Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Very Low Birthweight and Subsequent Neurological Defect (with special reference to spastic diplegia)

Of a total of 170 children who weighed 1500g or less at birth and who were born in or admitted shortly after birth to Hammersmith Hospital, London, between the years 1961‐70 inclusive, 165 have been followed to ascertain the incidence of neurological handicap, with particular reference to spastic diplegia. This condition occurred in six children (3·6 per cent), all of whom were born during the 1961‐64 period, an incidence in those years of 10·3 per cent, compared with 0·0 per cent in the period 1965‐70 (χ2=8·72, p=0·0032). These findings are considered in the context of perinatal illness and care. The one statistically significant difference found between the children with and without spastic diplegia in the earlier period was a somewhat lower mean minimum rectal temperature on the first day of life only.
AgNORs count correlates better than grading with the effect of chemotherapy in serous ovarian cancer.

OBJECTIVE to evaluate the relationship between AgNORs count as well as tumor grade and the effect of chemotherapy in serous ovarian cancer. MATERIAL AND METHODS 39 women who underwent surgical procedure and then chemotherapy due to serous ovarian cancer were included into the study. In cancer cells the mean number of AgNORs per nucleus (mAgNOR) and the mean percentage of nuclei with five or more AgNORs (pAgNOR) were counted. RESULTS in 13 women (33.3%) we did not found the neoplastic disease in second-look laparotomy (group I), and in 26 patients (66.7%) the cancer was present (group II). The mean grading and the mAgNOR of ovarian cancer in the first operation in group I and in group II were similar. The mean pAgNOR in group I was higher than in group II. The values of mAgNOR and pAgNOR but not grading in women with the absence of cancer in second-look laparotomy and in women with the only single neoplastic focuses were similar one to another, and both were higher than in cases of disseminated neoplastic disease. CONCLUSIONS the quantitative assessment of AgNORs is better prognostic factor when compared to grading for the effectiveness of adjuvant chemotherapy in serous ovarian cancer.
MRI manifestations of soft-tissue haemangiomas and accompanying reactive bone changes.

OBJECTIVES Soft tissue haemangiomas are common benign vascular lesions that can be accompanied by reactive changes in the adjacent bone structure. This study aimed to discuss the MRI features of soft-tissue haemangiomas with an emphasis on changes in bone. METHODS The radiographic and MRI findings of 23 patients (9 males, 14 females; mean age 25 years; age range 2-46 years) with soft-tissue haemangiomas were analysed retrospectively. MR images were evaluated for location of the lesion, size, configuration, signal features, contrast patterns, proximity to adjacent bone and changes in the accompanying bone. Excisional biopsy was performed in 15 patients. RESULTS Radiographs demonstrated phleboliths in 8 patients (34%) and reactive bone changes in 4 (19%). On MRI, T₁ weighted images showed that most of the lesions were isointense or isohyperintense, as compared with muscle tissue; however, on T₂ weighted images all lesions appeared as hyperintense. Following intravenous gadolinium-diethylene triamine pentaacetic acid (DTPA) administration, homogeneous enhancement was observed in 3 lesions and heterogeneous enhancement was seen in 19. No enhancement was observed in one patient. Bone atrophy adjacent to the lesion was observed in four patients. CONCLUSION MRI is the most valuable means of diagnosing deep soft-tissue haemangiomas. Bone changes can accompany deeply situated haemangiomas; in four of our patients, we found atrophy of the bone adjacent to the lesion. To our knowledge, this is the first report in the literature regarding atrophy of the bone adjacent to a lesion.
Transmission of proteotoxicity across cellular compartments.

