Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of light source position and bevel placement on facial margin adaptation of resin-based composite restorations.

PURPOSE To evaluate the effect of direction of first cure and the presence or absence of a facial margin bevel on the adaptation of facial margins of Class III resin-based composite (RBC) restorations. MATERIALS AND METHODS Custom polyvinyl siloxane (PVS) light shields were fabricated for both the mesial and distal surfaces of 20 extracted incisors. Class III cavities were prepared in the mesial and distal surfaces of the incisors. On the facial, lingual, and gingival margins of 20 of the preparations a 0.5 mm wide enamel bevel was placed. The lingual and gingival, but not the facial, margins were beveled on the other 20 preparations. The PVS light shield was adapted to the tooth and trimmed to allow 1-2 mm of the facial margin to be exposed on 10 of the beveled and 10 of the non-beveled preparations. For the remaining 20 preparations the PVS light shield was trimmed to allow access of the curing light only from the lingual. Teeth were restored with Prisma TPH RBC. Using the appropriate shield, restorations in the facial first cure group were cured first from the facial and then from the lingual. Restorations in the lingual first cure group were cured only from the lingual. Restorations were finished flush with enamel margins and thermocycled following storage. Samples were exposed to a 50% solution of silver nitrate followed by light exposure. Teeth were sectioned and microleakage was evaluated at three levels (incisal, middle, and cervical). Four evaluators (blinded to direction of cure) independently scored microleakage using a categorical evaluation scale. Statistical analysis included non-parametric descriptive statistics, Cohen's kappa, chi-square analysis, and Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA. RESULTS Samples prepared without a facial bevel revealed significantly more (P = 0.01) microleakage than preparations with a facial bevel. At the most incisal level, restorations cured first from the facial revealed significantly more (P < 0.001) microleakage than restorations cured first from the lingual. At the middle and cervical levels, restorations cured first from the facial revealed significantly less (P < 0.001) microleakage than restorations cured first from the lingual. When a facial bevel was present, samples cured first from the facial showed significantly less (P < 0.001) microleakage than those cured only from the lingual.
Review Paper: Determinants of Success of Inpatient Clinical Information Systems: A Literature Review

We reviewed the English and Dutch literature on evaluations of patient care information systems that require data entry by health care professionals published from 1991 to 2001. Our objectives were to identify attributes that were used to assess the success of such systems and to test the ability of a framework developed by Delone and McLean for management information systems(1) to categorize these attributes correctly. The framework includes six dimensions or success factors: system quality, information quality, usage, user satisfaction, individual impact, and organizational impact. Thirty-three papers were selected for complete review. Types of study design included descriptive, correlational, comparative, and case studies. A variety of relevant attributes could be assigned to the six dimensions in the Delone and McLean framework, but some attributes, predominantly in cases of failure, did not fit any of the categories. They related to contingent factors, such as organizational culture. Our review points out the need for more thorough evaluations of patient care information systems that look at a wide range of factors that can affect the relative success or failure of these systems.
Modelling gateway placement in wireless networks: geometric k-centres of unit disc graphs

Motivated by the gateway placement problem in wireless networks, we consider the geometric k-centre problem on unit disc graphs: given a set of points P in the plane, find a set F of k points in the plane that minimizes the maximum graph distance from any vertex in P to the nearest vertex in F in the unit disc graph induced by P union F. We describe exact and approximate polynomial-time solutions to this problem for any fixed k and show that the problem is NP-hard when k is an arbitrary input parameter.
Multi-tenant SOA Middleware for Cloud Computing

Enterprise IT infrastructure incurs many costs ranging from hardware costs and software licenses/maintenance costs to the costs of monitoring, managing, and maintaining IT infrastructure. The recent advent of cloud computing offers some tangible prospects of reducing some of those costs; however, abstractions provided by cloud computing are often inadequate to provide major cost savings across the IT infrastructure life-cycle. Multi-tenancy, which allows a single application to emulate multiple application instances, has been proposed as a solution to this problem. By sharing one application across many tenants, multi-tenancy attempts to replace many small application instances with one or few large instances thus bringing down the overall cost of IT infrastructure. In this paper, we present an architecture for achieving multi-tenancy at the SOA level, which enables users to run their services and other SOA artifacts in a multi-tenant SOA framework as well as provides an environment to build multi-tenant applications. We discuss architecture, design decisions, and problems encountered, together with potential solutions when applicable. Primary contributions of this paper are motivating multi-tenancy, and the design and implementation of a multi-tenant SOA platform which allows users to run their current applications in a multi-tenant environment with minimal or no modifications.
LCD screen calibration for deflectometric systems considering a single layer refraction model

