Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Sciatic Nerve and Knee Arthroplasty: To Block, or Not to Block-That Is the Question

T ricompartment (total) knee arthroplasty (TKA) consistently results in severe postoperative pain. Although providing a femoral nerve block dramatically improves analgesia, 80% to 90% of patients still experience pain requiring treatment with intravenous opioids in the immediate postoperative period.2,3 This pain is usually attributed to the sciatic and obturator nerves that contribute innervation to the knee joint, albeit less extensively than the femoral nerve. Although a lumbar epidural infusion will affect all 3 nerves, multiple investigations suggest that a continuous femoral nerve block offers similar analgesia with a more favorable adverse effect profile and is thus often cited as the ‘‘gold standard’’ following TKA. However, little consensus has emerged regarding the routine addition of a single-injection or continuous sciatic nerve block. This question is of great interest to health care providers considering the frequency that TKA is performed: more than 500,000 cases annually in the United States alone, with this number growing to 3.5 million in fewer than 20 years.
Environmental influences on egg and clutch sizes in lenticand lenticand lenticand loticbreeding loticbreeding loticbreeding salamanders

Environmental influences on egg and clutch sizes in lenticand lotic-breeding salamanders. Recent research indicates that social and environmental factors influence egg and clutch sizes in amphibians. However, most of this work is based on the reproductively diverse order Anura (frogs and toads), whereas less research has been conducted on Caudata (salamanders) and Gymnophiona (caecilians). Researchers have suggested that a relationship exists between social and environmental factors and egg and clutch sizes in salamanders, but studies controlling for phylogenetic context are lacking. We could not identify a sufficient number of comparisons for social influences on egg and clutch sizes; therefore, we focused on environmental influences for this study. Data on egg size, clutch size, environmental factors, and phylogenies for salamanders were assembled from the scientific literature. We used independent, pair-wise comparisons to investigate the association of larval salamander habitat and egg size and the association of larval salamander habitat with clutch sizes within a phylogenetic framework. There is a significant association between larval habitat and egg size; specifically, stream-breeding species produce larger eggs. There is no significant association between larval habitat and clutch size. Our study confirms earlier reports that salamander egg size is associated with larval environments, but is the first to use phylogenetically independent contrasts to account for the lack of phylogenetic independence of the traits measured (egg size and clutch size) associated with many of the diverse lineages. Our study shows that environmental selection pressure can be quite strong on one aspect of salamander reproduction—egg size.
Assessment of Quality of Health Care in Jimma Zone, Southwest Ethiopia

BACKGROUND: Quality of care is an important aspect of health care delivery system that is given a priority. Quality is a multidimensional concept that has been defined in various ways. Variation in quality of care between different health care facilities is thought to reflect differences in efficiency and other organizational factors. There was no adequate study related to quality of health care in Jimma zone. Therefore, the objective of this study was to assess quality of health care in Jimma zone. METHODS: A cross sectional quantitative study design was employed to assess the quality of care with respect to structure, care process and customer satisfaction involving 640 patients and 96 care providers in Jimma zone, southwest Ethiopia. Data were collected using an interview questionnaire and observation checklist devised by the investigators. RESULTS: The study showed that, on average, the studied institutions fulfilled 153(70.4%) of the health human power need. They also fulfilled 86(62.8%) of major equipment requirement against the national standard. The composite average satisfaction level of patients was 89.1% and that of the care providers was 86.7%. Nevertheless, the respect given to patients by care providers was rated as poor. A significant proportion, 39(48.2%) of the care providers were assessed as low performance. CONCLUSIONS: Majority of study subjects rated the overall quality of care as “good”. However the observation revealed that the human aspect of care was “poor”. In addition, the health institutions were facing shortage of human and material resources. Thus it was recommended that the responsible bodies at the 3 levels should take actions for improving institutional capacity and performance of care providers in order to improve quality of care. KEY WORDS: Quality of care, Jimma Zone, Southwest, Ethiopia
NeC4.5: neural ensemble based C4.5

Decision tree is with good comprehensibility while neural network ensemble is with strong generalization ability. These merits are integrated into a novel decision tree algorithm NeC4.5. This algorithm trains a neural network ensemble at first. Then, the trained ensemble is employed to generate a new training set through replacing the desired class labels of the original training examples with those output from the trained ensemble. Some extra training examples are also generated from the trained ensemble and added to the new training set. Finally, a C4.5 decision tree is grown from the new training set. Since its learning results are decision trees, the comprehensibility of NeC4.5 is better than that of neural network ensemble. Moreover, experiments show that the generalization ability of NeC4.5 decision trees can be better than that of C4.5 decision trees.
The 6-GHz methanol multibeam maser catalogue – IV. Galactic longitudes 186°–330° including the Orion–Monoceros region

