Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Internal fixators: a safe option for managing distal femur fractures?

OBJECTIVE: Evaluate safety and reliability of internal fixator for the treatment of intra-articular and periarticular distal femur fractures. METHODS: Retrospective data evaluation of 28 patients with 29 fractures fixed with internal fixator was performed. There was a predominance of male patients (53.5%), with 52% of open wound fractures, 76% of AO33C type fractures, and a mean follow up of 21.3 months. Time of fracture healing, mechanical axis deviation, rate of infection and postoperative complications were registered. RESULTS: Healing rate was 93% in this sample, with an average time of 5.5 months. Twenty-seven percent of patients ended up with mechanical axis deviation, mostly resulting from poor primary intra-operative reduction. There were two cases of implant loosening; two implant breakage, and three patients presented stiff knee. No case of infection was observed. Healing rate in this study was comparable with current literature; there was a high degree of angular deviation, especially in the coronal plane. CONCLUSION: Internal fixators are a breakthrough in the treatment of knee fractures, but its use does not preclude application of principles of anatomical articular reduction and mechanical axis restoration. Level of Evidence II, Retrospective Study.
Execution Patterns in Automatic Malware and Human-Centric Attacks

With the massive surges of new malware, the intuitive detection techniques currently used in most security tools deem ineffective. Consequently, we urgently need better solutions that are established on solid theoretical basis. It becomes, thus, necessary to search for more efficient techniques and algorithms as well as taxonomies and models for attacks and malware. We present, in this paper, the analysis we made on both automatic malware and human-centric attacks, which allowed us to construct a model for attack process. The main objective of this work is to construct a model that can aide in the generation of real attack scenarios and use it in the evaluation of Intrusion Detection Systems. However, the model described here could have many other potential uses. For example, it can be used for writing "execution- based" signatures, event correlation, penetration testing, security simulations as well as security educations.
Customer Relationship Management ( CRM ) and Study of Its Effect on Competitive Advantage

The purpose of this paper is to provide a managerially useful, end-to-end view dimension of the CRM process in organizations from a marketing point of view. Find solution for providing relation with customers in market and organizations specially those which are more dependent on information and knowledge since it is a critical element for them that determine their success. This perspective taken is customer based not the company's. We are going to find that how much the CRM could have effects on industrial competitive advantages to gain the above-average return for companies. [Mousavy S K, Saeedian Rad B, Bujarpor M, Mashali B. CRM and Study of Its Effect on Competitive Advantage. Life Sci J 2012;9(4):4167-4173] (ISSN:1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite. com. 621
Fine-grained maize cultivar identification using filter-specific convolutional activations

Cultivar identification is an important aspect in agriculture and also a typical task of fine-grained visual categorization (FGVC). In comparison with other common topics in FGVC, studies on this problem are somewhat lagged and limited. In this paper, targeting four Chinese maize cultivars of Jundan No.20, Wuyue No.3, Nongda No.108, and Zhengdan No.958, we first consider the problem of identifying the maize cultivar based on its tassel characteristics. Technically, an effective convolutional neural network (CNN) based feature encoding pipeline that allows integration of deep CNN based column feature extraction, filter-specific Fisher vector (FV) encoding and mutual information (MI) based filter selection is proposed to better address this problem. In particular, a novel fine-grained maize cultivar identification dataset termed MCI-4000 that contains 4000 images is first constructed by our team. Experimental results demonstrate that our method outperforms other stat-of-the-art approaches by at least 5% in accuracy. We also show that, there exists redundant filters in the last convolutional layer, and high accuracy can be achieved with only relatively low-dimensional column features and a small number of Gaussian components in FV.
LOW REGULARITY WELL-POSEDNESS FOR THE ONE DIMENSIONAL DIRAC-KLEIN-GORDON SYSTEM