Techniques based on deflectometry provide absolute shape measurements on specular surfaces by displaying a series of patterns on an LCD screen and using a camera to observe their reflection on the surface. These techniques can provide accurate measurements, but are prone to calibration errors. The extrinsic calibration of the screen, a key element in the calibration process, is often based on a flat surface model, which does not account for the refraction that occurs in the transparent layers of the LCD screen. Several authors have shown that a single glass layer model can reduce measurement errors, but two parameters that are not always available are needed: the index of refraction and the thickness of the refractive layer of the LCD screen. The method presented in this work allows the experimental computation of both parameters, taking into account the non-flat shape of the screen. A series of markers are placed on the front surface of the LCD and a coordinate measuring machine is employed to obtain its shape. Additional virtual markers are displayed on the screen and observed with a calibrated camera from different positions and orientations. The captured images show view-dependent displacements of the displayed features due to the refraction. Photogrammetric techniques are applied to relate the displacements observed in the images and the measured front surface, and a mathematical minimization algorithm is employed to estimate the LCD screen parameters. Several simulation experiments are performed to evaluate the approach, including the influence of measurement errors. The results indicate feasibility of the method.
Practice Improvement in Cervical Screening and Management (PICSM): Symposium on Management of Cervical Abnormalities in Adolescents and Young Women

A symposium with the primary goal of identifying strategies to increase the adoption of evidence based consensus guidelines for cervical cancer screening and the management of abnormal cervical cytology and histology in adolescents and young women was held June 19–20, 2009 in Bethesda, MD at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), under the sponsorship of the American Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology (ASCCP) and in partnership with the American Cancer Society (ACS). The 2006 ASCCP Guidelines for the Management of Women with Abnormal Cervical Cytology and Cervical Cancer Precursors were developed at a consensus process comprising 146 experts representing 29 organizations and professional societies who met at the NIH. The guidelines contain special recommendations to manage abnormal adolescent cytology results. These recommendations have subsequently been adopted by ACOG. The guidelines identify adolescents, defined as females under the age of 21 years, as a special population requiring interventions based on evidence recognizing the natural history of abnormal cytology is different in adolescents than adults. Anecdotal reports and clinician surveys verify under usage of the 2002 ACS [1] and 2003 American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) guidelines [2], on when to initiate screening, and the 2006 ASCCP management guidelines for adolescents [3–5]. PICSM delegates, representing 22 organizations, reviewed the literature on cytologic abnormalities in adolescent and young women to identify where evidence was lacking, assess adherence to existing recommendations; and, based on these findings, addressed strategies to increase guideline usage in adolescents and young women. Consensus recommendations were achieved on key messages that needed to be disseminated and methods to disseminate and implement them were recommended. Supporting information, not available at the time of the symposium, has been added. The following summarizes the 9 presentations.
Mineralogical and Physicochemical Characterization of the Clay Soil in the Locality of Loukolela (Congo)

: The objective of this study is to characterize the clay of the locality of Loukolela. The mineralogical analysis is given by using different techniques (DRX, IR, DTA, TGA, DTG). Among the physico-chemical properties, the chemical analysis is given by using the procedure of Carignan by proportioning each oxide by ICP-AES, the CEC is evaluated by the method of Metson. The properties of surface and the mesoporosity are deduced from the isotherm of adsorption/desorption of nitrogen on LOUK2 sample. The geotechnical properties of this soil are highlighted by determining the particle-size distribution of the soil by the method of sedimentation and sifting and the determination of the Atterberg limits. The potential of swelling is estimated by empirical methods. The mineralogical composition obtained and the physicochemical properties have revealed the predisposition factors of the shrinkage-swelling phenomenon. The estimated swelling potential allowed to classify the soil of the bank of the Loukolela as a swelling clay.
Deconstructing the Hedonic Treadmill: Is Happiness Autoregressive?

Affective habituation is well-documented in social sciences: people seem to adapt to many life events, ranging from lottery windfalls to terminal illnesses. We propose a subtle but critical difference: current happiness may depend directly on past happiness. We test our hypothesis running dynamic happiness regressions using panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study, the British Household Panel Survey and the Swiss Household Panel. Contrary to the widespread prior among economists and non-economists, the coefficient on lagged happiness is positive and statistically significant. We discuss some explanations for the puzzle. Our favorite is that reported happiness is time-inconsistent, even within individuals. We test this conjecture by using a 52-days study. As expected, the coefficient on lagged happiness is negative and statistically significant. We find that changes in hedonic states bounce back 30% in only 5 days.
Transcriptional Regulation of Tissue-Specific Genes by the ERK5 Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase

