Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Minimally invasive surgery for thyroid eye disease

Thyroid eye disease (TED) can affect the eye in myriad ways: proptosis, strabismus, eyelid retraction, optic neuropathy, soft tissue changes around the eye and an unstable ocular surface. TED consists of two phases: active, and inactive. The active phase of TED is limited to a period of 12–18 months and is mainly managed medically with immunosuppression. The residual structural changes due to the resultant fibrosis are usually addressed with surgery, the mainstay of which is orbital decompression. These surgeries are performed during the inactive phase. The surgical rehabilitation of TED has evolved over the years: not only the surgical techniques, but also the concepts, and the surgical tools available. The indications for decompression surgery have also expanded in the recent past. This article discusses the technological and conceptual advances of minimally invasive surgery for TED that decrease complications and speed up recovery. Current surgical techniques offer predictable, consistent results with better esthetics.
Freiburg RNA Tools: a web server integrating IntaRNA, ExpaRNA and LocARNA

The Freiburg RNA tools web server integrates three tools for the advanced analysis of RNA in a common web-based user interface. The tools IntaRNA, ExpaRNA and LocARNA support the prediction of RNA–RNA interaction, exact RNA matching and alignment of RNA, respectively. The Freiburg RNA tools web server and the software packages of the stand-alone tools are freely accessible at http://rna.informatik. uni-freiburg.de.
Increasing Incidence in Relapsing-Remitting MS and High Rates among Young Women in Finland: A Thirty-Year Follow-Up

Object. Gender and disease course specific incidences were studied in high- and medium-risk regions of MS in Finland. Methods. Age- and gender-specific incidences with 95% CIs were calculated in 10-year periods from 1981 to 2010. Poser diagnostic criteria were used and compared with the McDonald criteria from 2001 to 2010. Association between age and diagnostic delay over time was assessed by using the Kruskal-Wallis test. Results. 1419 (89%) RRMS and 198 (11%) PPMS cases were included. RRMS incidence increased with the female to male ratio (F/M) from 4,2/105 (F/M 1.9) to 9,7 (2.3), while that of PPMS decreased from 1,2 (1.6) to 0,7 (1.2). The use of McDonald criteria did not change the conclusion. The decreasing diagnostic delay and age at diagnosis in RRMS were associated within the 10-year periods and contrasted those in PPMS. Increasing female risk in RRMS was observed in the high-risk region. Conclusion. Increasing RRMS incidence and high female ratios shown in each age group indicate gender-specific influences acting already from childhood. A more precise definition of the risk factors and their action in MS is needed to provide a better understanding of underlying pathological processes and a rationale for the development of new preventive and treatment strategies.
Identification of Extracellular Matrix Components and Biological Factors in Micronized Dehydrated Human Amnion/Chorion Membrane

Objective: The use of bioactive extracellular matrix (ECM) grafts such as amniotic membranes is an attractive treatment option for enhancing wound repair. In this study, the concentrations, activity, and distribution of matrix components, growth factors, proteases, and inhibitors were evaluated in PURION® Processed, micronized, dehydrated human amnion/chorion membrane (dHACM; MiMedx Group, Inc.). Approach: ECM components in dHACM tissue were assessed by using immunohistochemical staining, and growth factors, cytokines, proteases, and inhibitors were quantified by using single and multiplex ELISAs. The activities of proteases that were native to the tissue were determined via gelatin zymography and EnzChek® activity assay. Results: dHACM tissue contained the ECM components collagens I and IV, hyaluronic acid, heparin sulfate proteoglycans, fibronectin, and laminin. In addition, numerous growth factors, cytokines, chemokines, proteases, and protease inhibitors that are known to play a role in the wound-healing process were quantified in dHACM. Though matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) were present in dHACM tissues, inhibitors of MMPs overwhelmingly outnumbered the MMP enzymes by an overall molar ratio of 28:1. Protease activity assays revealed that the MMPs in the tissue existed primarily either in their latent form or complexed with inhibitors. Innovation: This is the first study to characterize components that function in wound healing, including inhibitor and protease content and activity, in micronized dHACM. Conclusion: A variety of matrix components and growth factors, as well as proteases and their inhibitors, were identified in micronized dHACM, providing a better understanding of how micronized dHACM tissue can be used to effectively promote wound repair.
Constrained opportunistic power control in wireless networks