We extend recent results of S. Machihara and H. Pecher on low regularity well-posedness of the Dirac-Klein-Gordon (DKG) system in one dimension. Our proof, like that of Pecher, relies on the null structure of DKG, recently completed by D’Ancona, Foschi and Selberg, but we show that in 1d the argument can be simplified by modifying the choice of projections for the Dirac operator. We also show that the result is best possible up to endpoint cases, if one works in Bourgain-Klainerman-Machedon spaces.
Revisiting the concept of competitive advantage

Purpose – Although competitive advantage is the cornerstone concept in strategic management it still remains a poorly defined and operationalized construct. The purpose of this paper is to revisit the concept of competitive advantage, to identify the problems that stem from its current conceptualization from the majority of the literature.Design/methodology/approach – The paper undertakes an extensive literature review, audit of logical inference, syllogistic reasoning and Bayesian expressions in order to examine the problems associated with the current conceptualizations of competitive advantage.Findings – Several drawbacks and fallacies relating to current conceptualizations of competitive advantage were identified that create an urgent need for a more robust definition which could better serve the needs of both empirical research and management practice.Research limitations/implications – The authors by no means claim that the literature review undertaken in this paper on the concept of competitive adv.
Association of Genetic Variants in Complement Factor H and Factor H-Related Genes with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Susceptibility

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), a complex polygenic autoimmune disease, is associated with increased complement activation. Variants of genes encoding complement regulator factor H (CFH) and five CFH-related proteins (CFHR1-CFHR5) within the chromosome 1q32 locus linked to SLE, have been associated with multiple human diseases and may contribute to dysregulated complement activation predisposing to SLE. We assessed 60 SNPs covering the CFH-CFHRs region for association with SLE in 15,864 case-control subjects derived from four ethnic groups. Significant allelic associations with SLE were detected in European Americans (EA) and African Americans (AA), which could be attributed to an intronic CFH SNP (rs6677604, in intron 11, P meta = 6.6×10−8, OR = 1.18) and an intergenic SNP between CFHR1 and CFHR4 (rs16840639, P meta = 2.9×10−7, OR = 1.17) rather than to previously identified disease-associated CFH exonic SNPs, including I62V, Y402H, A474A, and D936E. In addition, allelic association of rs6677604 with SLE was subsequently confirmed in Asians (AS). Haplotype analysis revealed that the underlying causal variant, tagged by rs6677604 and rs16840639, was localized to a ∼146 kb block extending from intron 9 of CFH to downstream of CFHR1. Within this block, the deletion of CFHR3 and CFHR1 (CFHR3-1Δ), a likely causal variant measured using multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification, was tagged by rs6677604 in EA and AS and rs16840639 in AA, respectively. Deduced from genotypic associations of tag SNPs in EA, AA, and AS, homozygous deletion of CFHR3-1Δ (P meta = 3.2×10−7, OR = 1.47) conferred a higher risk of SLE than heterozygous deletion (P meta = 3.5×10−4, OR = 1.14). These results suggested that the CFHR3-1Δ deletion within the SLE-associated block, but not the previously described exonic SNPs of CFH, might contribute to the development of SLE in EA, AA, and AS, providing new insights into the role of complement regulators in the pathogenesis of SLE.
Enhancement of micromechanical resonator manufacturing precision via mechanically-coupled arraying

A statistical comparison between the resonance frequency variations of stand-alone micromechanical disk resonators and mechanically-coupled array composites of them reveals that mechanically-coupled arraying of on-chip micromechanical resonators can very effectively enhance the manufacturing repeatability of resonance frequencies. In particular, twenty 3-disk resonator array-composites on a single die achieve a measured resonance frequency standard deviation as small as 165.7 ppm around a 61.25 MHz average, which is significantly smaller than the 316.4 ppm measured for twenty stand-alone disk resonators on the same die. This new standard deviation reduces the expected filter percent bandwidth achievable with a 90% confidence interval without the need for trimming from the 1.89% of previous work to now just 0.86%. Larger arrays should further reduce the frequency standard deviation, perhaps to the point of allowing trim-free RF channel-select bandwidths with reasonable manufacturing confidence interval.
Application of TerraSAR-X Data for Emergent Oil-Spill Monitoring

