Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Evidence-Based Appraisal of the Use of Hyperbaric Oxygen on Flaps and Grafts

Summary: Hyperbaric oxygen has been advocated, both as an adjunctive or primary form of treatment, for a variety of disorders, including gas gangrene, osteoradionecrosis, and carbon monoxide poisoning. It has also been used to improve ischemic wounds before skin grafting and to support ischemic flaps. In this review, we analyze the available literature that investigates the use of hyperbaric oxygen for composite grafts, skin grafts, random flaps, distant flaps, and free flaps. An appraisal of the level of evidence for each of these uses of hyperbaric oxygen is offered. Although there are a significant amount of animal data supporting the application of hyperbaric oxygen for grafts and flaps, there is very little clinical information other than case reports and series to sustain its choice over other modalities of therapy. Multicenter prospective clinical studies are clearly needed comparing hyperbaric oxygen to other mechanical or pharmacologic interventions to improve wound healing for grafting or to support flap survival.
Making Large-Scale Information Resources Serve Communities of Practice

Community memory can provide the crucial bridge between large-scale information bases like digital libraries and the day-to-day activities of a community's members. Just as a digital library is based on a general structure and conventional means of access to diverse collections of materials, a community memory will help cull and shape the structure and contents of this collection to meet more particular needs. But it is by no means straightforward for people to collect, maintain, share, and apply the materials that are part of a community memory. Useful and usable community memories require support for: (1) the acquisition and evolution of content and structure; (2) the identification of materials and community members relevant to a particular task; and (3) the maintenance of organizations that are mutually intelligible across the community. In this paper, we explore issues related to these three requirements based on a meta-analysis of our collective experiences with the development and use of shared hypermedia information resources.
Clinical utility of 11C-flumazenil positron emission tomography in intractable temporal lobe epilepsy.

BACKGROUND 11C-flumazenil (FMZ) positron emission tomography (PET) is a new entrant into the armamentarium for pre-surgical evaluation of patients with intractable temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). AIMS To analyze the clinical utility of FMZ PET to detect lesional and remote cortical areas of abnormal benzodiazepine receptor binding in relation to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), 2-Deoxy-2 [18F] fluoro-D-glucose, (18F FDG) PET, electrophysiological findings and semiology of epilepsy in patients with intractable TLE. MATERIALS AND METHODS Patients underwent a high resolution MRI, prolonged Video-EEG monitoring before 18F FDG and 11C FMZ PET studies. Regional cortical FMZ PET abnormalities were defined on co-registered PET images using an objective method based on definition of areas of abnormal asymmetry (asymmetry index {AI}>10%). SETTINGS AND DESIGN Prospective. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS Student's "t" test. RESULTS Twenty patients (Mean age: 35.2 years [20-51]; M:F=12:8) completed the study. Mean age at seizure onset was 10.3 years (birth-38 years); mean duration, 23.9 years (6-50 years). Concordance with the MRI lesion was seen in 10 patients (nine with hippocampal sclerosis and one with tuberous sclerosis). In the other 10, with either normal or ambiguous MRI findings, FMZ and FDG uptake were abnormal in all, concordant with the electrophysiological localization of the epileptic foci. Remote FMZ PET abnormalities (n=18) were associated with early age of seizure onset (P=0.005) and long duration of epilepsy (P=0.01). CONCLUSIONS FMZ-binding asymmetry is a sensitive method to detect regions of epileptic foci in patients with intractable TLE.
A comparison of public and professionals' attitudes towards genetic developments

This study assesses the attitudes of the general public and of three professional groups to: genetic developments: the desired scope and availability of genetic testing in pregnancy; and decision-making about availability. Questionnaires were sent to 163 professionals and given directly to 973 members of the public by Gallup. Genetic developments were found to evoke both positive and negative feelings in all groups, but with the public being less positive overall than the professional groups. All groups endorsed the use of prenatal genetic screening and the offer of termination for serious conditions, but not for minor physical problems nor for non-disease characteristics. 54% of the general public did not want experts involved in decisions about the availability of new genetic tests, although 78% of professionals thought regulation should be by an advisory group including experts and members of the public. We need to develop ways of integrating public and professional views if the best decisions are to be made.
A General Scalable and Elastic Content-Based Publish/Subscribe Service