In the opportunistic power control algorithm (OPC), designed in each user tries to keep the product of its transmit power and its experienced effective interference to a constant, called the target signal-interference product (SIP). This increases the transmit power when the channel is good and reduces it when the channel is poor (opportunism). It has been shown that the OPC always converges to a fixed point irrespective of whether the power is constrained (where there is no upper bound on transmit power) or unconstrained (where an upper bound on transmit power is taken into account). It has also been shown via simulation that the throughput achieved by the unconstrained OPC is significant (as compared to other existing distributed schemes), and is an increasing function of the target-SIP set by users, in the sense that a higher target-SIP results in a higher throughput. In this paper, we show that in contrast to the unconstrained OPC, when the constrained OPC is applied, not only the throughput is not necessarily increased as the target-SIPs increase, but it may even decrease if some users set their target-SIPs at high values. Furthermore, we propose a heuristic solution to determine the target-SIPs by users in a distributed manner. Our simulation results show that the throughput achieved by our distributed setting of the target-SIPs very closely approaches the maximum achievable throughput by the constrained OPC, and is very close to the global optimum value.
Immunotherapy and Cancer: The Multi-Omics Perspective

Immunotherapies have revolutionized cancer treatment approaches. Because not all patients respond positively to immune therapeutic agents, it represents a challenge for scientists who strive to understand the mechanisms behind such resistance. In-depth exploration of tumor biology, using novel technologies such as omics science, can help decode the role of the tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) in producing a response to the immune blockade strategies. It can also help to identify biomarkers for patient stratification and personalized treatment. This review aims to explore these new models and highlight their possible pivotal role in changing clinical practice.
Impact of Brain Tumor Location on Morbidity and Mortality: A Retrospective Functional MR Imaging Study

These investigators assessed the relationship between the distance of tumor border to eloquent brain regions (motor and language) identified by fMRI and pre- and postoperative morbidity and mortality. Factors that affected patient motor and language presentation and outcomes were close proximity of tumor to functional areas and advanced age. Right-handedness affected only language deficits. Variables that influenced survival included tumor grade, location, and proximity to language and motor areas. These findings indicate that tumors may affect language and motor function differently, depending on tumor lesion to activation distance. Overall, the data support the use of fMRI as a tool to evaluate patient prognosis and are directly applicable to preoperative neurosurgical planning. BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: fMRI is increasingly used in neurosurgery to preoperatively identify areas of eloquent cortex. Our study evaluated the efficacy of clinical fMRI by analyzing the relationship between the distance from the tumor border to the area of functional activation (LAD) and patient pre- and postoperative morbidity and mortality. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study included patients with diagnosis of primary or metastatic brain tumor who underwent preoperative fMRI-based motor mapping (n=74) and/or language mapping (n=77). The impact of LAD and other variables collected from patient records was analyzed with respect to functional deficits in terms of morbidity (paresis and aphasia) and mortality. RESULTS: Significant relationships were found between motor and language LAD and the existence of either pre- or postoperative motor (P < .001) and language deficits (P=.009). Increasing age was associated with motor and language deficits (P=.02 and P=.04 respectively). Right-handedness was related to language deficits (P=.05). Survival analysis revealed that pre- and postoperative deficits, grade, tumor location, and LAD predicted mortality. Motor deficits increased linearly as the distance from the tumor to the primary sensorimotor cortex decreased. Language deficits increased exponentially as the distance from the tumor to the language areas decreased below 1 cm. Postoperative mortality analysis showed an interaction effect between motor or language LAD and mortality predictors (grade and tumor location, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: These findings indicate that tumors may affect language and motor function differently depending on tumor LAD. Overall, the data support the use of fMRI as a tool to evaluate patient prognosis and are directly applicable to neurosurgical planning.
Newborns are Prone to More Hypothermia in the Low Temperature of Operating Rooms

Aim: Hypothermia (HT) is a common and serious problem during anesthesia. As the ratio of skin surface area to body volume is higher in neonates than in adults, heat loss and ultimately HT are more common in the intraoperative period. This study aimed to determine the incidence and independent risk factors of HT in the neonatal period. Materials and Methods: This retrospective observational cohort study included 63 patients who underwent neonatal surgery within a one-year period. HT was defined as body temperature <36 °C and the patients were divided into two groups: Group I (body temperature <36 °C) and Group II (≥36 °C). Demographic data, ASA score, operative diagnosis, duration of surgery and anesthesia, amount of fluid, inotrope and vasopressor therapy, amount of bleeding, amount of blood transfusion, preoperative and postoperative temperatures, and the heating methods of the patients were recorded. Results: The median age of the patients was 5 days (0-28 days) and their mean weight was 2,792±782 grams. The esophageal method was used for temperature monitoring in 88.9% (56 patients) and the rectal method in 10.1% (7 patients). HT developed in 54% of the patients. Caps and socks were used to prevent HT in 96.8% of the patients, forced-air warming blankets in 95.2%, warming gel mattresses in 27%, and fluid and blood warming devices in 17.5%. In the logistic regression model, the operating room temperature was identified as the only independent risk factor associated with neonatal HT. Conclusion: Despite the use of active and passive warming methods, the incidence of HT in the neonatal period was found to be high. Cold operating rooms were found to be the only independent factor associated with neonatal HT.
Area-Specific Cell Stimulation via Surface-Mediated Gene Transfer Using Apatite-Based Composite Layers

