METU interoperable database system

and Sevgi Foundation, Turkey) is a multidatabase system based on OMG's (OMG is a registered trademark, and CORBA, ORB, OMG IDL, Object Request Broker are trademarks of OMG) distributed object management architecture. It is implemented on top of a CORBA compliant ORB, namely, DEC's ObjectBroker (ObjectBroker is a registered trademark of DEC Corp.) [DDO96]. In MIND all local databases are encapsulated in generic Database Object. The interface of the generic Database Object is de ned in CORBA IDL and multiple implementations of this interface, one for each component DBMSs, namely, Oracle7 (Oracle7 is a trademark of Oracle Corp.), Sybase (Sybase is a trademark of Sybase Corp.), Adabas D (Adabas D is a trademark of Software AG Corp.) and MOOD [Dog94] are provided. MIND provides its users a common data model and a single global query language based on SQL. The main functionalities of MIND are global query processing, global transaction management and schema integration. The basic component classes in the system are

Electrophysiological evaluation of phrenic nerve injury during cardiac surgery – a prospective, controlled, clinical study

BACKGROUND: According to some reports, left hemidiaphragmatic paralysis due to phrenic nerve injury may occur following cardiac surgery. The purpose of this study was to document the effects on phrenic nerve injury of whole body hypothermia, use of ice-slush around the heart and mammary artery harvesting. METHODS: Electrophysiology of phrenic nerves was studied bilaterally in 78 subjects before and three weeks after cardiac or peripheral vascular surgery. In 49 patients, coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) and heart valve replacement with moderate hypothermic (mean 28°C) cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) were performed. In the other 29, CABG with beating heart was performed, or, in several cases, peripheral vascular surgery with normothermia. RESULTS: In all patients, measurements of bilateral phrenic nerve function were within normal limits before surgery. Three weeks after surgery, left phrenic nerve function was absent in five patients in the CPB and hypothermia group (3 in CABG and 2 in valve replacement). No phrenic nerve dysfunction was observed after surgery in the CABG with beating heart (no CPB) or the peripheral vascular groups. Except in the five patients with left phrenic nerve paralysis, mean phrenic nerve conduction latency time (ms) and amplitude (mV) did not differ statistically before and after surgery in either group (p > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate that CPB with hypothermia and local ice-slush application around the heart play a role in phrenic nerve injury following cardiac surgery. Furthermore, phrenic nerve injury during cardiac surgery occurred in 10.2 % of our patients (CABG with CPB plus valve surgery)

The role of 5-HT7 receptors on isoproterenol-induced myocardial infarction in rats with high-fat diet exacerbated coronary endothelial dysfunction

The presence of 5-HT7r’s in both human and rat cardiovascular and immune tissues and their contribution to inflammatory conditions prompted us to hypothesize that these receptors contribute in acute myocardial infarction (MI) with underlying chronic endothelial dysfunction. We investigated the role of 5-HT7 receptors on heart tissue that damaged by isoproterenol (ISO)-induced MI in rats with high-fat diet (HFD). In vitro and in vivo effects of 5-HT7r agonist (LP44) and antagonist (SB269970) have been investigated on the H9C2 cell line and rats, respectively. For in vivo analyses, rats were fed with HFD for 8 weeks and after this period ISO-induced MI model has been applied to rat. To investigate the role of 5-HT7r’s, two different doses of LP44 and SB269970 were evaluated and compared with standard hypolipidemic agent, atorvastatin. In vitro studies showed that LP44 has protective and proliferative effects on rat cardiomyocytes. Also in in vivo studies stimulating 5-HT7r’s by LP44 improved blood lipid profile (decreased total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein-C, and triglyceride, increased high-density lipoprotein), decreased cardiac damage markers (creatine kinase and troponin-I), and corrected inflammatory status (tumor necrosis factor-α, interleukin-6). Our results showed significant improvement in LP44 administered rats in terms of histopathologic analyses. In damaged tissues, 5-HT7 mRNA expression increased and agonist administration decreased this elevation significantly. We determined for the first time that 5-HT7r’s are overexpressed in ISO-induced MI of rats with underlying HFD-induced endothelial dysfunction. Restoration of this overexpression by LP44, a 5-HT7r agonist, ameliorated heart tissue in physiopathologic, enzymatic, and molecular level, showing the cardiac role of these receptors and suggesting them as future potential therapeutic targets.</jats:p