Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of vent effects between a solid earmold and a hollow earmold.

BACKGROUND Hollow earmolds have become a popular type of earmold used in thin-tube, microsize hearing aid fittings. It is desirable for clinicians to be familiar with their characteristics and limitations. PURPOSE This investigation compared the effects of vent diameter between a traditional solid earmold and a hollow earmold that is used in modern thin-tube hearing aid fittings. RESEARCH DESIGN A single-blind, 2 x 4 factorial design was used. STUDY SAMPLE Eight adults with a high-frequency hearing loss participated. INTERVENTION Custom earmolds for use with thin-tube hearing aids were made for each participant. Two types of earmolds were made: a solid earmold with a traditional vent length and a hollow earmold where the thickness of the shell was the length of the vent. Vent diameters were 0, 1, 2, and 3 mm. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS The vent effect was evaluated on real-ear aided response, real-ear occluded response during vocalization, subjective occlusion rating, insertion loss, and maximum available gain before feedback. Real-ear measurements were made with the Fonix 6500 probe-microphone real-ear system. Vocalizations from the participants were analyzed with a custom MATLAB program, and statistical analysis was conducted with SPSS software. RESULTS A systematic vent effect was seen with each earmold type as the nominal vent diameter changed. For the same vent diameter, the vent effect seen with the hollow earmold was greater than that of the solid earmold. CONCLUSIONS Because of the difference in vent length (and thus acoustic mass) between a solid and a hollow earmold, the effect of vent diameter in a hollow earmold is more pronounced than that seen in a solid earmold of the same nominal vent diameter. Thus, a smaller vent diameter will be needed in a hollow earmold than in a solid earmold to achieve similar vent effects.
Source Camera Identification Using Enhanced Sensor Pattern Noise

Sensor pattern noises (SPNs), extracted from digital images to serve as the fingerprints of imaging devices, have been proved as an effective way for digital device identification. However, as we demonstrate in this work, the limitation of the current method of extracting SPNs is that the SPNs extracted from images can be severely contaminated by details from scenes, and as a result, the identification rate is unsatisfactory unless images of a large size are used. In this work, we propose a novel approach for attenuating the influence of details from scenes on SPNs so as to improve the device identification rate of the identifier. The hypothesis underlying our SPN enhancement method is that the stronger a signal component in an SPN is, the less trustworthy the component should be, and thus should be attenuated. This hypothesis suggests that an enhanced SPN can be obtained by assigning weighting factors inversely proportional to the magnitude of the SPN components.
Nerve conduction studies: essentials and pitfalls in practice

A neurologist has sent a patient for nerve conduction studies (NCS) and has received the report, but what does it mean? We hope to remove some of the mysteries that may surround NCS. The techniques and how they are affected by disease are described in general terms. These principles can be applied to specific conditions discussed elsewhere. We also discuss the numerous pitfalls that may be encountered with NCS. Understanding these basic concepts will allow you to get the most from your clinical neurophysiology department. NCS are only part of a complete peripheral neurophysiological examination (PNE) and are frequently accompanied by a needle electromyogram (EMG). The combination of both techniques and those detailed in other articles in this issue are often required for a complete diagnostic study. The process of choosing the appropriate tests is the responsibility of the clinical neurophysiologist (CN) and not the referring doctor and is planned as a dynamic series of steps designed to answer specific questions about nervous system function raised by the clinical picture. Clinical neurophysiologists can employ a confusing number of terms and abbreviations. Box 1 lists the ones we use frequently. ### Box 1: List of abbreviations and terminology used
Pseudoknots in RNA Secondary Structures: Representation, Enumeration, and Prevalence

A number of non-coding RNA are known to contain functionally important or conserved pseudoknots. However, pseudoknotted structures are more complex than orthodox, and most methods for analyzing secondary structures do not handle them. I present here a way to decompose and represent general secondary structures which extends the tree representation of the stem-loop structure, and use this to analyze the frequency of pseudoknots in known and in random secondary structures. This comparison shows that, though a number of pseudoknots exist, they are still relatively rare and mostly of the simpler kinds. In contrast, random secondary structures tend to be heavily knotted, and the number of available structures increases dramatically when allowing pseudoknots. Therefore, methods for structure prediction and non-coding RNA identification that allow pseudoknots are likely to be much less powerful than those that do not, unless they penalize pseudoknots appropriately.
Prognostic Value of p53 and bcl-2 Expression in Patients Treated with Breast Conservative Therapy

