Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pectus bar removal: surgical technique and strategy to avoid complications.

BACKGROUND Pectus bar removal is the final stage of the procedure for minimally invasive repair of pectus excavatum. Based on our experience with one of the largest scale data, we would like to address the important issues in pectus bar removal, such as appropriate duration of bar maintenance, techniques for bar removal, and strategies to avoid complications. METHODS Between September 1999 and August 2015, we operated on 2,553 patients with pectus excavatum and carinatum using pectus bars for a minimally invasive approach. Among them, 1,821 patients (71.3%) underwent pectus bar removal as a final stage of pectus deformity repair, and their data were analyzed retrospectively to identify the outcomes and adverse effects of the pectus bar removal procedure. The mean age of the patients was 9.13 years (range, 16 months to 44 years) and the male to female ratio was 3.55. The study is approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB), the ethical committee of Seoul St. Mary's Hospital. The IRB has exempted the informed consent from every patient in this study due to this is a retrospective chart review without revealing any patients' personal data. RESULTS Our technique involved straightening of the bar in a supine position. The overall mean duration of pectus bar maintenance was 2.57 years (range, 4 months to 14 years). The mean duration was 2.02 years (range, 4 months to 7 years) for children under 12 years, 2.99 years (range, 7 months to 9 years) for teenagers aged 12-20 years, and 3.53 years (range, 3 months to 14 years) for adults over 20 years. Forty-eight patients (2.6%) underwent bar removal more than 5 years after bar insertion and 58 patients (3.2%) underwent bar removal earlier than initially planned. The most common adverse reaction after bar removal was wound seroma including infection (43 patients, 2.36%). Recurrence after bar removal occurred in nine patients (0.49%), and seven of these required redo repair (0.38%). CONCLUSIONS Pectus bar removal is a safe and straightforward procedure with a low rate of complication.
The Effect of Additional Child Support Income on the Risk of Child Maltreatment

About 6 million children were reported to the child welfare system as being at risk of child abuse or neglect in the United States in 2010. Researchers and policy makers have long recognized that children living in families with limited economic resources are at higher risk for maltreatment than children from higher socioeconomic strata, but the causal effect of income, and particularly child support, on maltreatment risk has been challenging to establish; many of the same factors are associated with child support payment levels, poverty, and child maltreatment risk. Using a random assignment experiment that led to exogenous differences in child support received, the present analysis explores the causal role of a full pass-through and disregard of child support on the risk of child maltreatment. We find that a full child support pass-through, as compared to a partial pass-through, reduces the risk of child maltreatment.
Hemostatic abnormalities associated with cancer and its therapy.

Hemostatic abnormalities associated with malignancy have been described since the middle of the 19th century. Abnormalities associated with hypercoagulability and hemorrhage are reported in various percentages of patients depending upon the underlying neoplasm and the type of therapy. Changes in the quantitative and qualitative aspects of protein coagulation factors, anticoagulant proteins, circulating anticoagulants, platelets, and vascular responses have been noted. Clinical or subclinical disseminated intravascular coagulopathy (DIC) and associated paradoxical bleeding are common. Hemorrhage may be associated with a decrease of particular coagulation factors or alterations of vascular integrity and platelet numbers or function in various combinations. Evaluation of hemostatic abnormalities associated with cancer (HAAC) includes a careful history and physical examination, assessment of the prothrombin and activated partial thromboplastin times, platelet count, a test for fibrin or fibrinogen degradation products, and assay of fibrinogen levels. Specific findings may suggest the need for tests for naturally occurring protein anticoagulants (e.g., protein S, protein C, and antithrombin III), coagulation inhibitors, abnormalities of the fibrinolytic system, or other esoteric tests. Testing for F1 + 2 and fibrinopeptide A may be useful in determining early activation of prothrombin and thrombin, respectively, and a clue to incipient onset of DIC. Besides the disease, therapies for cancer can alter hemostatic activity. Chemotherapy has been reported to be associated with venous and arterial thromboses, cerebrovascular events, and coagulopathies. Radiation therapy decreases platelet production, particularly if the active bone marrow has been included in the field. Laboratory evaluation of HAAC requires consideration of the type of malignant disorder, the history and physical condition of the patient and any therapy.
Formalizing institutions as executable petri nets for distributed robotic systems