ABSTRACT The ERK5 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) differs from other MAPKs in possessing a potent transcriptional activation domain. ERK5 −/− embryos die from angiogenic defects, but the precise physiological role of ERK5 remains poorly understood. To elucidate molecular functions of ERK5 in the development of vasculature and other tissues, we performed gene profile analyses of erk5 −/− mouse embryos and erk5 −/− fibroblast cells reconstituted with ERK5 or ERK5(1-740), which lacks the transactivation domain. These experiments revealed several potential ERK5 target genes, including a proapoptotic gene bnip3, known angiogenic genes flt1 and lklf (lung Krüppel-like factor), and genes that regulate cardiovascular development. Among these, LKLF, known for its roles in angiogenesis, T-cell quiescence, and survival, was found to be absolutely dependent on ERK5 for expression in endothelial and T cells. We show that ERK5 drives lklf transcription by activating MEF2 transcription factors. Expression of erk5 short hairpin or a dominant-negative form of the ERK5 upstream activator, MEK5, in T cells led to downregulation of LKLF, increased cell size and upregulation of activation markers. Thus, through its kinase and transcriptional activation domains, ERK5 regulates transcriptional responses of cell survival and quiescence critical for angiogenesis and T-cell function.
Discrete-Time Zhang Neural Network for Online Time-Varying Nonlinear Optimization With Application to Manipulator Motion Generation

In this brief, a discrete-time Zhang neural network (DTZNN) model is first proposed, developed, and investigated for online time-varying nonlinear optimization (OTVNO). Then, Newton iteration is shown to be derived from the proposed DTZNN model. In addition, to eliminate the explicit matrix-inversion operation, the quasi-Newton Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno (BFGS) method is introduced, which can effectively approximate the inverse of Hessian matrix. A DTZNN-BFGS model is thus proposed and investigated for OTVNO, which is the combination of the DTZNN model and the quasiNewton BFGS method. In addition, theoretical analyses show that, with step-size h = 1 and/or with zero initial error, the maximal residual error of the DTZNN model has an O(τ2) pattern, whereas the maximal residual error of the Newton iteration has an O(τ) pattern, with τ denoting the sampling gap. Besides, when h ≠ 1 and h ∈ (0, 2), the maximal steady-state residual error of the DTZNN model has an O(τ2) pattern. Finally, an illustrative numerical experiment and an application example to manipulator motion generation are provided and analyzed to substantiate the efficacy of the proposed DTZNN and DTZNN-BFGS models for OTVNO.
Mobile Data Offloading: How Much Can WiFi Deliver?

This paper presents a quantitative study on the performance of 3G mobile data offloading through WiFi networks. We recruited 97 iPhone users from metropolitan areas and collected statistics on their WiFi connectivity during a two-and-a-half-week period in February 2010. Our trace-driven simulation using the acquired whole-day traces indicates that WiFi already offloads about 65% of the total mobile data traffic and saves 55% of battery power without using any delayed transmission. If data transfers can be delayed with some deadline until users enter a WiFi zone, substantial gains can be achieved only when the deadline is fairly larger than tens of minutes. With 100-s delays, the achievable gain is less than only 2%-3%, whereas with 1 h or longer deadlines, traffic and energy saving gains increase beyond 29% and 20%, respectively. These results are in contrast to the substantial gain (20%-33%) reported by the existing work even for 100-s delayed transmission using traces taken from transit buses or war-driving. In addition, a distribution model-based simulator and a theoretical framework that enable analytical studies of the average performance of offloading are proposed. These tools are useful for network providers to obtain a rough estimate on the average performance of offloading for a given WiFi deployment condition.
Fast, small-space algorithms for approximate histogram maintenance

(MATH) A vector <b>A</b> of length <i>N</i> is defined implicitly, via a stream of updates of the form "add 5 to <b>A</b><sub>3</sub>. " We give a <i>sketching</i> algorithm, that constructs a small <i>sketch</i> from the stream of updates, and a <i>reconstruction</i> algorithm, that produces a <i>B</i>-bucket piecewise-constant representation (histogram) <b>H</b> for <b>A</b> from the sketch, such that ||<b>A—H</b>||&xie;(1+ε)||<b>A—H</b><sub>opt</sub>||, where the error |||<b>A—H</b>|| is either $\ell_1$ (absolute) or $\ell_2$ (root-mean-square) error. The time to process a single update, time to reconstruct the histogram, and size of the sketch are each bounded by poly(<i>B</i>,log(<i>N</i>),log||<b>A</b>,1/ε. Our result is obtained in two steps. First we obtain what we call a <i>robust</i> histogram approximation for <b>A</b>, a histogram such that adding a small number of buckets does not help improve the representation quality significantly. From the robust histogram, we cull a histogram of desired accruacy and <i>B</i> buckets in the second step. This technique also provides similar results for Haar wavelet representations, under $\ell_2$ error. Our results have applications in summarizing data distributions fast and succinctly even in distributed settings.
Screening for Sexually Transmissible Infections in Unwanted Pregnancy