Prognostic value of p53 and bcl-2 expression on treatment outcome in breast cancer patients has been extensively evaluated, but the results were inconclusive. We evaluated the prognostic significance of these molecular markers in patients treated with breast conserving surgery and radiotherapy. One hundred patients whose immunostaining of p53 and bcl-2 expression was available among 125 patients who underwent radiotherapy after breast conserving surgery and axillary lymph node dissection were enrolled into this study. Eighty-seven patients also received adjuvant chemotherapy and/or hormonal therapy. Conventional clinicopathologic variables and treatment-related factors were also considered. The 5-yr loco-regional relapse-free and distant metastasis-free survival rates were 91.7% and 90.9%, respectively. On univariate analysis, age, T stage and the absence of bcl-2 & estrogen receptor (ER) expression were associated with loco-regional relapse-free survival. When incorporating these variables into Cox proportional hazard model, only bcl-2(-)/ER(-) phenotype was an adverse prognostic factor (P=0.018). As for the distant metastasis-free survival, age, T stage, and p53 expression were significant on univariate analysis. However, p53 expression was the only prognosticator on multivariate analysis (P=0.009). A bcl-2(-)/ER(-) phenotype and p53 expression are useful molecular markers predicting loco-regional relapse-free and distant metastasis-free survival, respectively, in patients treated with breast conserving surgery and radiotherapy.
Creating a sense of belonging for Indigenous students in British Columbia

This dissertation tells the story of partnership between myself, a doctoral student at UBC Okanagan, the Taku River Tlingit First Nation (TRTFN) and School District 87 (Stikine). Although the research is a partial fulfillment for my doctoral degree, I have attempted to emphasize the partnership aspects of the process throughout the writing of this document. I have been challenged to find ways to word sentences without using the phrase, my research. This was important to me because the first goal of this research is to decolonize research about Indigenous peoples by partnering with the Indigenous people. With regards to the second goal, Indigenous peoples worldwide and Aboriginal peoples in Canada advocate for changes to education for Indigenous students that will nurture Indigenous identity while preparing students and Indigenous communities for a prosperous future. This research supports initiatives to changes education for Indigenous students by sharing information from Indigenous students, parents, and community members about the ways in which Indigenous culture and language in schools can enhance sense of belonging and achievement. The aim of this research is to bridge the gap between European and Indigenous approaches to education through these two goals. To accomplish this, the research follows a Métis methodology based upon principles from Indigenous methodologies, appreciative inquiry, and grounded theory. The results of our research indicate that the children of TRTFN enjoy school, but have challenges to overcome for attendance in school and for access to secondary education. Students in Atlin have a strong sense of belonging to the land, to ancestors, to family, and to community. Students and their families and teachers believe that learning Tlingit culture and language is important to pass knowledge on to future generations. Students enjoy making choices about what they will learn and having opportunities for leadership. Finally, learning Indigenous culture and knowledge benefits all students. This is, of course, my dissertation. However, the learning that I acquired and the story of the research process are a shared journey with my partners in the research, TRTFN and SD87. It is my research for my dissertation, but our research for the community.
Prisoner or Patient? The Official Debate on the Criminal Lunatic in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

Nineteenth-century Ireland was colonized and strictly controlled from Britain. In this highly regulated society, reports of the Inspectorate of Lunacy in Ireland were used to express an official medical view on criminal lunacy. This view was based on experiences gained in the Central Criminal Lunatic Asylum for Ireland, opened at Dundrum in 1850. This paper will examine some of the ideas expressed in these reports, including views on the treatment of criminal lunatics, on their potential for dangerous behaviour, and on emigration as a form of after-care.
Identification of adverse events at an orthopedics department in Sweden

Background and purpose Adverse events (AEs) are common in acute care hospitals, but there have been few data concerning AEs in orthopedic patients. We tested and evaluated a patient safety model (the Wim‐mera clinical risk management model) and performed a three‐stage retrospective review of records to determine the occurrence of AEs in adult orthopedic inpatients. Methods The computerized medical and nursing records of 395 patients were included and screened for AEs using 12 criteria. Positive records were then reviewed by two senior orthopedic surgeons using a standardized protocol. An AE had to have occurred during the index admission or within the first 28 days of discharge from the Orthopedics Department. Screening of additional systems for reporting of AEs was also carried out for the same period. The number of patients suffering an AE and the number of AEs were recorded. Results Altogether, 60 (15 %) of 395 patients checked in the screening of records experienced 65 AEs (16%) due to healthcare management. Of the 65 AEs, 34 were estimated to have a high degree of preventability. 47 of the 65 AEs occurred during the index admission and 18 within 28 days of discharge. In screening of local and nationwide reporting systems for the same patients, 4 additional AEs were identified—2 of which were previously unknown. 67 different AEs were detected by using the Wimmera model (17%) Interpretation Using the Wimmera model with manual screening and review of records, many more AEs were detected than in all other traditional local and nationwide reporting systems used in Sweden when screening was done for the same period.
EXPLORING SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT IN METROPOLITAN TRANSPORTATION SAFETY IMPROVEMENT PROGRAMS