The big data era is characterized by the emergence of live content with increasing complexities of data dimensionality and data sizes, which poses a new challenge to emergency applications: how to timely disseminate large-scale live content to users who are interested in. The publish/subscribe (pub/sub) model is widely used to disseminate data because of its possibility of expanding the system to Internet-scale size. However, existing pub/sub systems are inadequate to meet the requirement of disseminating live content in the big data era, since their multi-hop routing techniques and coarse-grained partitioning techniques lead to a low matching throughput, and their upload capacities do not scale well. In this paper, we propose a general scalable and elastic pub/sub service based on the cloud computing environment, called GSEC. For generality, we propose a two-layer pub/sub framework to support the dissemination with diverse data sizes and data dimensionality. For scalability, a hybrid space partitioningtechnique is proposed to achieve high matching throughput, which divides subscriptions into multiple clusters in a hierarchical manner. Moreover, a helper-based content distribution technique is proposed to achieve high upload bandwidth, where servers act as both providers and coordinators to fully explore the upload capacity of the system. For elasticity, we propose a performance-aware provisioningtechnique to adjust the scale of servers to adapt to the churn workloads. To evaluate the performance of GSEC, about 1,000 servers are deployed and hundreds of thousands of live content items are tested in our CloudStack-based testbed. Extensive experiments confirm that GSEC can linearly increase the capacities of event matching and content distribution with the growth of servers, adaptively adjust these capacities in tens of seconds according to the churn workloads, and significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches under various parameter settings.
Modelling foot height and foot shape-related dimensions

The application of foot anthropometry to design good-fitting footwear has been difficult due to the lack of generalised models. This study seeks to model foot dimensions so that the characteristic shapes of feet, especially in the midfoot region, can be understood. Fifty Hong Kong Chinese adults (26 males and 24 females) participated in this study. Their foot lengths, foot widths, ball girths and foot heights were measured and then evaluated using mathematical models. The results showed that there were no significant allometry (p > 0.05) effects of foot length on ball girth and foot width. Foot height showed no direct relationship with foot length. However, a normalisation with respect to foot length and foot height resulted in a significant relationship for both males and females with R2 greater than 0.97. Due to the lack of a direct relationship between foot height and foot length, the current practice of grading shoes with a constant increase in height or proportionate scaling in response to foot length is less than ideal. The results when validated with other populations can be a significant way forward in the design of footwear that has an improved fit in the height dimension.
Standard metabolism, body temperature, and surface areas of Australian marsupials.

DAWSON, TERENCE J., AND A. J. HULBERT. Standard metabolism, body temperature, and surface areas of Australian marsupials. Am. J. Physiol. 2 1 B(4) : 12331238. 1970. -Standard (basal) metabolism and resting body temperatures were measured in eight Australian marsupial species which ranged in weight from 9 g to 54 kg. The relationship between standard metabolic rate (SMR) and body weight (W) was found to be best represented by the equation SMR (cal/hr) = 12.30 W0*7a7 g. The standard metabolism of marsupials therefore was found to be proportional to almost the same fractional power of body weight, 0.75, as that of eutherian mammals and the whole animal kingdom in general. The level of metabolism in the marsupials, however, was approximately 30yo lower than that of eutherian mammals. The marsupials were also found to have mean body temperatures 2-3 C lower than is usual for eutherians. The implications of a reduced metabolism with respect to energy balance are discussed, as are the relative levels of metabolism in higher vertebrates. Surface area and Meeh factors for eight marsupial species were also determined. It was found that the greatest influence on the Meeh factor of an animal was the relative amount of membraneous areas.
Global simulations of the impact on contemporary climate of a perturbation to the sea-to-air flux of dimethylsulfide

The sea-to-air flux of the biogenic sulfur (S) compound dimethylsulfide (DMS) is thought to constitute an important radiative impact on climate, especially in remote marine areas. Previous biogeochemical modelling analyses simulate medium to large changes in the sea-to-air flux of DMS in polar regions under warming scenarios. Here we assess the global radiative impact of such a prescribed change in DMS flux on contemporary climate using a low-resolution atmospheric gen eral circulation model. This impact operates through the atmospheric oxidation of DMS to radiatively-active sulfate aerosols, which are known to both reflect incom ing short-wave radiation and to affect the microphysical properties of clouds, for example, through an increase in cloud albedo. We use an atmospheric GCM with incorporated sulfur cycle, coupled to a mixed-layer (‘q-flux’) ocean, to estimate the climatic response to a prescribed meridionally-variable change in zonal DMS flux, as simulated in a previous modelling analysis. We compare baseline sulfur emissions (contemporary anthropogenic S and contemporary DMS sea-to-air flux), with contemporary anthropogenic S and a perturbed DMS flux. Our results indicate that the global mean DMS vertically integrated concentration increases by about 41 per cent. The relative increase in DMS annual emission is around 17 per cent in 70–80°N, although the most significant increase is in 50–70°S, up to 70 per cent. However, concentrations of atmospheric SO 2 and SO 4 2– increase by only about eight per cent. The oxidation of DMS by OH increases by about 20 per cent.
Robust Real-Time Multi-View Eye Tracking

