ACE inhibitor use in patients with myocardial infarction. Summary ofevidence from clinical trials

Experimental evidence for the beneficial effects on heart failure of chronic treatment with ACE inhibitors accumulated from early 1980 in experimental models of LV dysfunction secondary to AMI. These studies demonstrated an improvement in hemodynamics, LV remodeling, and mortality with ACE inhibitor treatment. The effect of ACE inhibitors during the acute phase of AMI was less clear, although there was evidence of protection from ischemic damage, possibly mediated by an increase in collateral coronary blood flow

Local attitudes toward Apennine brown bears: Insights for conservation issues

Human-carnivore coexistence is a multi-faceted issue that requires an understanding of the diverse attitudes and perspectives of the communities living with large carnivores. To inform initiatives that encourage behaviors in line with conservation goals, we focused on assessing the two components of attitudes (i.e., feelings and beliefs), as well as norms of local communities coexisting with Apennine brown bears (Ursus arctos marsicanus) for a long time. This bear population is under serious extinction risks due to its persistently small population size, which is currently confined to the long-established protected area of Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise National Park (PNALM) and its surrounding region in central Italy. We interviewed 1,611 residents in the PNALM to determine attitudes and values toward bears. We found that support for the bear's legal protection was widespread throughout the area, though beliefs about the benefits of conserving bears varied across geographic administrative districts. Our results showed that residents across our study areas liked bears. At the same time, areas that received more benefits from tourism were more strongly associated with positive feelings toward bears. Such findings provide useful information to improve communication efforts of conservation authorities with local communities

BRST Detour Quantization

We present the BRST cohomologies of a class of constraint (super) Lie algebras as detour complexes. By giving physical interpretations to the components of detour complexes as gauge invariances, Bianchi identities and equations of motion we obtain a large class of new gauge theories. The pivotal new machinery is a treatment of the ghost Hilbert space designed to manifest the detour structure. Along with general results, we give details for three of these theories which correspond to gauge invariant spinning particle models of totally symmetric, antisymmetric and K\"ahler antisymmetric forms. In particular, we give details of our recent announcement of a (p,q)-form K\"ahler electromagnetism. We also discuss how our results generalize to other special geometries.Comment: 43 pages, LaTeX, added reference

Dynamic MRI evaluation of urethral hypermobility post‐radical prostatectomy

Aims One postulated cause of post‐prostatectomy incontinence is urethral and bladder neck hypermobility. The objective of this study was to determine the magnitude of anatomical differences of urethral and bladder neck position at rest and with valsalva in continent and incontinent men post‐prostatectomy based on dynamic MRI. Methods All subjects underwent a dynamic MRI protocol with valsalva and non‐valsalva images and a standard urodynamic evaluation. MRI measurements were taken at rest and with valsalva, including (1) bladder neck to sacrococcygeal inferior pubic point line (SCIPP), (2) urethra to pubis, and (3) bulbar urethra to SCIPP. Data were analyzed in SAS using two‐tailed t tests. Results A total of 21 subjects (13 incontinent and 8 continent) had complete data and were included in the final analysis. The two groups had similar demographic characteristics. On MRI, there were no statistically significant differences in anatomic position of the bladder neck or urethra either at rest or with valsalva. The amount of hypermobility ranged from 0.8 to 2 mm in all measures. There were also no differences in the amount of hypermobility (position at rest minus position at valsalva) between groups. Conclusions We found no statistically significant differences in bladder neck and urethral position or mobility on dynamic MRI evaluation between continent and incontinent men status post‐radical prostatectomy. A more complex mechanism for post‐prostatectomy incontinence needs to be modeled in order to better understand the continence mechanism in this select group of men. Neurourol. Urodynam. 33:312–315, 2014 . © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106760/1/nau22408.pd

Simvastatin improves the sexual health-related quality of life in men aged 40 years and over with erectile dysfunction : Additional data from the Erectile Dysfunction and Statin trial

© 2014 Trivedi et al. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited.Background: Erectile dysfunction is prevalent in men over 40 years, affecting their quality of life and that of their partners. The aims of this study were:a)To evaluate the internal reliability of the male erectile dysfunction specific quality of life (MED-QoL) scale and explore its factor structure.b)To evaluate the effect of simvastatin on subscales of the MED-QoL in men over forty years with erectile dysfunction. Methods: This is a double blind randomised controlled trial of 40 mg simvastatin or placebo given once daily for six months to men over forty years with untreated erectile dysfunction, who were not at high cardiovascular risk and were not on anti-hypertensive or lipid-lowering medication. 173 eligible men were recruited from 10 general practices in East of England. Data were collected at two points over 30 weeks. We report on the factor structure of MED-QoL, the internal reliability of the scale and the derived subscales, and the effect of simvastatin on MED-QoL subscales. Results: An initial analysis of the MED-QoL items suggested that a number of items should be removed (MED-QoL-R). Exploratory factor analysis identified three subscales within the MED-QoL-R which accounted for 96% of the variance, related to feelings of Control, initiating Intimacy, and Emotional response to erectile dysfunction. The alpha value for the revised scale (MED-Qol-R) was >0.95 and exceeded .82 for each subscale. Regression analysis showed that patients in the placebo group experienced a significantly reduced feeling of Control over erectile dysfunction than those in the statin group. Those in the placebo group had significantly lower Emotional response than those in the statin group at the close of trial, but there was no significant treatment effect on Intimacy. Conclusions: Our revised MED-QoL-R identified three subscales. Secondary analysis showed a significant improvement in sexual health related quality of life, specifically in relation to perception of control and emotional health in men with untreated erectile dysfunction given 40 mg simvastatin for six months. Trial registration: Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN66772971.Peer reviewe

Quantum Principal Bundles on Projective Bases

The purpose of this paper is to propose a sheaf theoretic approach to the theory of quantum principal bundles over non affine bases. We study noncommutative principal bundles corresponding to G→ G/ P, where G is a semisimple group and P a parabolic subgroup

Making the hyper--K\"ahler structure of N=2 quantum string manifest

We show that the Lorentz covariant formulation of N=2 string in a curved space reveals an explicit hyper--K\"ahler structure. Apart from the metric, the superconformal currents couple to a background two--form. By superconformal symmetry the latter is constrained to be holomorphic and covariantly constant and allows one to construct three complex structures obeying a (pseudo)quaternion algebra.Comment: 8 pages, no figures, PACS: 04.60.Ds; 11.30.Pb, Keywords: N=2 string, hyper-K\"ahler geometry. Presentation improved, references added. The version to appear in PR

Differential Calculi on Quantum Principal Bundles Over Projective Bases

We propose a sheaf-theoretic approach to the theory of differential calculi on quantum principal bundles over non-affine bases. After recalling the affine case we define differential calculi on sheaves of comodule algebras as sheaves of covariant bimodules together with a morphism of sheaves -the differential- such that the Leibniz rule and surjectivity hold locally. The main class of examples is given by covariant calculi over quantum flag manifolds, which we provide via an explicit Ore extension construction. In a second step we introduce principal covariant calculi by requiring a local compatibility of the calculi on the total sheaf, base sheaf and the structure Hopf algebra in terms of exact sequences. In this case Hopf–Galois extensions of algebras lift to Hopf–Galois extensions of exterior algebras with compatible differentials. In particular, the examples of principal (covariant) calculi on the quantum principal bundles Oq(SL2(C)) and Oq(GL2(C)) over the projective space P1(C) are discussed in detail