Institutional Robotics is a new approach to the coordination of distributed robotic systems, drawing inspiration from social sciences. It aims to provide a comprehensive strategy for specifying social interactions among robots in the form of institutions. In this paper, we present a formalism for institutions in the Institutional Robotics model. We apply this formalism to two case studies. The first is concerned with a swarm of simple robots which has to maintain wireless connectivity. The second focuses on role allocation in a robotic team aimed at improving coordination and performance in a transportation task.
A longitudinal evaluation of an early immersion program in British Columbia

Abstract This article presents the results of a longitudinal study of two cohorts of students enrolled in an early French immersion program in the province of British Columbia since September, 1973. In an immersion program, the children's second language (French) is used as the language of instruction during the initial years of schooling. The immersion experience of the two cohorts differed in the initial grades with one cohort receiving 20% English instruction in kindergarten and grade 2, and the other receiving no English instruction until grade 3. In comparison to their peers in the regular English program immersion students performed at a similar level in mathematics, and they attained equivalence in English language skills soon after English language arts were introduced into the curriculum. Immersion students had higher levels of achievement in French than students enrolled in other types of French language programs. Their levels of achievement in French language arts were found to be similar to th.
Characterization of the bacteriophage φ29‐encoded protein p16.7: a membrane protein involved in phage DNA replication

An early expressed operon, located at the right end of the linear bacteriophage φ29 genome, contains open reading frame (ORF)16.7, whose deduced protein sequence of 130 amino acids is conserved in φ29‐related phages. Here, we show that this ORF actually encodes a protein, p16.7, which is abundantly and early expressed after infection. p16.7 is a membrane protein, and the N‐terminally located transmembrane‐spanning domain is required for its membrane localization. The variant p16.7A, in which the N‐terminal membrane anchor was replaced by a histidine‐tag, was purified and characterized. Purified p16.7A was shown to form dimers in solution. To study the in vivo role of p16.7, a φ29 mutant containing a suppressible mutation in gene 16.7 was constructed. In vivo phage DNA replication was affected in the absence of p16.7, especially at early infection times. Based on the results, the putative role of p16.7 in in vivoφ29 DNA replication is discussed.
A Deep Siamese Network for Scene Detection in Broadcast Videos

We present a model that automatically divides broadcast videos into coherent scenes by learning a distance measure between shots. Experiments are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by comparing our algorithm against recent proposals for automatic scene segmentation. We also propose an improved performance measure that aims to reduce the gap between numerical evaluation and expected results, and propose and release a new benchmark dataset.
MOVING INTERNATIONAL ADVERTISING RESEARCH FORWARD : A New Research Agenda

In introducing the special issue on international advertising, this paper assesses progress made in international research. It begins with an examination of the content of international advertising papers published in the Journal of Advertising during the past ten years. The content of these more recent research articles is then compared to those that appeared earlier in the Journal's history. This paper also surveys four earlier reviews of the international advertising literature and assesses whether issues posed in the reviews have been adequately addressed. A new agenda for international advertising researchers is offered, consisting of eight research questions and some admonitions relating to data collection and collaboration among researchers. The contributions of papers in this issue are then detailed in the context of the proposed research agenda.
Two Become One? Spouses and Agreement in Political Opinions

Spouses who talk about politics with each other have long been considered aberrant cases of political discussion because of the frequency of their interaction and the high levels of agreement between them. Using the 1996 Indianapolis-St. Louis Election Study, we challenge these assumptions. We find that compared with other types of discussion dyads, married dyads are no more likely to agree about a host of policy issues, even though they do talk about them more frequently. In addition, we find even when spouses do agree about their presidential vote choice more often, they do not perceive this agreement to exist. These findings indicate that within the microfoundations of married political behavior, spouses may experience less political variety because of the frequency of their interaction, but this does not necessarily mean they experience lower levels of disagreement.
Is the personal political? Chronotopes and changing stances toward Catalan language and identity