An important subgroup of human neurodegenerative diseases is associated with abnormal expansions of glutamine repeats found in several otherwise unrelated proteins (Zoghbi and Orr 2000). Interest in these polyglutamine diseases is fueled both by their clinical significance and by the belief that lessons gleaned from these relatively rare conditions will apply to other more prevalent human neurodegenerative disorders and perhaps more generally to other diseases of aging. The basis for this belief is the observation that polyglutamine diseases and common neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, share as a common feature the accumulation of abnormal protein aggregates in and around affected neurons (Kaytor and Warren 1999). In the polyglutamine diseases there is a good correlation between the length of the glutamine repeat, the tendency of the affected protein to assume abnormal aggregation-prone states of folding, and the occurrence of neurodegeneration (Gusella and MacDonald 2000; Orr 2001). Furthermore, there is reason to believe that despite the dissimilarities in structure and function of the proteins that “host” the glutamine repeat, once the polyglutamine expansion has reached a critical length, it imposes a common abnormal folding state on the affected protein (Perutz 1996). Together with the dominant inheritance pattern of the associated diseases, these observations suggest that the abnormal polyglutamine repeat converts host proteins into toxic entities, or proteotoxins (Hightower 1991). Attempts to understand the pathophysiology of polyglutamine diseases have therefore focused on the physical state of the abnormal protein, the cellular compartment in which it is found, and the impact of the abnormal protein on cell physiology. A paper in this issue of Genes & Development reports on a pathogenic polyglutamine protein that accumulates as a nuclear aggregate yet triggers the unfolded protein response—a cellular response to unfolded and misfolded proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum (Nishitoh et al. 2002). We will discuss some of the implications of this finding whereby the impact of a polyglutamine-containing proteotoxin can be transmitted from one cellular compartment to another.
Variational Policy for Guiding Point Processes

Temporal point processes have been widely applied to model event sequence data generated by online users. In this paper, we consider the problem of how to design the optimal control policy for point processes, such that the stochastic system driven by the point process is steered to a target state. In particular, we exploit the key insight to view the stochastic optimal control problem from the perspective of optimal measure and variational inference. We further propose a convex optimization framework and an efficient algorithm to update the policy adaptively to the current system state. Experiments on synthetic and real-world data show that our algorithm can steer the user activities much more accurately and efficiently than other stochastic control methods.
Why do newcomers abandon open source software projects?

Open source software projects, are based on volunteers collaboration and require a continuous influx of newcomers for their continuity. Newcomers face difficulties and obstacles when starting their contributions, resulting in a low retention rate. This paper presents an analysis of the first interactions of newcomers on a project, checking if the dropout may have been influenced by lack of answer, answers politeness and helpfulness, and the answer author. We have collected five years data from the developers' mailing list communication and issue manager (Jira) discussions of the Hadoop Common project. We observed developers' communication, identifying newcomers and classifying questions and answers content. In the analyzed period, less than 20% of newcomers became long-term contributors. There are evidences that the newcomers decision to abandon the project was influenced by the authors of the answers and by the type of answer received. However, the lack of answer was not evidenced as a factor that influences newcomers' decision to remain or abandon the project.
Tissue-Specific Transcriptome and Hormonal Regulation of Pollinated and Parthenocarpic Fig (Ficus carica L.) Fruit Suggest that Fruit Ripening Is Coordinated by the Reproductive Part of the Syconium

In the unconventional climacteric fig (Ficus carica) fruit, pollinated and parthenocarpic fruit of the same genotype exhibit different ripening characteristics. Integrative comparative analyses of tissue-specific transcript and of hormone levels during fruit repining from pollinated vs. parthenocarpic fig fruit were employed to unravel the similarities and differences in their regulatory processes during fruit repining. Assembling tissue-specific transcripts into 147,000 transcripts with 53,000 annotated genes provided new insights into the spatial distribution of many classes of regulatory and structural genes, including those related to color, taste and aroma, storage, protein degradation, seeds and embryos, chlorophyll, and hormones. Comparison of the pollinated and parthenocarpic tissues during fruit ripening showed differential gene expression, especially in the fruit inflorescence. The distinct physiological green phase II and ripening phase III differed significantly in their gene-transcript patterns in both pulp and inflorescence tissues. Gas chromatographic analysis of whole fruits enabled the first determination of ripening-related hormone levels from pollinated and non-pollinated figs. Ethylene and auxin both increased during fruit ripening, irrespective of pollination, whereas no production of active gibberellins or cytokinins was found in parthenocarpic or pollinated ripening fruit. Tissue-specific transcriptome revealed apparent different metabolic gene patterns for ethylene, auxin and ABA in pollinated vs. parthenocarpic fruit, mostly in the fruit inflorescence. Our results demonstrate that the production of abscisic acid (ABA), non-active ABA–GE conjugate and non-active indoleacetic acid (IAA)–Asp conjugate in pollinated fruits is much higher than in parthenocarpic fruits. We suggest that fruit ripening is coordinated by the reproductive part of the syconium and the differences in ABA production between pollinated and parthenocarpic fig fruit might be the key to their different ripening characteristics.
Phosphorus adsorption characteristics of oyster shells and alum sludge and their application for nutrient control in constructed wetland system