Traffic safety strongly impacts the overall health, livability and mobility in our urban areas. In the U.S., there were approximately 42,000 highway-related fatalities in 2003, nearly forty percent occurring in cities. Performance measurements of safety-related investments (particularly noninfrastructure ones) are challenging, encumbered by temporal and spatial variations not easily captured by traditional crash-based performance measures. In this paper, we summarize the results of our study examining the spatiotemporal effects of the Community and School Traffic Safety Partnership (CSTSP) using a geographic information system for display and analysis. The study used enforcement, crash, and other network data to develop spatial and temporal based performance measures, concentrating on a subset of CSTSP investments to reduce driver error (mobile photo radar and automated enforcement red-light running).
The Temporal Dynamics of Differential Gene Expression in Aspergillus fumigatus Interacting with Human Immature Dendritic Cells In Vitro

Dendritic cells (DC) are the most important antigen presenting cells and play a pivotal role in host immunity to infectious agents by acting as a bridge between the innate and adaptive immune systems. Monocyte-derived immature DCs (iDC) were infected with viable resting conidia of Aspergillus fumigatus (Af293) for 12 hours at an MOI of 5; cells were sampled every three hours. RNA was extracted from both organisms at each time point and hybridised to microarrays. iDC cell death increased at 6 h in the presence of A. fumigatus which coincided with fungal germ tube emergence; >80% of conidia were associated with iDC. Over the time course A. fumigatus differentially regulated 210 genes, FunCat analysis indicated significant up-regulation of genes involved in fermentation, drug transport, pathogenesis and response to oxidative stress. Genes related to cytotoxicity were differentially regulated but the gliotoxin biosynthesis genes were down regulated over the time course, while Aspf1 was up-regulated at 9 h and 12 h. There was an up-regulation of genes in the subtelomeric regions of the genome as the interaction progressed. The genes up-regulated by iDC in the presence of A. fumigatus indicated that they were producing a pro-inflammatory response which was consistent with previous transcriptome studies of iDC interacting with A. fumigatus germ tubes. This study shows that A. fumigatus adapts to phagocytosis by iDCs by utilising genes that allow it to survive the interaction rather than just up-regulation of specific virulence genes.
Research design features and patient characteristics associated with the outcome of antidepressant clinical trials.

OBJECTIVE The authors examined which, if any, research design features and patient characteristics would significantly differ between successful and unsuccessful antidepressant trials. METHOD Clinical trial data were reviewed for nine antidepressants approved by the Food and Drug Administration between 1985 and 2000. From the antidepressant research programs on these medications, 52 clinical trials were included in the study. The authors evaluated trial design features, patient characteristics, and difference in response between placebo and antidepressant. RESULTS Nine trial design features and patient characteristics were present in the research programs for all nine of the antidepressants. The severity of depressive symptoms before patient randomization, the dosing schedule (flexible versus fixed), the number of treatment arms, and the percentage of female patients were significantly associated with the difference in response to antidepressant and placebo. The duration of the antidepressant trial, number of patients per treatment arm, number of sites, and mean age of the patients were similar in successful trials (with a greater antidepressant-placebo difference) and less successful trials (with a smaller antidepressant-placebo difference). CONCLUSIONS These findings may help in the design of future antidepressant trials.
Homocysteine is lower in the third trimester of pregnancy in women with enhanced folate status from continued folic acid supplementation.