Abstract During the early catalanization of schooling in the Barcelona area in the 1980s, Castilian-speaking teenagers of working-class immigrant descent often struggled against Catalan language and identity. This longitudinal study followed a group of high-school classmates and found that as young adults, some but not all of the resistant working-class Castilian speakers have incorporated Catalan into their lives and identity. This article draws on Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of the ‘chronotope’ or time-space frame to analyze the accounts of language and identity given by informants who adapted positively to Catalan and that of a peer whose hostility to Catalan increased over the years. Drawing on three contrasting chronotopes, informants give different meanings to personal experiences and linguistic practices. Those who adapted positively to Catalan present their linguistic development within biographical and cosmopolitan chronotopes that emphasize individual maturation and experience. They reject the politicization of language and an ideology of authenticity that links language choice to origins. The more anti-Catalan peer presents a socio-historical chronotope that frames his own experience as political and related to national and state debates, and he draws on an ideology of ethnolinguistic solidarity and linguistic authenticity.
A Node-Based Time Slot Assignment Algorithm for STDMA Wireless Mesh Networks

Most slot assignment algorithms that are proposed for spatial time-division multiple-access (STDMA) mesh networks use a simplified transmission model that does not consider the time-varying fading characteristic of a wireless channel. In addition, these algorithms are usually link based, and scheduling in each slot is fixed and done for links. When the scheduled link is in deep fade or has no traffic, the slot that is given to that link will be wasted. In this paper, we present a node-based slot assignment scheme in which scheduling in each slot is done for nodes and not links. Because a node has multiple links, it can exploit multiuser diversity, i.e., different links have different traffic and fading conditions, to achieve much better performance.
Partial regularity of brenier solutions of the monge-ampère equation

Given $\Omega,\Lambda \subset \R^n$ two bounded open sets, and $f$ and $g$ two probability densities concentrated on $\Omega$ and $\Lambda$ respectively, we investigate the regularity of the optimal map $\nabla \varphi$ (the optimality referring to the Euclidean quadratic cost) sending $f$ onto $g$. We show that if $f$ and $g$ are both bounded away from zero and infinity, we can find two open sets $\Omega'\subset \Omega$ and $\Lambda'\subset \Lambda$ such that $f$ and $g$ are concentrated on $\Omega'$ and $\Lambda'$ respectively, and $\nabla\varphi:\Omega' \to \Lambda'$ is a (bi-Holder) homeomorphism. This generalizes the $2$-dimensional partial regularity result of [8].
The Effect of Preemptive Pudendal Nerve Blockade on Pain After Transvaginal Pelvic Reconstructive Surgery

OBJECTIVE: To assess the effect of preemptive pudendal nerve blockade on pain and consumption of narcotic analgesia following transvaginal pelvic reconstructive surgery. METHODS: This was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Patients undergoing transvaginal pelvic reconstructive surgery under general anesthesia were randomized to receive pudendal block with either bupivacaine 0.25% or placebo (normal saline 0.9%) immediately before surgery. All patients received postoperative intravenous hydromorphone patient-controlled analgesia. Patients were asked to report on their pain intensity 1, 3, 5, 7, 18, and 24 hours postoperatively, using a validated visual analog pain scale from 0–10. Main outcome measures included postoperative pain intensity and hydromorphone consumption. RESULTS: One hundred ten patients enrolled in the study, of whom 106 underwent randomization, and 102 received pudendal nerve blockade, 51 with bupivacaine and 51 with saline. Demographic and baseline clinical characteristics were not significantly different between the 2 patients groups. There were no significant differences in postoperative pain intensity (median scores: 1 hour, 4.0 versus 5.0; 3 hours, 3.0 versus 4.0; 7 hours, 2.0 versus 3.0; 18 hours, 3.0 versus 4.0), the consumption of hydromorphone (0–3 hours, 1.84 mg versus 1.77 mg; 4–7 hours, 1.19 mg versus 1.20 mg; 8–18 hours, 2.89 mg versus 2.35 mg), or mean hospital stay (39.6 versus 37.3 hours) between the bupivacaine and saline groups. CONCLUSION: Preemptive pudendal nerve blockade does not affect postoperative pain intensity or the consumption of narcotic analgesia after transvaginal pelvic reconstructive surgery. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: I
Crystal Structures of GII.10 and GII.12 Norovirus Protruding Domains in Complex with Histo-Blood Group Antigens Reveal Details for a Potential Site of Vulnerability

