Endotracheal Versus Intravenous Epinephrine During Electromechanical Dissociation with CPR in Dogs

The dose-response curves of epinephrine given either IV or endotracheally (ET) were compared during resuscitation from electromechanical dissociation (EMD). Ten anesthetized dogs were subjected to a two-minute period of electrically induced ventricular fibrillation (VF) followed by defibrillation without CPR to produce EMD. Mechanical CPR was followed by injection of either ET or IV epinephrine. Successful response was defined as a return of pulsatile blood pressure within two minutes of drug administration. Using log-dose increments of epinephrine, experimental trials were repeated in each animal. The IV and ET median effective doses were 14 and 130 g/kg, respectively. When the trials were successful, the time between drug administration and either arterial blood pressure increases or return of spontaneous circulation did not differ significantly for the ET and IV groups. These results show that the dosage for epinephrine delivered ET must be higher than the IV dosage to achieve the same response during CPR

Influence of Adrenergic Drugs Upon Vital Organ Perfusion During CPR

To determine whether adrenergic drugs administered during cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) alter the distribution of artificial card:l.ac output, we measu red regional blood flow and cardiac output using radioactive microspheres in 12 dogs. Ventricular fibrillation was induced electrically and CPR was immediately begun with a mechanical chest compressor and ventilator (Thurn per ( R) ) at 60 compressions/min, with a ventilation:compression ratio of 1:5, a compression duration of 0.5 sec, and a ventilation pressure of 20 em H 2 o. Compression force was sufficient to develop 40-50 mmHg peak intraesophageal pressure. After 30 sec of CPR, either 0.9% saline vehicle or 50 ug/kg of epinephrine, phenylephrine, or isoproterenol was administered through a central venous catheter. One minute later, microspheres were injected into the left ventricle. After 250 sec of CPR the ventricles were defibrillated electrically. Twenty minute recovery periods were interposed between each drug injection. accord:l.ng Each dog recei.ved to predetermlned all three drugs and saline sequence. Following saline, epinephrine, phenylephrine, and isoproterenol treatment respectively, cardiac output averaged 392, 319, 255, and 475 ml/min; bratn blood flow averaged 37, 54, 2 9 \u27 and 28 ml/min; heart blood flow averaged 25, 79, 26, and IS ml/min; and kidney blood flow averaged 44, 4, 16, and 29 ml/min. Epinephrine improved blood flow t6 the brain, probably because of its alpha adrenergic activity. Epinephrine improved blood flow to the heart during CPR much more than the other agents, probably because of its combined alpha and beta adrenergic activity. This effect may explain its superiority in restoring circulation after prolonged arrest and resuscitation. Isoproterenol should not be used in CPR because it shunts blood away from vital organs

Yangians, finite W-algebras and the Non Linear Schrodinger hierarchy

We show an algebra morphism between Yangians and some finite W-algebras. This correspondence is nicely illustrated in the framework of the Non Linear Schrodinger hierarchy. For such a purpose, we give an explicit realization of the Yangian generators in terms of deformed oscillators.Comment: LaTeX2e, 10 pages, Talk presented by E. Ragoucy at ACTP-Nankai Symposium on Yang-Baxter systems, non linear models and their applications, Seoul (Korea) October 20-23, 199

RNAalifold: improved consensus structure prediction for RNA alignments

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The prediction of a consensus structure for a set of related RNAs is an important first step for subsequent analyses. RNAalifold, which computes the minimum energy structure that is simultaneously formed by a set of aligned sequences, is one of the oldest and most widely used tools for this task. In recent years, several alternative approaches have been advocated, pointing to several shortcomings of the original RNAalifold approach.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We show that the accuracy of RNAalifold predictions can be improved substantially by introducing a different, more rational handling of alignment gaps, and by replacing the rather simplistic model of covariance scoring with more sophisticated RIBOSUM-like scoring matrices. These improvements are achieved without compromising the computational efficiency of the algorithm. We show here that the new version of RNAalifold not only outperforms the old one, but also several other tools recently developed, on different datasets.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The new version of RNAalifold not only can replace the old one for almost any application but it is also competitive with other approaches including those based on SCFGs, maximum expected accuracy, or hierarchical nearest neighbor classifiers.</p

ViennaRNA Package 2.0

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Secondary structure forms an important intermediate level of description of nucleic acids that encapsulates the dominating part of the folding energy, is often well conserved in evolution, and is routinely used as a basis to explain experimental findings. Based on carefully measured thermodynamic parameters, exact dynamic programming algorithms can be used to compute ground states, base pairing probabilities, as well as thermodynamic properties.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The <monospace>ViennaRNA</monospace> Package has been a widely used compilation of RNA secondary structure related computer programs for nearly two decades. Major changes in the structure of the standard energy model, the <it>Turner 2004 </it>parameters, the pervasive use of multi-core CPUs, and an increasing number of algorithmic variants prompted a major technical overhaul of both the underlying <monospace>RNAlib</monospace> and the interactive user programs. New features include an expanded repertoire of tools to assess RNA-RNA interactions and restricted ensembles of structures, additional output information such as <it>centroid </it>structures and <it>maximum expected accuracy </it>structures derived from base pairing probabilities, or <it>z</it>-<it>scores </it>for locally stable secondary structures, and support for input in <monospace>fasta</monospace> format. Updates were implemented without compromising the computational efficiency of the core algorithms and ensuring compatibility with earlier versions.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The <monospace>ViennaRNA Package 2.0</monospace>, supporting concurrent computations <monospace>via OpenMP</monospace>, can be downloaded from <url>http://www.tbi.univie.ac.at/RNA</url>.</p

Defining locality as a problem difficulty measure in genetic programming

A mapping is local if it preserves neighbourhood. In Evolutionary Computation, locality is generally described as the property that neighbouring genotypes correspond to neighbouring phenotypes. A representation has high locality if most genotypic neighbours are mapped to phenotypic neighbours. Locality is seen as a key element in performing effective evolutionary search. It is believed that a representation that has high locality will perform better in evolutionary search and the contrary is true for a representation that has low locality. When locality was introduced, it was the genotype-phenotype mapping in bitstring-based Genetic Algorithms which was of interest; more recently, it has also been used to study the same mapping in Grammatical Evolution. To our knowledge, there are few explicit studies of locality in Genetic Programming (GP). The goal of this paper is to shed some light on locality in GP and use it as an indicator of problem difficulty. Strictly speaking, in GP the genotype and the phenotype are not distinct. We attempt to extend the standard quantitative definition of genotype-phenotype locality to the genotype-fitness mapping by considering three possible definitions. We consider the effects of these definitions in both continuous- and discrete-valued fitness functions. We compare three different GP representations (two of them induced by using different function sets and the other using a slightly different GP encoding) and six different mutation operators. Results indicate that one definition of locality is better in predicting performance.Science Foundation IrelandIrish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technologyti, ke, ab - TS 02.1