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) signals can propagate through hazardous weather and atmospheric conditions with heavy cloud cover, volcanic dust, snow, or rain. The all-weather capabilities of SARs have attracted significant interest in remote sensing communities, since serious environmental disasters such as oil spills have been highly ¿elusive¿ to optical sensors, making visible spectrum data vulnerable to rapidly changing atmospheric conditions. In this paper, we discuss the technical functionalities of TerraSAR-X from the emergency response perspective, describing its technical abilities in terms of a damping ratio, radiometric accuracy, and noise level with reference to the actual Hebei Spirit oil-spill incident that occurred on the west coast of the Korean peninsula in December 2007. The damping ratios estimated from the TerraSAR-X data as a function of Bragg wavenumber for various wind speeds indicate that TerraSAR-X data can be effectively used to identify oil-spill areas with acceptable accuracy. We also received ERS-2, ENVISAT, RADARSAT-1, and ALOS PALSAR data for this oil-spill event, not simultaneously but with varying time delays. The processing results for the multitemporal data sets obtained from the X- and C-band SAR systems are useful since they can be used to determine the near-real-time migration of spilt oil. The results of the current study indicate that there are distinct advantages of using X-band TerraSAR-X data for oil-spill detection compared to the data obtained at other available frequencies.
Role of Ferulic Acid in the Amelioration of Ionizing Radiation Induced Inflammation: A Murine Model

Ionizing radiation is responsible for oxidative stress by generating reactive oxygen species (ROS), which alters the cellular redox potential. This change activates several redox sensitive enzymes which are crucial in activating signaling pathways at molecular level and can lead to oxidative stress induced inflammation. Therefore, the present study was intended to assess the anti-inflammatory role of ferulic acid (FA), a plant flavonoid, against radiation-induced oxidative stress with a novel mechanistic viewpoint. FA was administered (50 mg/kg body wt) to Swiss albino mice for five consecutive days prior to exposing them to a single dose of 10 Gy 60Co γ-irradiation. The dose of FA was optimized from the survival experiment and 50 mg/kg body wt dose showed optimum effect. FA significantly ameliorated the radiation induced inflammatory response such as phosphorylation of IKKα/β and IκBα and consequent nuclear translocation of nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB). FA also prevented the increase of cycloxygenase-2 (Cox-2) protein, inducible nitric oxide synthase-2 (iNOS-2) gene expression, lipid peroxidation in liver and the increase of tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) in serum. It was observed that exposure to radiation results in decreased activity of superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT) and the pool of reduced glutathione (GSH) content. However, FA treatment prior to irradiation increased the activities of the same endogenous antioxidants. Thus, pretreatment with FA offers protection against gamma radiation induced inflammation.
Evidence-informed physical therapy management of performance-related musculoskeletal disorders in musicians

Playing a musical instrument at an elite level is a highly complex motor skill. The regular daily training loads resulting from practice, rehearsals and performances place great demands on the neuromusculoskeletal systems of the body. As a consequence, performance-related musculoskeletal disorders (PRMDs) are globally recognized as common phenomena amongst professional orchestral musicians. These disorders create a significant financial burden to individuals and orchestras as well as lead to serious consequences to the musicians’ performance and ultimately their career. Physical therapists are experts in treating musculoskeletal injuries and are ideally placed to apply their skills to manage PRMDs in this hyper-functioning population, but there is little available evidence to guide specific injury management approaches. An Australia-wide survey of professional orchestral musicians revealed that the musicians attributed excessively high or sudden increase in playing-load as major contributors to their PRMDs. Therefore, facilitating musicians to better manage these loads should be a cornerstone of physical therapy management. The Sound Practice orchestral musicians work health and safety project used formative and process evaluation approaches to develop evidence-informed and clinically applicable physical therapy interventions, ultimately resulting in favorable outcomes. After these methodologies were employed, the intervention studies were conducted with a national cohort of professional musicians including: health education, onsite injury management, cross-training exercise regimes, performance postural analysis, and music performance biomechanics feedback. The outcomes of all these interventions will be discussed alongside a focussed review on the existing literature of these management strategies. Finally, a framework for best-practice physical therapy management of PRMDs in musicians will be provided.
Ontology Evolution