ABSTRACT Noroviruses are the dominant cause of outbreaks of gastroenteritis worldwide, and interactions with human histo-blood group antigens (HBGAs) are thought to play a critical role in their entry mechanism. Structures of noroviruses from genogroups GI and GII in complex with HBGAs, however, reveal different modes of interaction. To gain insight into norovirus recognition of HBGAs, we determined crystal structures of norovirus protruding domains from two rarely detected GII genotypes, GII.10 and GII.12, alone and in complex with a panel of HBGAs, and analyzed structure-function implications related to conservation of the HBGA binding pocket. The GII.10- and GII.12-apo structures as well as the previously solved GII.4-apo structure resembled each other more closely than the GI.1-derived structure, and all three GII structures showed similar modes of HBGA recognition. The primary GII norovirus-HBGA interaction involved six hydrogen bonds between a terminal αfucose1-2 of the HBGAs and a dimeric capsid interface, which was composed of elements from two protruding subdomains. Norovirus interactions with other saccharide units of the HBGAs were variable and involved fewer hydrogen bonds. Sequence analysis revealed a site of GII norovirus sequence conservation to reside under the critical αfucose1-2 and to be one of the few patches of conserved residues on the outer virion-capsid surface. The site was smaller than that involved in full HBGA recognition, a consequence of variable recognition of peripheral saccharides. Despite this evasion tactic, the HBGA site of viral vulnerability may provide a viable target for small molecule- and antibody-mediated neutralization of GII norovirus.
Effect Of Anesthetics On Stress And The Innate Immune System Of Gilthead Seabream (Sparus Surata)

Anesthesia may depress the immune system in mammals and fish. In the present work, two anesthetics used in aquaculture, clove oil (0.445 mM) and benzocaine (0.225 mM), were tested to observe their effects on the stress response and innate immune system activity of gilthead seabream (Sparus aurata L.). Results showed that both anesthetics induced increased blood glucose and serum cortisol levels. In addition, benzocaine depressed lysozyme activity, production of reactive oxygen species and pinocytosis activity. These were not depressed by clove oil, suggesting that clove oil is a safer anesthetic for seabream as it does not cause immunodepression in anesthetized fish.
Investigation of ocular temperature change in rabbits during 40 GHz band exposure

In vivo ocular temperatures in rabbits were measured during 40 GHz millimeter-wave exposure (400-100 mW/cm2). To visualize aqueous humor convection, 0.2% microencapsulated thermochromic liquid crystals (MTLCs) were injected into the anterior chambers of rabbit eyes. Exposure to 40 GHz increased corneal, lens and retrobulbar temperature, with aqueous humor convection having an important role in heat transfer from the cornea to the lens. These findings show that dynamic changes in temperature and distribution in the anterior chamber occur in living rabbit eyes during exposure to 40 GHz millimeter-waves.
Eosinophil sequestration and activation are associated with the onset and severity of systemic adverse reactions following the treatment of onchocerciasis with ivermectin.