We present the fourth portion of a Galactic plane survey of methanol masers at 6668 MHz, spanning the longitude range 186°–330°. We report 207 maser detections, 89 new to the survey. This completes the southern sky part of the methanol multibeam survey and includes a large proportion of new sources, 43 per cent. We also include results from blind observations of the Orion–Monoceros star-forming region, formally outside the latitude range of the methanol multibeam survey; only the four previously known methanol emitting sites were detected, of which we present new positions and spectra for masers at Orion A (south) and Orion B, obtained with the Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (MERLIN) array.
Online Allocation of Virtual Machines in a Distributed Cloud

One of the primary functions of a cloud service provider is to allocate cloud resources to users upon request. Requests arrive in real-time and resource placement decisions must be made as and when a request arrives, without any prior knowledge of future arrivals. In addition, when a cloud service provider operates a geographically diversified cloud that consists of a large number of small data centers, the resource allocation problem becomes even more complex. This is due to the fact that resource request can have additional constraints on data center location, service delay guarantee, and so on, which is especially true for the emerging network function virtualization application. In this paper, we propose a generalized resource placement methodology that can work across different cloud architectures, resource request constraints, with real-time request arrivals and departures. The proposed algorithms are online in the sense that allocations are made without any knowledge of resource requests that arrive in the future, and the current resource allocations are made in such a manner as to permit the acceptance of as many future arrivals as possible. We derive worst case competitive ratio for the algorithms. We show through experiments and case studies the superior performance of the algorithms in practice.
Low-Power Divider

The general objective of our work is to develop methods to reduce the energy consumption of arithmetic modules while maintaining the delay unchanged and keeping the increase in the area to a minimum. Here, we illustrate some techniques for dividers realized in CMOS technology. The energy dissipation reduction is carried out at different levels of abstraction: from the algorithm level down to the implementation, or gate, level. We describe the use of techniques such as switching-off not active blocks, retiming, dual voltage, and equalizing the paths to reduce glitches. Also, we describe modifications in the on-the-fly conversion and rounding algorithm and in the redundant representation of the residual in order to reduce the energy dissipation. The techniques and modifications mentioned above are applied to a radix-4, divider, realized with static CMOS standard cells, for which a reduction of 40 percent is obtained with respect to the standard implementation. This reduction is expected to be about 60 percent if low-voltage gates, for dual voltage implementation, are available. The techniques used here should be applicable to a variety of arithmetic modules which have similar characteristics.
THE IN VITRO TRANSFORMATION OF FROZEN-STORED LYMPHOCYTES IN THE MIXED LYMPHOCYTE REACTION AND IN CULTURE WITH PHYTOHEMAGGLUTININ AND SPECIFIC ANTIGENS

We have investigated the in vitro transformation of lymphocytes that have been frozen and stored at low temperatures. Cells frozen at different times and stored for various times do transform in a reproducible manner when placed in culture with PHA or as one population of the two-way or the one-way MLR. When frozen-stored lymphocytes are cultured with specific antigen or as both partners in the MLR the response is minimal. The freezing process destroys neutrophils, and the remaining population transforms in a manner similar to cultures of purified lymphocytes. Practical aspects of the technique are discussed and we have suggested possible practical applications for future investigation.
Revisiting the Estimate of the North Sea Air‐Sea Flux of CO2 in 2001/2002: The Dominant Role of Different Wind Data Products

For the North Sea, a semienclosed shelf sea in the northeastern North Atlantic, the seasonal and annual CO2 air‐sea fluxes (ASF) had been estimated for 2001 and 2002 in earlier work. The underlying observations, ΔpCO2, salinity, and temperature had been combined with 6‐hourly wind data derived from ERA40 reanalysis. In order to assess the impact of different wind data products on the computation of CO2 ASF, we compared ERA40 wind data with coastDat data derived from the nonhydrostatic regional climate model COSMO‐CLM. From the four observational months September, November, February, and May all but the May data show higher wind speeds for coastDat than for ERA40, especially off the Norwegian, UK, and continental coasts. Largest differences occur in the northern offshore areas. The comparison with observed wind data supports this feature generally: At Helgoland, an island in the German Bight, and at the Belgium pile “Westhinder” the ERA40 data underestimate both, the coastDat data and the observations. Wind observations for two Norwegian North Sea platforms were available: At the northern station “Troll” off the Norwegian coast the coastDat data overestimate the observations in winter. At “Ekofisk” in the central North Sea the ERA40 data fit the observations well, while the coastDat data slightly overestimate the observational data in all months but in May. The corresponding CO2 ASF estimates show strongest deviations off the Norwegian coast. Using different bulk formulas for determining the net annual ASF resulted in differences due to different wind products of up to 34%.
The PYRIN-CARD Protein ASC Is an Activating Adaptor for Caspase-1*