Ontologies evolve continuously throughout their lifecycle to respond to different change requirements. Several problems emanate from ontology evolution: capturing change requirements, change representation, change impact analysis and resolution, change validation, change traceability, change propagation to dependant artifacts, versioning, etc. The purpose of this chapter is to gather research and current developments to manage ontology evolution. The authors highlight ontology evolution issues and present a state-of-the-art of ontology evolution approach by describing issues raised and the ontology model considered (ontology representation language), and also the ontology engineering tools supporting ontology evolution and maintenance. Furthermore, they sum up the state-of-the-art review by a comparative study based on general characteristics, evolution functionalities supported, and specificities of the existing ontology evolution approaches. At the end of the chapter, the authors discuss future and emerging trends.
Marginal Taxes and the Asset Portfolios of Swedish Households

This paper focuses on the effects of marginal tax rates, wealth, income, and a set of socioeconomic and demographic variables on the portfolio composition of households using detailed micro data on 2,000 Swedish households. In particular, efforts are made to disentangle the effects of marginal tax rates on the portfolio behavior of households. Some econometric problems involved when estimating asset demand equations in the presence of incomplete portfolios are briefly discussed. A final section examines the overall effect of marginal tax rates on asset demands by applying estimated discrete and continuous portfolio equations to compute different tax elasticities. Copyright 1990 by The editors of the Scandinavian Journal of Economics.
CD4+ T cells with an activated and exhausted phenotype distinguish immunodeficiency during aviremic HIV-2 infection

Objective:HIV type 2 (HIV-2) represents an attenuated form of HIV, in which many infected individuals remain ‘aviremic’ without antiretroviral therapy. However, aviremic HIV-2 disease progression exists, and in the current study, we therefore aimed to examine if specific pathological characteristics of CD4+ T cells are linked to such outcome. Design:HIV-seronegative (n = 25), HIV type 1 (HIV-1) (n = 33), HIV-2 (n = 39, of whom 26 were aviremic), and HIV-1/2 dually (HIV-D) (n = 13)-infected study participants were enrolled from an occupational cohort in Guinea-Bissau. Methods:CD4+ T-cell differentiation, activation, exhaustion, senescence, and transcription factors were assessed by polychromatic flow cytometry. Multidimensional clustering bioinformatic tools were used to identify CD4+ T-cell subpopulations linked to infection type and disease stage. Results:HIV-2-infected individuals had early and late-differentiated CD4+ T-cell clusters with lower activation (CD38+HLA-DR+) and exhaustion programmed death-1 (PD-1) than HIV-1 and HIV-D-infected individuals. We also noted that aviremic HIV-2-infected individuals possessed fewer individuals. CD4+ T cells with pathological signs compared to other HIV-infected groups. Still, compared to HIV-seronegative individuals, aviremic HIV-2-infected individuals had T-bet+ CD4+ T cells that showed elevated immune activation/exhaustion, and particularly the frequencies of PD-1+ cells were associated with a suboptimal percentage of CD4+ T cells. Conclusion:Increased frequencies of CD4+ T cells with an activated/exhausted phenotype correlate with exacerbated immunodeficiency in aviremic HIV-2-infected individuals. Thus, these findings encourage studies on the introduction of antiretroviral therapy also to individuals with aviremic HIV-2 infection.
Enamel matrix protein derivatives: role in periodontal regeneration

The role of regenerative periodontal therapy is the reconstitution of lost periodontal structures, ie, new formation of root cementum, periodontal ligament, and alveolar bone. The outcome of basic research has pointed to the important role of enamel matrix protein derivative (EMD) in periodontal wound healing. Histologic results from animal and human studies have shown that treatment with EMD promotes periodontal regeneration. Moreover, clinical studies have indicated that treatment with EMD positively influences periodontal wound healing in humans. The goal of this paper is to review the existing literature on EMD.
A Non-Data-Aided Maximum Likelihood Time Delay Estimator Using Importance Sampling

