Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Acute Gastrocnemius-Soleus Complex Injuries in National Football League Athletes

Background: Lower extremity muscle injuries are common in professional football. Although less common than hamstring or quadriceps injuries in National Football League (NFL) athletes, calf injuries occur with relative frequency and have not previously been studied. Purpose: To evaluate gastrocnemius-soleus complex muscle injuries over the past 13 years from a single NFL team to determine the incidence of such injuries, their imaging characteristics, and return to play after such injuries and any correlation between imaging findings and prolonged return to play. Study Design: Case series; Level of evidence, 4. Methods: A retrospective review of all acute calf muscle injuries on a single NFL team from 2003 to 2015 was performed. Player demographics and return-to-play data were obtained from the medical records. All available magnetic resonance images (MRIs) were reviewed by a musculoskeletal radiologist for specific imaging findings that correlated with return to play. Results: A total of 27 calf injuries in 24 NFL players were reviewed, yielding an incidence of 2.3 acute calf injuries per year on a single NFL team. Of these 27 injuries, 20 (74%) were isolated injuries to the gastrocnemius muscle, 4 (15%) were isolated injuries to the soleus muscle, and the remaining 3 injuries (11%) involved both. Defensive players were more likely to sustain injuries (P = .043). The mean time to return to play for all 27 players was 17.4 ± 14.6 days (range, 3-62 days). MRIs were available in 14 of the 27 injuries. The average size of the fascial defect (P = .032) and the presence of a fluid collection (P = .031) both correlated with return to play of longer than 2 weeks. Conclusion: Although less common than hamstring or quadriceps muscle injuries, calf muscle injuries occur with relative frequency in the NFL, and more so in defensive players. The majority of these injuries occur in the gastrocnemius and result in significant disability, with at least 2 weeks of missed playing time on average. MRI may have an important role in the evaluation of calf injuries in NFL players, as certain injury imaging characteristics, including the anteroposterior size of any fascial tear and the presence of a fluid collection, are associated with longer return-to-play times after injury.
Structural Studies of the Complex Between Akt-in and the Akt2-PH Domain Suggest that the Peptide Acts as an Allosteric Inhibitor of the Akt Kinase

Serine/threonine kinase Akt plays a central role in the regulation of cell survival and proliferation. Hence, the search for Akt specific inhibitors constitutes an attractive strategy for anticancer therapy. We have previously demonstrated that the proto-oncogene TCL1 coactivates Akt upon binding to its Plekstrin Homology Domain, and we proposed a model for the structure of the complex TCL1:Akt2-PHD. This model led to the rational design of Akt-in, a peptide inhibitor spanning the A s-strand of human TCL1 that binds Akt2 PH domain and inhibits the kinase activation. In the present report, we used NMR spectroscopy to determine the 3D structure of the peptide free in solution and bound to Akt2-PHD. NMR chemical shift mapping was used to determine the imprint of Akt-in on the PH domain; whereas peptide Ala-scanning revealed which peptide residues were involved in the interaction. Together with the solution structure of Akt2-PHD, these results allowed us to dock Akt-in on the PH domain. The docked complex suggests that while Akt-in binds Akt2-PHD in a region overlapping the binding site of TCL1, its mode of interaction is markedly different. Moreover, the affinity was disappointingly low, contrary to that published previously. Besides providing a description of the interaction between Akt-in an Akt2 PH domain, the present work brings additional clues on the putative peptide mode of action. Instead of behaving as an analog of PtdIns, as previously suggested, Akt-in might act as an "allosteric" inhibitor, maintaining the full-length kinase in its "closed" inactive conformation, rather than disturbing the membrane anchorage of its "open" active conformation.
Curcumin Inhibits the Activation of Immunoglobulin E-Mediated Mast Cells and Passive Systemic Anaphylaxis in Mice by Reducing Serum Eicosanoid and Histamine Levels

Curcumin is naturally occurring polyphenolic compound found in turmeric and has many pharmacological activities. The present study was undertaken to evaluate anti-allergic inflammatory activity of curcumin, and to investigate its inhibitory mechanisms in immunoglobulin E (IgE)/Ag-induced mouse bone marrow-derived mast cells (BMMCs) and in a mouse model of IgE/Ag-mediated passive systemic anaphylaxis (PSA). Curcumin inhibited cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) dependent prostaglandin D2 (PGD2) and 5-lipoxygenase (5-LO) dependent leukotriene C4 (LTC4) generation dose-dependently in BMMCs. To probe the mechanism involved, we assessed the effects of curcumin on the phosphorylation of Syk and its downstream signal molecules. Curcumin inhibited intracellular Ca2+ influx via phospholipase Cγ1 (PLCγ1) activation and the phosphorylation of mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) and the nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) pathway. Furthermore, the oral administration of curcumin significantly attenuated IgE/Ag-induced PSA, as determined by serum LTC4, PGD2, and histamine levels. Taken together, this study shows that curcumin offers a basis for drug development for the treatment of allergic inflammatory diseases.
Perceptibility of digital watermarking in haptically enabled 3D meshes