Surface-mediated gene transfer systems using biocompatible calcium phosphate (CaP)-based composite layers have attracted attention as a tool for controlling cell behaviors. In the present study we aimed to demonstrate the potential of CaP-based composite layers to mediate area-specific dual gene transfer and to stimulate cells on an area-by-area basis in the same well. For this purpose we prepared two pairs of DNA–fibronectin–apatite composite (DF-Ap) layers using a pair of reporter genes and pair of differentiation factor genes. The results of the area-specific dual gene transfer successfully demonstrated that the cells cultured on a pair of DF-Ap layers that were adjacently placed in the same well showed specific gene expression patterns depending on the gene that was immobilized in theunderlying layer. Moreover, preliminary real-time PCR results indicated that multipotential C3H10T1/2 cells may have a potential to change into different types of cells depending on the differentiation factor gene that was immobilized in the underlying layer, even in the same well. Because DF-Ap layers have a potential to mediate area-specific cell stimulation on their surfaces, they could be useful in tissue engineering applications.
Learning High Dynamic Range from Outdoor Panoramas

Outdoor lighting has extremely high dynamic range. This makes the process of capturing outdoor environment maps notoriously challenging since special equipment must be used. In this work, we propose an alternative approach. We first capture lighting with a regular, LDR omnidirectional camera, and aim to recover the HDR after the fact via a novel, learning-based inverse tonemapping method. We propose a deep autoencoder framework which regresses linear, high dynamic range data from non-linear, saturated, low dynamic range panoramas. We validate our method through a wide set of experiments on synthetic data, as well as on a novel dataset of real photographs with ground truth. Our approach finds applications in a variety of settings, ranging from outdoor light capture to image matching.
Low-Rank Tensors for Verbs in Compositional Distributional Semantics

Several compositional distributional semantic methods use tensors to model multi-way interactions between vectors. Unfortunately, the size of the tensors can make their use impractical in large-scale implementations. In this paper, we investigate whether we can match the performance of full tensors with low-rank approximations that use a fraction of the original number of parameters. We investigate the effect of low-rank tensors on the transitive verb construction where the verb is a third-order tensor. The results show that, while the low-rank tensors require about two orders of magnitude fewer parameters per verb, they achieve performance comparable to, and occasionally surpassing, the unconstrained-rank tensors on sentence similarity and verb disam-
Structural features and lipid binding domain of tubulin on biomimetic mitochondrial membranes

Significance Tubulin has emerged as a highly unexpected component of mitochondrial membranes involved in regulation of membrane permeability. This discovery has reawakened interest in the nature of the tubulin–membrane interaction to answer a new question: How does tubulin, a cytosolic protein famous for its role in microtubule structure and dynamics, come to target mitochondrial membranes? Here, using a combination of five biophysical methods, we study peripheral binding of tubulin to biomimetic membranes of different lipid compositions. We conclude that tubulin distinguishes between lamellar and nonlamellar lipids through a highly conserved amphipathic binding motif. Specifically, α-tubulin targets cell and organelle membranes by sensing lipid-packing defects via an amphipathic α-helix, with broad consequences for both normal cellular function and disease. Dimeric tubulin, an abundant water-soluble cytosolic protein known primarily for its role in the cytoskeleton, is routinely found to be associated with mitochondrial outer membranes, although the structure and physiological role of mitochondria-bound tubulin are still unknown. There is also no consensus on whether tubulin is a peripheral membrane protein or is integrated into the outer mitochondrial membrane. Here the results of five independent techniques—surface plasmon resonance, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, bilayer overtone analysis, neutron reflectometry, and molecular dynamics simulations—suggest that α-tubulin’s amphipathic helix H10 is responsible for peripheral binding of dimeric tubulin to biomimetic “mitochondrial” membranes in a manner that differentiates between the two primary lipid headgroups found in mitochondrial membranes, phosphatidylethanolamine and phosphatidylcholine. The identification of the tubulin dimer orientation and membrane-binding domain represents an essential step toward our understanding of the complex mechanisms by which tubulin interacts with integral proteins of the mitochondrial outer membrane and is important for the structure-inspired design of tubulin-targeting agents.
Why People Check In to Social Network Sites