Despite significant advances in improving the gaze tracking accuracy under controlled conditions, the tracking robustness under real-world conditions, such as large head pose and movements, use of eyeglasses, illumination and eye type variations, remains a major challenge in eye tracking. In this paper, we revisit this challenge and introduce a real-time multi-camera eye tracking framework to improve the tracking robustness. First, differently from previous work, we design a multi-view tracking setup that allows for acquiring multiple eye appearances simultaneously. Leveraging multi-view appearances enables to more reliably detect gaze features under challenging conditions, particularly when they are obstructed in conventional single-view appearance due to large head movements or eyewear effects. The features extracted on various appearances are then used for estimating multiple gaze outputs. Second, we propose to combine estimated gaze outputs through an adaptive fusion mechanism to compute user's overall point of regard. The proposed mechanism firstly determines the estimation reliability of each gaze output according to user's momentary head pose and predicted gazing behavior, and then performs a reliability-based weighted fusion. We demonstrate the efficacy of our framework with extensive simulations and user experiments on a collected dataset featuring 20 subjects. Our results show that in comparison with state-of-the-art eye trackers, the proposed framework provides not only a significant enhancement in accuracy but also a notable robustness. Our prototype system runs at 30 frames-per-second (fps) and achieves 1 degree accuracy under challenging experimental scenarios, which makes it suitable for applications demanding high accuracy and robustness.
Curve Fitting of the Corporate Recovery Rates: The Comparison of Beta Distribution Estimation and Kernel Density Estimation

Recovery rate is essential to the estimation of the portfolio’s loss and economic capital. Neglecting the randomness of the distribution of recovery rate may underestimate the risk. The study introduces two kinds of models of distribution, Beta distribution estimation and kernel density distribution estimation, to simulate the distribution of recovery rates of corporate loans and bonds. As is known, models based on Beta distribution are common in daily usage, such as CreditMetrics by J.P. Morgan, Portfolio Manager by KMV and Losscalc by Moody’s. However, it has a fatal defect that it can’t fit the bimodal or multimodal distributions such as recovery rates of corporate loans and bonds as Moody’s new data show. In order to overcome this flaw, the kernel density estimation is introduced and we compare the simulation results by histogram, Beta distribution estimation and kernel density estimation to reach the conclusion that the Gaussian kernel density distribution really better imitates the distribution of the bimodal or multimodal data samples of corporate loans and bonds. Finally, a Chi-square test of the Gaussian kernel density estimation proves that it can fit the curve of recovery rates of loans and bonds. So using the kernel density distribution to precisely delineate the bimodal recovery rates of bonds is optimal in credit risk management.
Face-on, stream-fed intermediate polars: An alternative model for RX J1914.4+2456 and RX J0806.3+1527

RX J1914.4+2456 and RX J0806.3+1527 have been proposed as double degenerate binaries with orbital periods of 569 s and 321 s respectively. An alternative model, in which the periods are related to the spin of a magnetic white dwarf in an intermediate polar system, has been rejected by other authors. We show that a face-on, stream-fed intermediate polar model for the two systems is viable and preferable to the other models. In each case, the X-ray modulation periods then represent the rotation of the white dwarf in the binary reference frame. The model explains the fully modulated X-ray pulse profiles, the X-ray spectra, the antiphase between X-ray and optical/infrared modulation, the lack of longer period modulation, and the low level of polarization. The optical spectrum of RX J0806.3+1527 suggests that Balmer series lines are present, blended with HeII lines. This is unlike the spectra of any of the known AM CVn stars and suggests that the system is not a double degenerate binary. The optical spectrum of RX J1914.4+2456 has spectral features that are consistent with those of a K star, ruling out the double degenerate models in this case. The lack of optical/infrared emission lines in RX J1914.4+2456 may be attributed to a high mass accretion rate and its face-on orientation. Its reported period decrease may be a short term spin-up episode driven by the current high u M. Finally we suggest that there is an observational selection effect such that the face-on intermediate polars that are detected will all have a stream-fed component, and the purely stream-fed intermediate polars that are detected will all be face-on systems.
Urease-positive, Kanagawa-negative Vibrio parahaemolyticus from patients and the environment in the Pacific Northwest

We previously reported the occurrence of Vibrio parahaemolyticus in patients and the environment in the Pacific Northwest. The present studies compare the biochemical characteristics, Kanagawa hemolysin reactions, and plasmid profiles of 13 patient and 221 environmental isolates of the organism. Classical biochemical testing of the isolates revealed similar reactions for the clinical and environmental strains, and analysis in agarose gels revealed that 13 to 15% of the isolates had plasmids. The strains were tested for production of Kanagawa hemolysin on Wagatsuma agar, and 1.4% of environmental isolates and 23% of clinical isolates were positive. Clinical isolates from locally acquired extraintestinal infections were urease negative and Kanagawa hemolysin negative, isolates from locally acquired gastroenteritis cases were urease positive and Kanagawa negative, and isolates from traveler's diarrhea were urease negative and Kanagawa positive. Eight percent of the local environmental isolates were also urease positive and Kanagawa hemolysin negative. These findings suggest that expression of the Kanagawa hemolysin is not essential for the pathogenesis of V. parahaemolyticus infections. In addition, our findings suggest that V. parahaemolyticus gastroenteritis in the Pacific Northwest is associated with a urease-positive, Kanagawa-negative biotype of the organism.
When a healthy diet turns deadly