Usage of 3D data and models is receiving a growing interest for several applications, like training, museum displays, multimodal interfaces, aid for impaired people. In such a framework the need will soon raise to protect 3D data from misuse. Among the technologies that can be used to this aim, digital watermarking has a prominent role, due to its versatility and non-obtrusiveness. A basic requirement of any watermarking scheme is that the embedded code is invisible, or non-perceivable, by the end user of the data. This requirement also holds for 3D objects, it is then necessary that the human ability of perceiving a signal hidden in a 3D object is studied. In this paper we present a preliminary analysis aiming at comparing the perceptibility of the hidden signal when the 3D model is sensed through different senses, namely vision (through common rendering techniques and subsequent display on a monitor) and touch (through a haptic interface). Specifically our investigation aimed at assessing whether ensuring watermark invisibility is sufficient to ensure that the watermark presence can not be felt haptically. The answer stemming from our preliminary analysis seems to be no, even if further studies are necessary before a definitive answer can be given.
Bubbles: a unifying framework for low-level statistical properties of natural image sequences.

Recently, different models of the statistical structure of natural images have been proposed. These models predict properties of biological visual systems and can be used as priors in Bayesian inference. The fundamental model is independent component analysis, which can be estimated by maximization of the sparsenesses of linear filter outputs. This leads to the emergence of principal simple cell properties. Alternatively, simple cell properties are obtained by maximizing the temporal coherence in natural image sequences. Taking account of the basic dependencies of linear filter outputs permit modeling of complex cells and topographic organization as well. We propose a unifying framework for these statistical properties, based on the concept of spatiotemporal activity "bubbles. "A bubble means here an activation of simple cells (linear filters) that is contiguous both in space (the cortical surface) and in time.
Management of diaphyseal tibial fractures by plate fixation with absolute or relative stability: a retrospective study of 45 patients

Background Fixation of diaphyseal tibial fractures by plates is not considered the best option due to complications that may eventually arise; however, if principles of stability and proper surgical techniques are used, it is possible to obtain fracture consolidation without major risks. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional observational descriptive study by retrospectively analyzing medical records of patients with diaphyseal tibial fractures that were treated with plates from the period between June 2011 and June 2014 at San José and Susana López Hospitals in the city of Popayan, Colombia. 3 treatment groups were created and analyzed according to the type of fracture (Association Osteosynthesis/Osteosynthesis Trauma Association AO/OTA): group I: simple fractures 42A/B, absolute stability; group II: simple fractures 42A/B, Minimally Invasive Plate Osteosynthesis (MIPO) technique, relative stability; group III: multifragmentary fractures 42C, MIPO technique, relative stability. A descriptive analysis of patients, fracture consolidation time, and complications in each group were performed. Results 45 patients with tibial fractures treated with osteosynthesis plates were analyzed. Group I: 14 patients, 42A (n=13) and 42B (n=1), had an average consolidation time of 16.38 (SD=1.98) and 14 weeks, respectively. In group II: 19 patients, out of which 18 achieved fracture consolidation (42A n=15 and 42B n=3) with an average time of 17.4 (SD=3.33) and 17.3 weeks (SD=6.11), respectively. Finally, in group III: 12 patients all with 42C fractures with a consolidation time of 16.86 (SD=2.93) weeks. The average fracture consolidation time for all 44 patients was 16.86 weeks (SD 2.93). Conclusions Osteosynthesis plates are an alternative to intramedullary nailing for diaphyseal tibial fractures and their outcomes can be favorable as long as the management of soft tissues and the proper principle of stability are taken into account. Level of evidence IV.
Cross-lingual sentence extraction for information distillation

Information distillation aims to analyze and interpret large volumes of speech and text archives in multiple languages and produce structured information of interest to the user. In this work, we investigate cross-lingual information distillation, where nonEnglish (source language) documents are searched for user queries that are in English (target language). We propose to perform distillation both on the original source language data and their English translations output by machine translation, and combine the two outputs. We experimentally show that combination approach results in 8% to 16% absolute (13% to 31% relative) F-measure improvement over the previous work.
Bayesian inference as a cross-linguistic word segmentation strategy: Always learning useful things