ABSTRACT Although check-in behavior has developed rapidly in recent years, the reasons why people share location-related information and the activities they are engaged in have not been adequately investigated. The primary objective of this study is to develop and refine a conceptual framework from social word-of-mouth motivations and the mobile perspective to provide a theoretical understanding of the motivations that induce consumers to engage in check-in behavior. The results show that the social condition (e.g., tie strength, subjective norms, expressiveness, social support, and information sharing) play the most critical role in motivating people to engage in check-in behavior. In addition, the perceptual (e.g., perceived social benefit, perceived enjoyment, and perceived value) and consumption-based conditions (such as customer satisfaction and communicator involvement) also motivate people to engage in check-in behavior and to disseminate their consumption experiences by using mobile devices. The results provide certain theoretical and practical implications for marketing practitioners in their planning of new marketing strategies to attract consumer attention, and will contribute to a better understanding of check-in behavior.
Raising the Issue of Local Wisdom in Science Learning and Its Impact on Increasing Students' Scientific Literacy

In the context of global educational challenges, scientific literacy remains a foundational goal yet is often hindered by traditional teaching methods that lack cultural and contextual relevance. This study addresses the intersection of local wisdom with science education as a strategy to enhance students' scientific literacy, grounded in the belief that culturally resonant teaching can improve learning outcomes. This study explores the impact of integrating local wisdom into science education on enhancing students' scientific literacy. Employing an experimental pretest-posttest control group design, the research involved 86 Indonesian high school students, divided evenly between a control group receiving traditional science instruction and an experimental group whose curriculum was enriched with local wisdom content. Over a six-week period focused on climate change, the experimental group's instruction intertwined indigenous knowledge with scientific concepts, aiming to create a culturally contextualized learning experience. The results, derived from quantitative measures were analyzed using ANOVA and post hoc tests. Findings indicate a statistically significant improvement in the scientific literacy of the experimental group compared to the control group, with the former demonstrating a substantial increase in posttest scores. The study confirms that local wisdom can be a potent tool in science education, leading to higher engagement and improved scientific literacy. This research contributes to the field by providing empirical evidence supporting culturally responsive teaching approaches and underscores the potential of local wisdom in bridging the gap between traditional knowledge systems and scientific methodologies.
A coupled probabilistic hydrologic and hydraulic modelling framework to investigate the uncertainty of flood loss estimates

Reliable estimation of flood loss is crucial for flood management. Since this estimation relies on models that are prone to uncertainty, it is vital to clearly understand how the uncertainties affect the appraised flood loss. This paper presents a coupled probabilistic hydrologic and hydraulic modelling framework to estimate the uncertainty of anticipated loss. A hydrologic model performs rainfall‐runoff transformation and a two‐dimensional unsteady hydraulic model simulates flood inundation. The outputs of the latter are fed into a loss estimation tool. Two sources of uncertainty—rainfall depth and antecedent moisture condition—are used to illustrate the framework on the Swannanoa River watershed in North Carolina, United States. The impact of the uncertainty of these two sources is tracked over the hydrologic model, hydraulic model and loss estimation tool. Our case study results illustrate that the estimations on the percent affected people can be four times more uncertain than the rainfall depth and two times more than the flood extent, but its uncertainty is comparable to hydrograph attributes. The appraised structural damages are nearly two times more uncertain than the affected people. These findings, however, may only be valid for a case study with hilly topography and should be cautiously extrapolated to other areas.
TRACKING INVARIANT MANIFOLDS WITHOUT DIFFERENTIAL FORMS

A frequently studied problem of geometric singular perturbation theory consists in establishing the presence of trajectories of certain types (homoclinic, heteroclinic, satisfying given boundary conditions, etc.) approximating singular ones for the unperturbed problem. A useful tool for this problem has been established in Jones et al. [2] and called “Exchange Lemma” by the authors. It resembles the well known λ-lemma (Palis et al. [4]) with critical elements of a dynamical system replaced by “slow manifolds” of a singularly perturbed differential equation. The degeneration of transversality in the unperturbed equation in important applications lead the authors of Jones et al. [3] establish a more precise version of the Exchange Lemma. The proof of the Exchange Lemma of Jones et al. [2], [3] involves differential equations for the evolution of differential forms of tangent vectors along trajectories. The purpose of this paper is to present an alternative proof which avoids differential forms. We believe that, except of being more elementary, it provides additional insight into the geometry of the problem. We refer the reader to Jones et al. [2], [3] for the motivation and the application of the Exchange Lemma. In order to facilitate the comparison of our result to Jones et al. [2], [3] we use freely their notation whenever possible. As in Jones et al. [2], [3] we consider a singularly perturbed system