This research aimed to evaluate the feasibility of employing some locally available oyster shells (OS) and alum sludge (AS) as the P adsorption media of constructed wetland beds. The batch and column tests were conducted with different sizes of OS and AS to observe the P adsorption characteristics and breakthrough, while P adsorption rates were determined from jar test. From the batch test, the ability to adsorb the amount of added P was different considerably between OS and AS media and sizes. At the same size, the P adsorption capacities of OS were higher than those of alum sludge. The P adsorption capacities of AS with 0.3–0.6 mm and > 0.6 mm sizes were similar, but those of 0.3–0.6 mm OS was higher than > 0.6 mm OS. Jar test results revealed the first-order P removal rates (k) to be 11.4, 4.5, 1.7 and 1.0 d− 1 for the 0.3–0.6 mm AS, > 0.6 mm AS, 0.3–0.6 mm OS, and > 0.6 mm OS, respectively. From the column tests, the adsorption capacities were found to be more than 26 and 24.5 g/kg for the OS media sizes of 0.3–0.6 and > 0.6 mm, respectively, and 12 g/kg for the AS media. The column tests revealed that AS was able to adsorb P faster than the oyster shells, but due to its low adsorption capacity, the periods of P breakthrough in the effluent of the alum sludge columns were shorter than those of the oyster shell columns. Experiments with a pilot-scale vertical-flow subsurface constructed wetland unit packed with > 0.6 mm OS media demonstrated the high P removal efficiencies of more than 96.2% during the 210 days of operation.
Analysis of traditional fish processing methods among women in Lau Local Government Area of Taraba State, Nigeria

The study analyzed traditional fish processing methods among women in Lau Local Government of Taraba State, Nigeria. Structured questionnaires were administered to 80 randomly selected respondents from 113 registered fish processors. Percentages, frequencies and multiple regression analysis were used for the data analysis. The study revealed that most (73.75%) of the respondents were within the age range of 30 to 49 years, 73.75% were married with average size of seven people per house hold. About 73% of the respondents had formal education with average of 19 years processing experience. More than half (51.25%) of the respondents had income of less than N 30,000 and 90.00% of them had no prior contact with extension agents. 77.50% of the respondents adopted smoking and 10% fermentation/drying as methods of fish processing. The coefficient of determination (R²) was estimated at 0.974 indicating that 97.4% of the variation was explained by the variables (Age, house hold size and education) included in the model. Smoke pollution, poor transportation network and seasonality of fish were the major problems confronting the respondents. The findings recommended that the fisheries unit of agricultural extension agency and research institutes should device appropriate or improved methods of processing fish locally that will be less hazardous to health and environmentally suitable. Government should engage in rehabilitation of rural feeder roads leading to the processing communities to improve transportation system and reduce cost.
Automated Laboratory Infiltrometer to Estimate Saturated Hydraulic Conductivity Using an Arduino Microcontroller Board