Statistical learning has been proposed as one of the earliest strategies infants could use to segment words out of their native language because it does not rely on language-specific cues that must be derived from existing knowledge of the words in the language. Statistical word segmentation strategies using Bayesian inference have been shown to be quite successful for English (Goldwater et al. 2009), even when cognitively inspired processing constraints are integrated into the inference process (Pearl et al. 2011, Phillips & Pearl 2012). Here we test this kind of strategy on child-directed speech from seven languages to evaluate its effectiveness cross-linguistically, with the idea that a viable strategy should succeed in each case. We demonstrate that Bayesian inference is indeed a viable cross-linguistic strategy, provided the goal is to identify useful units of the language, which can range from sub-word morphology to whole words to meaningful word combinations.
Detecting toxic comments from highly skewed social media data

A user’s online social media data, to a considerable extent, provides insight into the user’s activity. Screening user-generated data for negative content has a wide range of applications, like background checks of an employee and spotting of terror elements. Researchers have focused on identifying toxic text in social media by exploiting deep-learning models in conjunction with pre-trained language models. However, the availability of labelled toxic text is limited. In this work, we apply data augmentation techniques to address the problem of imbalanced training data. The augmented labelled data is used to fine-tune an ensemble. The ensemble consists of one linear classifier and three sequence classifiers, Bi-RNN (Bi-directional Recurrent Neural Networks), Bi-GRU (Bi-directional Gated Recurrent Unit), and Bi-LSTM (Bi-directional Long-Short Term Memory). We use BERT (Bi-directional Encoder Representations from Transformers) as our pre-trained language model. We also experiment with various text preprocessing techniques on the training data and how it affects classification performance. We compare our best-identified model with other toxic text detection frameworks available in the literature.
Uncertainty in Rainfall Intensity Duration Frequency Curves of Peninsular Malaysia under Changing Climate Scenarios

This study developed a methodological framework to update the rainfall intensity-duration-frequency (IDF) curves under climate change scenarios. A model output statistics (MOS) method is used to downscale the daily rainfall of general circulation models (GCMs), and an artificial neural network (ANN) is employed for the disaggregation of projected daily rainfall to hourly maximum rainfall, which is then used for the development of IDF curves. Finally, the 1st quartiles, medians, and 3rd quartiles of projected rainfall intensities are estimated for developing IDF curves with uncertainty level. Eight GCM simulations under two radiative concentration pathways (RCP) scenarios, namely, RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5, are used in the proposed framework for the projection of IDF curves with related uncertainties for peninsular Malaysia. The projection of rainfall revealed an increase in the annual average rainfall throughout the present century. The comparison of the projected IDF curves for the period 2006–2099 with that obtained using GCM hindcasts for the based period (1971–2005) revealed an increase in rainfall intensity for shorter durations and a decrease for longer durations. The uncertainty in rainfall intensity for different return periods for shorter duration is found to be 2 to 6 times more compared to longer duration rainfall, which indicates that a large increase in rainfall intensity for short durations projected by GCMs is highly uncertain for peninsular Malaysia. The IDF curves developed in this study can be used for the planning of climate resilient urban water storm water management infrastructure in Peninsular Malaysia.
Case Study: IBM Watson Analytics Cloud Platform as Analytics-as-a-Service System for Heart Failure Early Detection

In the recent years the progress in technology and the increasing availability of fast connections have produced a migration of functionalities in Information Technologies services, from static servers to distributed technologies. This article describes the main tools available on the market to perform Analytics as a Service (AaaS) using a cloud platform. It is also described a use case of IBM Watson Analytics, a cloud system for data analytics, applied to the following research scope: detecting the presence or absence of Heart Failure disease using nothing more than the electrocardiographic signal, in particular through the analysis of Heart Rate Variability. The obtained results are comparable with those coming from the literature, in terms of accuracy and predictive power. Advantages and drawbacks of cloud versus static approaches are discussed in the last sections.
Genes in the Ureteric Budding Pathway: Association Study on Vesico-Ureteral Reflux Patients

Vesico-ureteral reflux (VUR) is the retrograde passage of urine from the bladder to the urinary tract and causes 8.5% of end-stage renal disease in children. It is a complex genetic developmental disorder, in which ectopic embryonal ureteric budding is implicated in the pathogenesis. VUR is part of the spectrum of Congenital Anomalies of the Kidney and Urinary Tract (CAKUT). We performed an extensive association study for primary VUR using a two-stage, case-control design, investigating 44 candidate genes in the ureteric budding pathway in 409 Dutch VUR patients. The 44 genes were selected from the literature and a set of 567 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) capturing their genetic variation was genotyped in 207 cases and 554 controls. The 14 SNPs with p<0.005 were included in a follow-up study in 202 cases and 892 controls. Of the total cohort, ∼50% showed a clear-cut primary VUR phenotype and ∼25% had both a duplex collecting system and VUR. We also looked for association in these two extreme phenotype groups. None of the SNPs reached a significant p-value. Common genetic variants in four genes (GREM1, EYA1, ROBO2 and UPK3A) show a trend towards association with the development of primary VUR (GREM1, EYA1, ROBO2) or duplex collecting system (EYA1 and UPK3A). SNPs in three genes (TGFB1, GNB3 and VEGFA) have been shown to be associated with VUR in other populations. Only the result of rs1800469 in TGFB1 hinted at association in our study. This is the first extensive study of common variants in the genes of the ureteric budding pathway and the genetic susceptibility to primary VUR.
Evidence for Spread of a Clonal Strain of Pseudomonas aeruginosa among Cystic Fibrosis Clinics