The PYRIN and CARD domains are members of the six-helix bundle death domain-fold superfamily that mediates assembly of large signaling complexes in the apoptotic and inflammatory signaling pathways. Here we show that the PYRIN-CARD protein ASC functions as a caspase-1-activating adaptor. ASC interacted specifically with procaspase-1 via CARD-CARD interactions and induced its oligomerization. Consistent with these results ectopic expression of full-length ASC, but not its isolated CARD or PYRIN domain, with procaspase-1 induced activation of procaspase-1 and processing of pro-interleukin-1β in transfected cells. Substitution of the PYRIN domain of ASC with an inducible FKBP12 oligomerization domain produced a molecule that can induce caspase-1 activation in response to stimulation with the oligomerization drug AP20187, suggesting that the PYRIN domain functions as an oligomerization domain, whereas the CARD domain functions as the effector domain in the caspase-1 activation pathway. Furthermore stable expression of an isolated CARD of ASC in THP-1 cells diminished interleukin-1β generation in response to pro-inflammatory cytokines. These results indicate that ASC is involved in the caspase-1 signaling pathway by mediating the assembly of a caspase-1-inflammasome signaling complex in response to pro-inflammatory cytokine stimulation.
Objectively measured physical activity and its influence on physical capacity and clinical parameters in patients with primary Sjögren’s syndrome

Objective The objectives of this paper are to objectively measure habitual physical activity levels in patients with primary Sjögren’s syndrome (pSS) with mild disease activity and to determine to which extent it may be associated with physical capacity and function and clinical features. Methods In this cross-sectional study, 29 women with pSS were objectively assessed for habitual physical activity levels (using accelerometry) and compared with 20 healthy women (CTRL) frequency-matched for physical activity levels, age, body mass index, and body fat percentage with regard to physical capacity and function, fatigue, depression, pain, and health-related quality of life. Results pSS showed 8.5 min/day of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) when only MVPA accumulated in bouts ≥ 10 min was considered; when considering total MVPA (including bouts < 10 min), average levels were 26.3 min/day, with 62% of pSS patients achieving the recommendation (≥ 21.4 min/day). Moreover, pSS showed lower VO2peak, lower muscle strength and function, higher fatigue, and poorer health-related quality of life when compared with CTRL (p < 0.05). These differences (except for aerobic capacity) were sustained even when only individuals achieving the minimum of 21.4 min/day of total MVPA in both groups were compared. Finally, MVPA time was significantly correlated with aerobic conditioning, whereas total counts and sedentary time were associated with lower-body muscle strength and the bodily-pain domain of SF-36 in patients with pSS. Conclusion When compared to physical activity-matched healthy controls, pSS patients showed reduced physical capacity and function, increased fatigue and pain, and reduced health-related quality of life. Except for aerobic conditioning, these differences were sustained when only more physically active participants were compared, indicating that minimum recommended levels of physical activity for the general population may not be sufficient to counteract pSS comorbidities.
Shifts in Myxomycete Community Structure in Selected Microhabitats Across Nutrient Treatments in a Lowland Tropical Forest of Panama

Myxomycetes (plasmodial slime molds) are abundant amoeboid predators of bacteria and other microorganisms. They are found worldwide, largely in association with decaying plant material in terrestrial habitats. Their consumption of bacterial prey puts microbial predators such as myxomycetes in a key position in various ecosystem processes wherein they help regulate the flow of nutrients (e.g., N and C) through the ecosystem. The importance of microbial predators in nutrient cycling and plant productivity is well established. Given the extent to which tropical ecosystems influence global nutrient fluxes, along with the ecologically significant role that myxomycetes play in these processes, there is a pressing need to learn more about this understudied community. This dissertation comprises an important first step toward developing an understanding of the ecological role of myxomycetes, with two major contributions. Identifying species is a fundamental step toward characterizing the diversity of a community. Given the unique challenge of identifying species of myxomycetes imposed by their unique biology, this dissertation begins in chapter two with a review of the myxomycete species concept. The various species concepts used (or potentially used) to identify species of myxomycetes are discussed. In chapter three, the challenges that myxomycete identification pose are described in the context of an ecological study. Therein, the use of a long-term nutrient fertilization experiment is described within which the effects of three major macronutrients, N, P and K on the myxomycete community in a lowland tropical forest of Panama are investigated. Interestingly, very little evidence supports the presence of a nutrient limitation to the myxomycete community, despite the many limitations that have been identified for other groups in this ecosystem (e.g., plants). The unexpected results provide the opportunity to again discuss the complications of species identification and enumeration of myxomycetes for in-depth studies. The results also highlight the unique biology of myxomycetes and provide new insights into their ecology. Finally, in chapter four, a holistic approach is employed to describe a species new to science that was discovered during the course of this dissertation work in Panama. Overall this dissertation highlights the importance of myxomycete taxonomy in an ecological framework.
Bedaquiline and Linezolid for Extensively Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis in Pregnant Woman