In this paper, we present a new time delay maximum likelihood estimator based on importance sampling (IS). We show that a grid search and lack of convergence from which most iterative estimators suffer can be avoided. It is assumed that the transmitted data are completely unknown at the receiver. Moreover the carrier phase is considered as an unknown nuisance parameter. The time delay remains constant over the observation interval and the received signal is corrupted by additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). We use importance sampling to find the global maximum of the compressed likelihood function. Based on a global optimization procedure, the main idea of the new estimator is to generate realizations of a random variable using an importance function, which approximates the actual compressed likelihood function. We will see that the algorithm parameters affect the estimation performance and that with an appropriate parameter choice, even over a small observation interval, the time delay can be accurately estimated at far lower computational cost than with classical iterative methods.
Two Sides of a Coin: Endogenous and Exogenous Effects of Corporate Diversification on Firm Value

We investigate the value effects of two types of corporate diversification – unexpected exogenous diversification and endogenous diversification. Combining Heckman's sample‐selection estimator with a two‐stage least squares estimator and a generalized method of moments instrumental variables estimator to control for both endogeneity and sample‐selection bias, we find that while an unexpected increase in diversification caused by exogenous shocks destroys firm value, an endogenous increase in diversification due to managerial decisions will enhance firm value, indicating a diversification premium from altering organizational structures.
Quadrilateral Barycentric Basis Functions for Surface Integral Equations

A framework for solving surface integral equation on quadrilateral, triangular, and mixed quadrilateral-triangular meshes is presented. The initial meshes are represented in terms of quadrilateral barycentric meshes (QBMs), which are obtained by partitioning each initial quadrilateral and triangle into four and three barycentric quadrilaterals, respectively. Quadrilateral barycentric basis functions (QBBFs) are defined on QBMs. The QBBFs serve a dual role. First, they allow defining primary basis functions (PBFs), which are well suited for representing surface currents on quadrilateral, triangular, and mixed meshes. Second, the QBBFs are used to define dual basis function (DBFs), which are natural for using in conjunction with Calderón multiplicative preconditioners (CMPs). These QBBFs, PBFs, and DBFs result in a substantial reduction in the number of nonzero elements in the sparse projection matrices for PBFs and DBFs as well as reduction of unknowns and quadrature points. When these PBFs and DBFs are used in CMPs, they reduce the number of iterations and eliminate the dense mesh breakdown of the surface electric field integral equation. Numerical examples demonstrate the efficiency of using the introduced QBBFs with associated PBFs and DBFs for solving electromagnetic surface electric field integral equations on quadrilateral, triangular, and mixed meshes.
Consensus in Diverse Corporate Boards

Many directors are not simply insiders or outsiders. For example, an officer of a supplier is neither independent nor captive of management. We use a spatial model of board decision-making to analyze bargaining among multiple types of directors. Board decisions are modeled using a new solution concept called consensus. We use consensus to show that the information a new director brings is more important than the new director's impact on bargaining when the board is large and not too diverse. Our model suggests broadening the regulatory definition of independence and requiring a supermajority of outsiders. It also cautions that strong penalties, such as those imposed by Sarbanes-Oxley erode incentives when board performance is difficult to measure.
THE PRICE ELASTICITY OF EXTERNAL DEMAND: HOW DOES PORTUGAL COMPARE WITH OTHER EURO AREA COUNTRIES?

This paper estimates the price elasticity of external demand of Portuguese exports in the period 1995-2009 and compares it with those of other euro area countries. This proxy of the export price elasticity is computed as a weighted average of the import demand elasticities in each individual country-product destination market, using the elasticities of substitution across imported varieties of Broda et al. (2006). Overall, Portugal tends to export to individual markets which have, on average, a lower price elasticity than the markets where other euro area countries export to. Therefore, the product and geographical composition of Portuguese exports reduces their exposure to relative price fluctuations.