To investigate the role of eosinophil activation and sequestration in the development and severity of adverse reactions after the treatment of Onchocerca volvulus infection, 40 O. volvulus-infected Ghanaians were randomized to receive placebo or standard- or high-dose ivermectin. Subjects were examined for typical physiologic and clinical events before and up to 48 h after treatment. Plasma samples were tested for interleukin (IL)-5 and eosinophil degranulation products (e.g., eosinophil-derived neurotoxin, EDN). After treatment, peripheral eosinophil counts declined in ivermectin-treated groups (P<.001), whereas circulating levels of IL-5 (P<.01) and EDN (P<.05) increased. Cumulative levels of IL-5 and EDN correlated with reaction scores (P<.01). High-dose ivermectin was associated with more-severe reactions, more-profound eosinopenia, and higher circulating levels of IL-5 and EDN, compared with the standard dose. These results suggest that eosinophil sequestration and activation/degranulation are associated with the initiation and severity of ivermectin-associated adverse reactions.
Psychological, sociocultural, and marital adaptation of Turkish immigrant couples in Canada

The study examined the acculturation and adaptation of 200 married Turkish immigrants in Toronto, Canada, using selfreport questionnaires. As an extension of research from sojourners to immigrants, and from individuals to married couples, marital adaptation was introduced and three facets of adaptation were differentiated: psychological, sociocultural, and marital. The findings support the contention that adaptation is multifaceted. Consistent with stress and coping models, psychological adaptation of married couples was associated with the personality variable of hardiness, social support, acculturation attitudes, and discrimination. On the other hand, in line with social learning perspectives, sociocultural adaptation was mostly related to the variables instrumental in acquiring social skills in the new culture, namely, language proficiency and contact with members of the dominant group. Marital adaptation was mostly associated with marital stressors and marital support. The lack of research on gender d.
The storytelling organization: A study of story performance in an office-supply firm.

I would like to thank Joanne Martin, Alan Wilkins, David Whetten, Fiona Crofton, Robert Dennehy, Mimi Bard, Michael Moch, Jeanine Sheehan, ASO editor Gerald Salancik, Linda Pike, and the reviewers for helpful comments in the writing of this paper. This paper reports on a participant-observation study in a large office-supply firm of how people perform stories to make sense of events, introduce change, and gain political advantage during their conversations. The story was not found to be a highly agreed-upon text, told from beginning to end, as it has been studied in most prior story research. Rather, the stories were dynamic, varied by context, and were sometimes terse, requiring the hearer to fill in silently major chunks of story line, context, and implication. Stories were frequently challenged, reinterpreted, and revised by the hearers as they unfolded in conversation. The paper supports a theory of organization as a collective storytelling system in which the performance of stories is a key part of members' sense making and a means to allow them to supplement individual memories with institutional memory. '
HRM perspectives on addiction to technology and work

Purpose – The aim of this study is an exploration of the behavioural addictions to work (workaholism) and to use of technology (technolophilia), particularly as they overlap in managers' work routines and expectations placed on their employees.Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a qualitative analysis of managers' comments from structured interviews and focus groups in several countries.Findings – This research culminated in a model of various adaptations to both work pressure and need to use technology in today's business work, including the potential to over‐adapt or lapse into a pattern of addiction.Research limitations/implications – The consolidation of multi‐disciplinary literature and the framework of the model will serve as a reference points for continuing research on behavioural addictions related to work and technology.Practical implications – Human resource professionals concerned with employee well‐being can utilize the components of this model to proactively recognize problems a.
Indirect measures as a signal for evaluative change

Implicit and explicit attitudes can be changed by using evaluative learning procedures. In this contribution we investigated an asymmetric effect of order of administration of indirect and direct measures on the detection of evaluative change: A change in explicit attitudes is more likely detected if they are measured after implicit attitudes, whereas these latter change regardless of the order. This effect was demonstrated in two studies (n=270; n=138) using the self-referencing task whereas it was not found in a third study (n=151) that used a supraliminal sequential evaluative conditioning paradigm. In all studies evaluative change was present only for contingency aware participants. We discuss a potential explanation underlying the order of measure effect entailing that, in some circumstances, an indirect measure is not only a measure but also a signal that can be detected through self-perception processes and further elaborated at the propositional level.