SUMMARY Two hundred and two women attending a private clinic for termination of pregnancy were screened for various genital pathogens immediately before operation. Five patients had genital warts; Chlamydia trachomatis was isolated from 6; Trichomonas vaginalis identi fied from 9, and yeasts from 30. There were none with gonnorrhoea, positive V.D. R.L. or clinical signs of Herpes simplex. Further work is needed to characterise groups of termination patients with higher incidences of infection and to determine the role of C. trachomatis in post-abortal sepsis.
Object-Based Attention and Occlusion Evidence From Normal Participants and a Computational Model

One way of perceptually organizing a complex visual scene is to attend selectively to information in a particular physical loca tion. Another way of reducing the complexity in the input is to attend selectively to an individual object in the scene and to process its elements preferentially. This latter, object-based attention process was examined, and the predicted superiority for reporting features from 1 relative to 2 objects was replicated in a series of experiments. This object-based process was robust even under conditions of occlusion, although there were some b oundary conditions on its operation. Finally, an account of the data is provided via simulations of the findings in a computational mod el. The claim is that object-based attention arises from a mechanism that groups together those features based on internal representations developed over perceptual experience and then preferentially gates these features for later, selective processing.
Slow components of potassium tail currents in rat skeletal muscle

The kinetics of potassium tail currents have been studied in the omohyoid muscle of the rat using the three-microelectrode voltage-clamp technique. The currents were elicited by a two-pulse protocol in which a conditioning pulse to open channels was followed by a test step to varying levels. The tail currents reversed at a single well-defined potential (VK). At hyperpolarized test potentials (-100 mV and below), tail currents were inward and exhibited two clearly distinguishable phases of decay, a fast tail with a time constant of 2-3 ms and a slow tail with a time constant of approximately 150 ms. At depolarized potentials (-60 mV and above), tail currents were outward and did not show two such easily separable phases of decay, although a slow kinetic component was present. The slow kinetic phase of outward tail currents appeared to be functionally distinct from the slow inward tail since the channels responsible for the latter did not allow significant outward current. Substitution of Rb for extracellular K abolished current through the anomalous (inward-going) rectifier and at the same time eliminated the slow inward tail, which suggests that the slow inward tail current flows through anomalous rectifier channels. The amplitude of the slow inward tail was increased and VK was shifted in the depolarizing direction by longer conditioning pulses. The shift in VK implies that during outward currents potassium accumulates in a restricted extracellular space, and it is suggested that this excess K causes the slow inward tail by increasing the inward current through the anomalous rectifier. By this hypothesis, the tail current slowly decays as K diffuses from the restricted space. Consistent with such a hypothesis, the decay of the slow inward tail was not strongly affected by changing temperature. It is concluded that a single delayed K channel is present in the omohyoid. Substitution of Rb for K has little effect on the magnitude or time course of outward current tails, but reduces the magnitude and slows the decay of the fast component of inward tails. Both effects are consistent with a mechanism proposed for squid giant axon (Swenson and Armstrong, 1981): that (a) the delayed potassium channel cannot close while Rb is inside it, and (b) that Rb remains in the channel longer than K.
Bone Diagenesis and its Implication for Disease Diagnosis: The Relevance of Bone Microstructure Analysis for the Study of Past Human Remains

Abstract When bone is exposed to the burial environment it may experience structural changes induced by multiple agents. The study of postmortem alterations is important to differentiate decomposition phenomena from normal physiological processes or pathological lesions, as well as to assess bone tissue quality. Microscopy is of great utility to evaluate the integrity of bone microstructure and it provides significant data on long-term bone decomposition. A total of 18 human bone sections (eight archeological and ten retrieved from an identified skeletal collection) were selected for analysis under plane light and polarized light. The aim of this exploratory study was to analyze the impact of diagenesis and taphonomy on the bone microstructure, as well as on the differential diagnosis of pathological conditions. The results showed that the microscopy approach to bone tissues contributed materially as an aid in the detailed description of the main diagenetic changes observed. It showed that gross inspection does not provide a realistic assessment of bone tissue preservation, which can impact in the characterization of lesions present and subsequent disease diagnosis. Therefore, researchers should continue to consider the application of histological techniques if the aim is to comprehend tissue integrity and its association with decomposition or disease.