelopmental disorders, and regulatory CNVs. On the other hand, they have shared molecular mechanisms, including chromatin biology. The BD risk genes identified here could provide insight into the pathogenesis of BD

Chart-Based Transfer Rule Application in Machine Translation

Transfer-based Machine Translation systems require a procedure for choosing the set of transfer rules for generating a target language translation from a given source language sentence. In an MT system with many competing transfer rules, choosing the best set of transfer rules for translation may involve the evaluation of an explosive number of competing sets. We propose a solution to this problem based on current best- rst chart parsing algorithms. 1 Introduction Transfer-based Machine Translation systems require a procedure for choosing the set of transfer rules for generating a target language translation from a given source language sentence. This procedure is trivial for a system if, given a context, one transfer rule can be selected unambiguously. Otherwise, choosing the best set of transfer rules may involve the evaluation of numerous competing sets. In fact, the number of possible transfer rule combinations increases exponentially with the length of the source language sente..

Covering Treebanks with GLARF

This paper introduces GLARF, a framework for predicate argument structure