This paper describes the design, calibration and testing processes of a new device named Automated Laboratory Infiltrometer (ALI). It allows to determinate in laboratory, under controlled conditions the saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ks) of altered or unaltered soil samples which is a key parameter to understand the movement of water through a porous medium. The ALI combines the advantages of three different approaches: measures vertical infiltration rates in a soil column, measures the actual volumes of vertically drained water through the soil column, and finally, uses heat as a natural tracer to determinate water flux rates through the porous medium; all those parameters are used to determinate Ks. The ALI was developed using the popular Arduino microcontroller board and commercially available sensors that give the whole system a low cost. Data from the ALI are recorded in a microSD memory so they can be easily read from any spreadsheet software helping to reduce time consuming and avoiding reading errors. The performance of this device was evaluated by comparing the water flow rates determined by the three approaches for which is designed; an excellent correlation among them was observed (worst correlation: R2 = 0.9826 and r-RSME = 0.94%).
Graph Clustering Based on Structural/Attribute Similarities

The goal of graph clustering is to partition vertices in a large graph into different clusters based on various criteria such as vertex connectivity or neighborhood similarity. Graph clustering techniques are very useful for detecting densely connected groups in a large graph. Many existing graph clustering methods mainly focus on the topological structure for clustering, but largely ignore the vertex properties which are often heterogenous. In this paper, we propose a novel graph clustering algorithm, SA-Cluster, based on both structural and attribute similarities through a unified distance measure. Our method partitions a large graph associated with attributes into k clusters so that each cluster contains a densely connected subgraph with homogeneous attribute values. An effective method is proposed to automatically learn the degree of contributions of structural similarity and attribute similarity. Theoretical analysis is provided to show that SA-Cluster is converging. Extensive experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of SA-Cluster through comparison with the state-of-the-art graph clustering and summarization methods.
Fast encoding method for vector quantization based on a new mixed pyramid data structure [image coding applications]

VQ is a famous signal compression method. The encoding speed of VQ is a key problem for its practical application. In principle, the high dimension of a vector makes it very expensive computationally to find the best-matched template in a codebook for an input vector by Euclidean distance. As a result, many fast search methods have been developed in previous works based on statistical features (i.e. mean, variance or L/sub 2/ norm) or multi-resolution representation (i.e. various pyramid data structures) of a vector to deal with this computational complexity problem. Therefore, how to use them optimally in terms of a small memory requirement and a little computational overhead becomes very important. This paper proposes to combine both the 2-PM sum pyramid and (n/spl times/n)-PM variance pyramid of a vector to construct a new mixed pyramid data structure, which only requires (k+1) memories for a k-dimensional vector. Experimental results confirmed that the encoding efficiency by using this mixed pyramid outperforms the previous works significantly.
The birth of strange stars and their dynamo-originated magnetic fields

It is shown that protostrange stars (PSSs) can be convective and that there are two possible scenarios describing their turbulence. Besides the local turbulence on the scale which is less than the mean free path of neutrinos, large-scale (1 km) convection also may occur with properties that are similar to those of convection in protoneutron stars (PNSs). We thus suggest that strange stars can also create dynamo-originated magnetic elds during the deleptonization episode soon after a supernova explosion. Further detailed investigations are needed to see whether or not strange stars and neutron stars can be distinguished according to the dierences in dynamo actions in strange quark matter and in neutron matter. The magnetic elds of strange stars and neutron stars may also behave very dierently during the accretion-phase when the elds decay.
A direct spatial-domain representation for the fields excited by an arbitrary incident field at a planar dielectric interface

A new expression is constructed for scattering from a planar dielectric interface. This expression provides the exact boundary fields excited by all arbitrary incident field on a flat surface without requiring operator inversion or spectral decomposition of the incident field. While analytically exact, the simulation results can be affected by numerical and discretization errors when the operators are not handled properly. Particular attention must be paid to operator products and discretization. Extension of this result to smooth closed bodies is addressed in a separate presentation.
Efficiently Handling Temporal Knowledge in an HTN Planner