A woman with extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis treated with a drug regimen including linezolid and bedaquiline during her last 3 weeks of pregnancy gave birth to a child without abnormalities. No fetal toxicities were noted by 2 years after delivery. This drug combination might be safe during the late third trimester of pregnancy.
Measuring #GamerGate: A Tale of Hate, Sexism, and Bullying

Over the past few years, online aggression and abusive behaviors have occurred in many different forms and on a variety of platforms. In extreme cases, these incidents have evolved into hate, discrimination, and bullying, and even materialized into real-world threats and attacks against individuals or groups. In this paper, we study the Gamergate controversy. Started in August 2014 in the online gaming world, it quickly spread across various social networking platforms, ultimately leading to many incidents of cyberbullying and cyberaggression. We focus on Twitter, presenting a measurement study of a dataset of 340k unique users and 1.6M tweets to study the properties of these users, the content they post, and how they differ from random Twitter users. We find that users involved in this ``Twitter war'' tend to have more friends and followers, are generally more engaged and post tweets with negative sentiment, less joy, and more hate than random users. We also perform preliminary measurements on how the Twitter suspension mechanism deals with such abusive behaviors. While we focus on Gamergate, our methodology to collect and analyze tweets related to aggressive and bullying activities is of independent interest.
Methylation and mutational analysis of p27kip1 in prostate carcinoma

We have previously identified 12p12‐13 as a region of frequent genetic loss in prostate carcinoma. A candidate tumor suppressor gene at this locus is the cyclin dependent kinase inhibitor p27kip1, which has been implicated as a marker of aggressive prostate carcinoma. Herein, we examine metastatic prostate tumors, xenografts, and cell lines for gene inactivation via mutational inactivation or promoter hypermethylation.
Iron, Anemia, and Iron Deficiency Anemia among Young Children in the United States

Iron deficiency and anemia are associated with impaired neurocognitive development and immune function in young children. Total body iron, calculated from serum ferritin and soluble transferrin receptor concentrations, and hemoglobin allow for monitoring of the iron and anemia status of children in the United States. The purpose of this analysis is to describe the prevalence of iron deficiency (ID), anemia, and iron deficiency anemia (IDA) among children 1–5 years using data from the 2007–2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Prevalence of ID, anemia, and IDA among children 1–5 years was 7.1% (5.5, 8.7), 3.2% (2.0, 4.3), and 1.1% (0.6, 1.7), respectively. The prevalence of both ID and anemia were higher among children 1–2 years (p < 0.05). In addition, 50% of anemic children 1–2 years were iron deficient. This analysis provides an update on the prevalence of ID, anemia, and IDA for a representative sample of US children. Our results suggest little change in these indicators over the past decade. Monitoring of ID and anemia is critical and prevention of ID in early childhood should remain a public health priority.
Behavioral interventions to improve glycemic control in African Americans with type 2 diabetes: a systematic review.

OBJECTIVE The use of behavioral interventions has been shown to improve glycemic control, however, the effectiveness of different behavioral interventions in one of the most high risk populations, African Americans, remains unclear. Our systematic review identified and examined findings of published behavioral interventions targeted at African Americans to improve glycemic control. The goal of our study was to distinguish which interventions were effective and identify areas for future research. DESIGN Medline, PsychInfo, and CINAHL were searched for articles published from January 2000 through January 2012 using a reproducible strategy. Study eligibility criteria included interventions aimed at changing behavior in adult African Americans with type 2 diabetes and measured glycemic control. RESULTS Ten studies met the inclusion criteria, of which five showed a statistically significant change in HbA1c in the intervention group when compared to the control group. Summary information and characteristics of the reviewed studies are provided. CONCLUSIONS Characteristics of successful interventions included using problem solving with the patient, culturally tailoring the intervention, and using a nurse educator. Limitations include the limited number of intervention studies available using glycemic control as the outcome measure. Clinical trials are needed to determine how best to tailor interventions to this largely underserved population and studies should describe details of cultural tailoring to provide information for future programs.