The portrayal of the Anglican clergyman in some nineteenth-century fiction

What were Anglican Clergymen, in the fiction of the nineteenth century, like? How were their social and intellectual attitudes, and religious beliefs, characterized and delineated? Why do novelists portray the clergy as they do? How accurate is their portrayal, in the light of contemporary ecclesiastical history? This study answers these questions by reference to the novels, both well-known and little read, and to the lives and opinions of the actual clergy, of the period. There is a general survey of the fictional clergy throughout the century which relates them to particular religious movements, such as the Evangelical and Tractarian movements, and to changing intellectual and theological opinion. The principal aim of the study, however, is literary. It concentrates on the work of four major authors: Jane Austen, Thomas Love Peacock, Anthony Trollope and George Eliot. Their novels are examined in detail; the place and treatment of their clerical characters analysed and discussed. This close study of particular novels, it is hoped, will deepen the general literary appreciation of the novels and writers and stimulate interest in the neglected clerical characters of fiction

Proportionate and Disproportionate Functional Mitral Regurgitation: A New Conceptual Framework That Reconciles the Results of the MITRA-FR and COAPT Trials

Traditional approaches to the characterization of secondary or functional mitral regurgitation (MR) have largely ignored the critical importance of the left ventricle (LV). We propose that patients with secondary MR represent a heterogenous group, which can be usefully subdivided based on understanding that the effective regurgitant orifice area (EROA) is dependent on left ventricular end-diastolic volume (LVEDV). According to the Gorlin hydraulic orifice equation, patients with heart failure, an LV ejection fraction of 30%, an LVEDV of 220 to 250 ml, and a regurgitant fraction of 50% would be expected to have an EROA of ≈0.3 cm2 independent of specific tethering abnormalities of the mitral valve leaflets. The MR in these patients is proportionate to the degree of LV dilatation and can respond to drugs and devices that reduce LVEDV. In contrast, patients with EROA of 0.3 to 0.4 cm2 but with LVEDV of only 160 to 200 ml exhibit degrees of MR that are disproportionately higher than predicted by LVEDV. These patients appear to preferentially benefit from interventions directed at the mitral valve. Our proposed conceptual framework explains the apparently discordant results from 2 recent randomized controlled trials of mitral valve repair. The MITRA-FR (Percutaneous Repair with the MitraClip Device for Severe Functional/Secondary Mitral Regurgitation) trial enrolled patients who had MR that was proportionate to the degree of LV dilatation, and during long-term follow-up, the LVEDV and clinical outcomes of these patients did not differ from medically-treated control subjects. In comparison, the patients enrolled in the COAPT (Cardiovascular Outcomes Assessment of the MitraClip Percutaneous Therapy for Heart Failure Patients with Functional Mitral Regurgitation) trial had an EROA ≈30% higher but LV volumes that were ≈30% smaller, indicative of disproportionate MR. In these patients, transcatheter mitral valve repair reduced the risk of death and hospitalization for heart failure, and these benefits were paralleled by a meaningful decrease in LVEDV. Thus, characterization of MR as proportionate or disproportionate to LVEDV appears to be critical to the selection of an optimal treatment for patients with chronic heart failure and systolic dysfunction

Clinical and magnetic resonance imaging characteristics of thoracolumbar intervertenral disk extrusions and protrusions in large breed dogs

It has recently been shown that the fat-derived hormone adiponectin has the ability to decrease hyperglycemia and to reverse insulin resistance. However, bacterially produced full-length adiponectin is functionally inactive. Here, we show that endogenous adiponectin secreted by adipocytes is post-translationally modified into eight different isoforms, as shown by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis. Carbohydrate detection revealed that six of the adiponectin isoforms are glycosylated. The glycosylation sites were mapped to several lysines (residues 68, 71, 80, and 104) located in the collagenous domain of adiponectin, each having the surrounding motif of GXKGE(D). These four lysines were found to be hydroxylated and subsequently glycosylated. The glycosides attached to each of these four hydroxylated lysines are possibly glucosylgalactosyl groups. Functional analysis revealed that full-length adiponectin produced by mammalian cells is much more potent than bacterially generated adiponectin in enhancing the ability of subphysiological concentrations of insulin to inhibit gluconeogenesis in primary rat hepatocytes, whereas this insulin-sensitizing ability was significantly attenuated when the four glycosylated lysines were substituted with arginines. These results indicate that full-length adiponectin produced by mammalian cells is functionally active as an insulin sensitizer and that hydroxylation and glycosylation of the four lysines in the collagenous domain might contribute to this activity.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Causas de variação de pesos e ganhos de peso em fêmeas da Raça Canchim

Causas de variação e estimativas dos coeficientes de herdabilidade e correlações genética relativos aos pesos ao nascer, aos 205 aos 12, 18 e 24 meses

Negative effects of epilepsy and antiepileptic drugs on the trainability of dogs with naturally occurring idiopathic epilepsy

Epilepsy and anti-epileptic drug (AED) treatment have been found to induce or exacerbate underlying cognitive impairments in people, affecting learning ability, attention and memory. Idiopathic epilepsy (IE) is the most common chronic neurological condition in dogs. Whether IE impairs cognition, which may be reflected in affected dogs’ trainability, has not been explored. The aim of this study was to investigate whether IE and/or AED treatment compromise the trainability of dogs with IE compared to controls. An online cross-sectional study was conducted, resulting in a sample of 4051 dogs, of which 286 had been diagnosed with IE. Owners reported their dog’s trainability using a previously validated research questionnaire, along with their dogs’ training history (type of activities and training methods used) and clinical history. Four factors were significantly associated with trainability in a generalised linear mixed model: (i) epilepsy diagnosis: dogs with IE had significantly lower trainability than controls; (ii) age: dogs aged >12 years had significantly lower trainability than all other age groups; (iii) adult training history score: dogs with greater exposure to training activities were more trainable; and (iv) training method: dogs whose owners used a mix of both reward and punishment-based methods had lower trainability than those using solely reward-based methods. Within the sub-population of dogs with IE, those treated with (i) polytherapy (2–3 AEDs), (ii) zonisamide and/or (iii) potassium bromide exhibited lower trainability. This study provides initial evidence of cognitive impairment associated with IE and treatments for it, as measured by a metric of trainability. Further study is required to characterise these deficits. However, if these effects are confirmed, the merits of using the dog as a model of spontaneously occurring epilepsy will be strengthened, further consideration of the effects of AEDs will be required, and strategies to enhance cognition in affected dogs should be explored

Construction of Parseval wavelets from redundant filter systems

We consider wavelets in L^2(R^d) which have generalized multiresolutions. This means that the initial resolution subspace V_0 in L^2(R^d) is not singly generated. As a result, the representation of the integer lattice Z^d restricted to V_0 has a nontrivial multiplicity function. We show how the corresponding analysis and synthesis for these wavelets can be understood in terms of unitary-matrix-valued functions on a torus acting on a certain vector bundle. Specifically, we show how the wavelet functions on R^d can be constructed directly from the generalized wavelet filters.Comment: 34 pages, AMS-LaTeX ("amsproc" document class) v2 changes minor typos in Sections 1 and 4, v3 adds a number of references on GMRA theory and wavelet multiplicity analysis; v4 adds material on pages 2, 3, 5 and 10, and two more reference

Some non genetic effects on pre and pos-weaning weights of Canchim calves.

Some non genetic effects on pre and pos-weaning weights of Canchim calves