This paper presents some enhancements in the temporal reasoning of a Hierarchical Task Network (HTN) planner, named SIADEX, that, up to authors knowledge, no other HTN planner has. These new features include a sound partial order metric structure, deadlines, temporal landmarking or synchronization capabilities built on top of a Simple Temporal Network and an efficient constraint propagation engine boosted by exploiting the causal structure of plans.
Biomechanical Analysis of Fusion Segment Rigidity Upon Stress at Both the Fusion and Adjacent Segments: A Comparison between Unilateral and Bilateral Pedicle Screw Fixation

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of unilateral pedicle screw fixation on the fusion segment and the superior adjacent segment after one segment lumbar fusion using validated finite element models. Materials and Methods Four L3-4 fusion models were simulated according to the extent of decompression and the method of pedicle screws fixation in L3-4 lumbar fusion. These models included hemi-laminectomy with bilateral pedicle screw fixation in the L3-4 segment (BF-HL model), total laminectomy with bilateral pedicle screw fixation (BF-TL model), hemi-laminectomy with unilateral pedicle screw fixation (UF-HL model), and total laminectomy with unilateral pedicle screw fixation (UF-TL model). In each scenario, intradiscal pressures, annulus stress, and range of motion at the L2-3 and L3-4 segments were analyzed under flexion, extension, lateral bending, and torsional moments. Results Under four pure moments, the unilateral fixation leads to a reduction in increment of range of motion at the adjacent segment, but larger motions were noted at the fusion segment (L3-4) in the unilateral fixation (UF-HL and UF-TL) models when compared to bilateral fixation. The maximal von Mises stress showed similar patterns to range of motion at both superior adjacent L2-3 segments and fusion segment. Conclusion The current study suggests that unilateral pedicle screw fixation seems to be unable to afford sufficient biomechanical stability in case of bilateral total laminectomy. Conversely, in the case of hemi-laminectomy, unilateral fixation could be an alternative option, which also has potential benefit to reduce the stress of the adjacent segment.
The Earliest Finding of Indocyanine Green Lymphography in Asymptomatic Limbs of Lower Extremity Lymphedema Patients Secondary to Cancer Treatment: The Modified Dermal Backflow Stage and Concept of Subclinical Lymphedema

Background: Early diagnosis and treatment are as important for management of secondary lymphedema following cancer treatment as in primary cancer treatment. Indocyanine green lymphography is the modality of choice for routine follow-up evaluation of patients at high risk of developing lymphedema after cancer therapy. Methods: Fifty-six limbs of 28 so-called unilateral secondary lower extremity lymphedema patients who underwent indocyanine green lymphography were compared with dermal backflow patterns of indocyanine green lymphography on 28 asymptomatic limbs and assessed using leg dermal backflow stage. Results: Of 28 asymptomatic limbs of secondary lower extremity lymphedema patients, the dermal backflow patterns were detected in 19 limbs but were absent in nine limbs. Significant differences were seen between asymptomatic limbs with dermal backflow patterns (n = 19) and limbs without them (n = 9): age, 51.4 ± 15.3 years versus 34.8 ± 12.7 years (p = 0.007); body weight, 75.1 ± 7.9 kg versus 50.1 ± 5.3 kg (p = 0.012); body mass index, 23.1 ± 4.2 versus 19.7 ± 1.8 (p = 0.005); leg dermal backflow stage of asymptomatic limb, 1.2 ± 0.4 versus 0.0 ± 0.0 (p < 0.001); and leg dermal backflow stage of symptomatic limb, 3.5 ± 0.6 versus 2.8 ± 0.8 (p = 0.033). Conclusions: The splash pattern is the earliest finding on indocyanine green lymphography of asymptomatic limbs of secondary lower extremity lymphedema patients. The leg dermal backflow stage allows early diagnosis of secondary lower extremity lymphedema even in a subclinical stage. The concept of subclinical lymphedema could play an important role in early diagnosis and prevention of lymphedema after cancer treatment. CLINICAL QUESTION/LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Diagnostic, V.