BACKGROUND In many countries, current recommendations are that women take a daily 400-mug folic acid supplement from before conception until the end of the 12th week of gestation for the prevention of neural tube defects. Low folate status is associated with an increased concentration of plasma total homocysteine (tHcy), a risk factor associated with pregnancy complications such as preeclampsia. METHODS In a longitudinal study, we determined tHcy and corresponding folate status in 101 pregnant women at 12, 20, and 35 weeks of gestation, in 35 nonpregnant controls sampled concurrently, and in a subgroup (n = 21 pregnant women and 19 nonpregnant controls) at 3 days postpartum. RESULTS Plasma tHcy was significantly lower throughout pregnancy compared with nonpregnant controls, with values lowest in the second trimester before increasing toward nonpregnant values in the third trimester. Importantly, mean tHcy concentrations were lower in pregnant women taking folic acid supplements than in those not, an effect that reached significance in the third trimester (5.45 vs 7.40 micromol/L; P <0.05). During the third trimester, tHcy concentrations were significantly higher in pregnant women with a history of miscarriage than in women with no previous history (8.15 vs 6.38 micromol/L; P <0.01). CONCLUSIONS This is the first longitudinal study to show that homocysteine concentrations increase in late pregnancy toward nonpregnant values; an increase that can be limited by enhancing folate status through continued folic acid supplementation. These results indicate a potential role for continued folic acid supplementation in reducing pregnancy complications associated with hyperhomocysteinemia.
Target Identity-aware Network Flow for online multiple target tracking

In this paper we show that multiple object tracking (MOT) can be formulated in a framework, where the detection and data-association are performed simultaneously. Our method allows us to overcome the confinements of data association based MOT approaches; where the performance is dependent on the object detection results provided at input level. At the core of our method lies structured learning which learns a model for each target and infers the best location of all targets simultaneously in a video clip. The inference of our structured learning is done through a new Target Identity-aware Network Flow (TINF), where each node in the network encodes the probability of each target identity belonging to that node. The proposed Lagrangian relaxation optimization finds the high quality solution to the network. During optimization a soft spatial constraint is enforced between the nodes of the graph which helps reducing the ambiguity caused by nearby targets with similar appearance in crowded scenarios. We show that automatically detecting and tracking targets in a single framework can help resolve the ambiguities due to frequent occlusion and heavy articulation of targets. Our experiments involve challenging yet distinct datasets and show that our method can achieve results better than the state-of-art.
CT and Ultrasound in the Study of Ulcerated Carotid Plaque Compared with Surgical Results: Potentialities and Advantages of Multidetector Row CT Angiography

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Ulceration is a severe complication of carotid plaque. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the role and the diagnostic efficacy of multidetector row CT angiography (MDCTA) and ultrasound (US) echo color Doppler (US-ECD) in the study of patients with carotid plaque complicated by ulceration through the comparison with the surgical observation. MATERIALS AND METHODS: From January 2004 to October 2005, 237 patients, for a total of 474 carotid arteries, studied at first with color Doppler US, were analyzed using CT angiography. A total of 103 patients underwent a carotid endarterectomy. We analyzed stenosis degree, plaque composition, and presence of ulcerations. In a second phase, the data were compared with the surgical results when the MDCTA indicated surgical intervention. RESULTS: MDCTA found 31 ulcerations; the surgical confirmation underlined a 93.75% sensitivity and a 98.59% specificity. US-ECD performances were 37.5% and 91.5% for sensitivity and specificity, respectively. The number of patients who showed plaque ulcerations increased with the severity of stenosis. Furthermore, ulcerations of the carotid plaque occurred more often proximal than distal to the point of maximum stenosis, and this trend increased with the severity of the stenosis. We also determined that fatty plaques were more likely to be affected by ulcerations. CONCLUSIONS: The results of our study suggest that MDCTA detects with higher sensitivity and specificity the presence of ulcerated plaque compared with US-ECD, which has been demonstrated to be less effective in this evaluation. Considering the high MDCTA sensitivity and specificity for detection of plaque ulceration, we therefore recommend MDCTA as a useful step for correct presurgical planning.
Do the Benefits of Male Circumcision Outweigh the Risks? A Critique of the Proposed CDC Guidelines

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have announced a set of provisional guidelines concerning male circumcision, in which they suggest that the benefits of the surgery outweigh the risks. I offer a critique of the CDC position. Among other concerns, I suggest that the CDC relies more heavily than is warranted on studies from Sub-Saharan Africa that neither translate well to North American populations nor to circumcisions performed before an age of sexual debut; that it employs an inadequate conception of risk in its benefit vs. risk analysis; that it fails to consider the anatomy and functions of the penile prepuce (i.e., the part of the penis that is removed by circumcision); that it underestimates the adverse consequences associated with circumcision by focusing on short-term surgical complications rather than long-term harms; that it portrays both the risks and benefits of circumcision in a misleading manner, thereby undermining the possibility of obtaining informed consent; that it evinces a superficial and selective analysis of the literature on sexual outcomes associated with circumcision; and that it gives less attention than is desirable to ethical issues surrounding autonomy and bodily integrity. I conclude that circumcision before an age of consent is not an appropriate health-promotion strategy.