Recent advances in molecular typing techniques have led to the identification of a dominant clonal strain of Pseudomonas aeruginosa within several cystic fibrosis (CF) clinics ([2][1]-[6][2], [8][3], [9][4]). These strains have been described as “hypertransmissible,” and “patient-to-patient
Repri N Ted From

We develop a framework for thinking about the 'paradox' of very gradual diffusion of apparently cost-effective energy-conservation technologies. Our analysis provides some keys to understanding why this technology-diffusion process is gradual, and focuses attention on the factors that cause this to be the case, including those associated with potential market failures -information problems, principal/agent slippage, and unobserved costs -and those explanations that do not represent market failures -private information costs, hign discount rates, and heterogeneity among potential adopters. Additionally, our analysis indicates how alternative policy instruments -both economic incentives and direct regulations -can hasten the diffusion of energy-conserving technologies.
JFA-based front ends for speaker recognition

We discuss the limitations of the i-vector representation of speech segments in speaker recognition and explain how Joint Factor Analysis (JFA) can serve as an alternative feature extractor in a variety of ways. Building on the work of Zhao and Dong, we implemented a variational Bayes treatment of JFA which accommodates adaptation of universal background models (UBMs) in a natural way. This allows us to experiment with several types of features for speaker recognition: speaker factors and diagonal factors in addition to i-vectors, extracted with and without UBM adaptation in each case. We found that, in text-independent speaker verification experiments on NIST data, extracting i-vectors with UBM adaptation led to a 10% reduction in equal error rates although performance did not improve consistently over the whole DET curve. We achieved a further 10% reduction (with a similar inconsistency) by using speaker factors extracted with UBM adaptation as features. In text-dependent speaker recognition experiments on RSR2015 data, we were able to achieve very good performance using a JFA model with diagonal factors but no speaker factors as a feature extractor. Contrary to standard practice, this JFA model was configured so as to model speakerphrase combinations (rather than speakers) and it was trained on utterances of very short duration (rather than whole recording sessions). We also present a variant of the length normalization trick inspired by uncertainty propagation which leads to substantial gains in performance over the whole DET curve.
Long-Term Athletic Development in Youth Alpine Ski Racing: The Effect of Physical Fitness, Ski Racing Technique, Anthropometrics and Biological Maturity Status on Injuries

Alpine ski racing is known to be a sport with a high risk of injuries. Because most studies have focused mainly on top-level athletes and on traumatic injuries, limited research exists about injury risk factors among youth ski racers. The aim of this study was to determine the intrinsic risk factors (anthropometrics, biological maturity, physical fitness, racing technique) for injury among youth alpine ski racers. Study participants were 81 youth ski racers attending a ski boarding school (50 males, 31 females; 9–14 years). A prospective longitudinal cohort design was used to monitor sports-related risk factors over two seasons and traumatic (TI) and overuse injuries (OI). At the beginning of the study, anthropometric characteristics (body height, body weight, sitting height, body mass index); biological maturity [status age at peak height velocity (APHV)]; physical performance parameters related to jump coordination, maximal leg and core strength, explosive and reactive strength, balance and endurance; and ski racing technique were assessed. Z score transformations normalized the age groups. Multivariate binary logistic regression (dependent variable: injury yes/no) and multivariate linear regression analyses (dependent variable: injury severity in total days of absence from training) were calculated. T-tests and multivariate analyses of variance were used to reveal differences between injured and non-injured athletes and between injury severity groups. The level of significance was set to p < 0.05. Relatively low rates of injuries were reported for both traumatic (0.63 TI/athlete) and overuse injuries (0.21 OI/athlete). Athletes with higher body weight, body height, and sitting height; lower APHV values; better core flexion strength; smaller core flexion:extension strength ratio; shorter drop jump contact time; and higher drop jump reactive strength index were at a lower injury risk or more vulnerable for fewer days of absence from training. However, significant differences between injured and non-injured athletes were only observed with respect to the drop jump reactive strength index. Regular documentation of anthropometric characteristics, biological maturity and physical fitness parameters is crucial to help to prevent injury in youth ski racing. The present findings suggest that neuromuscular training should be incorporated into the training regimen of youth ski racers to prevent injuries.