The health benefits of a high fiber diet (HFD) result in part from the action of metabolic end products made by gut commensals on the host epithelium. Butyrate is one such beneficial metabolite; however, butyrate paradoxically enhances the capacity of Escherichia coli-produced Shiga toxin type 2 (Stx2) to kill tissue culture cells. We recently showed that mice fed an HFD exhibited increased butyrate in gut contents and had an altered intestinal microbiota with reduced numbers of Escherichia species. Furthermore, mice fed an HFD and infected with Stx-producing E. coli (STEC) were colonized to a higher degree, lost more weight and succumbed to infection at greater rates compared with STEC-infected low fiber diet animals. The HFD animals showed higher levels of the Stx receptor globotriaocylceramide (Gb3) in both the gut and kidneys. We speculate that an HFD that leads to increased intestinal butyrate and Gb3 in the intestines and kidneys may explain the higher rate of the hemolytic uremic syndrome in females over males.
CALCULATION OF SHOCKS USING SOLUTIONS OF SYSTEMS OF ORDINARY DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS

The method of intrinsic characterisation of shock wave propagation avoids the cumbersome task of solving the basic systems of equations before and after the shock, and has been used by various authors for direct calculation of relevant quantities on the shock. It leads to an inﬁnite hierarchy of ordinary diﬀerential equations, which, due to the absence of a mathematical theory, is truncated to a ﬁnite system. In most practical cases, but not in all, the solutions of the truncated systems approximate the solution of the inﬁnite system satisfactorily. The mathematical question of the error generated is completely open. We precisely deﬁne the concept of approximation and rigorously justify the local correctness of the approximation method for positive real analytic initial data for the inviscid Burgers’ equation, which has certain features in common with systems appearing in literature. At the same time we show that the nonuniqueness of the inﬁnite system can lead to wrong results when the initial data are only C ∞ and that blow-up of the solutions of the truncated systems are an obstacle for straightforward global approximation. Global approximation is achieved by recomputing the initial conditions for the approximating solutions in ﬁnitely many time steps. The results obtained will have to be taken into account in a future theory for more advanced systems.
Keynes's animal spirits vindicated: an analysis of recent empirical and neural data on money illusion

The tendency of people to think of money in nominal, rather than real, terms is now well documented by recent empirical data. In particular, experimental and neurobiological data provide new insights on the individual and subindividual (neurobiological processes) anchoring of money illusion. The sensitivity of the reward brain system to the nominal format of money may explain money illusion at a biological level and provide a sort of physical demonstration of Keynes animal spirits hypothesis. These findings make it more difficult to ignore the hedonic or emotional dimension of money, which lies outside the scope of homo economicus.
Social and behavioral risk factors for maxillary incisor trauma in an adolescent Arab population.

BACKGROUND/AIM The majority of dental traumas are due to falls or blows during regular activity, personal interaction and play inside or outside the home, suggesting that behaviors associated with certain social conditions are risk factors. Our purpose was to explore that hypothesis. MATERIALS AND METHODS We examined a population-based sample of 1583 13-14-year-old subjects in a classroom setting. Incisor trauma was scored according to the National Institute of Dental Research index, and overjet was measured to the nearest 0.5 mm. Presence of mesial migration and/or loss of first molars and/or open caries in permanent teeth were recorded and categorized as increased caries experience. Body mass index (BMI) was calculated from standardized measurements of height and weight, as weight in kg height(-1) in m(2). Obesity was scored if BMI exceeded 30. Information on participation in physical activities, family income, and number of siblings was collected through subject and family interview. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS Univariate logistic regression detected reduced trauma risk among subjects of high income families (P = 0.009) and among subjects attending private schools (P = 0.026). Sports and physical activities were more prevalent in boys than in girls (P = 0.000) and associated with trauma in the sample as a whole (P = 0.001), but not separately in boys and girls. No effect was detected of obesity, number of siblings and increased caries experience. Univariate analyzes also detected increased trauma risk in boys (P = 0.000) and in subjects with increasing intervals of overjet (P = 0.000). Following use of multiple regressions with forward selection, only male gender, increasing overjet, and high family income were included in the final prediction model. Our findings suggest that behaviors associated with high family income and private school attendance reduce the risk of incisor trauma among adolescents in Kuwait, and that the gender difference in sports activities is an unlikely explanation for the gender difference in trauma.