Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Potentially Unstable Intertrochanteric Fractures

Objectives: Evaluation of risk factors for loss of reduction in initially stable intertrochanteric fractures. Design: Retrospective database analysis. Setting: University teaching hospital. Patients/Participants: Sixty-six patients over the age of 55 years presenting with fractures of the trochanteric region caused by a low-energy injury, classified as AO/OTA type 31-A1 (stable fracture in Evans classification). Intervention: Treatment with a sliding compression hip screw. Main Outcome Measurement: The outcome examined in this study was loss of reduction as measured by the amount of medialization of the femoral shaft. Results: Increased age (P = 0.01) and comminution of the lateral cortex (P = 0.0001) were factors significantly associated with excessive displacement. These 2 factors had a high degree of correlation (r = 0.76). Conclusions: A surgeon must be aware of iatrogenic fragmentation of the lateral cortex at the time of surgery in apparently stable intertrochanteric fractures in older patients because of the potential for subsequent loss of reduction.
Efficiency of Beam–Column Joint Strengthened by FRP Laminates

The recent earthquakes have shown that the vulnerability and the defects of the concrete joints in beam– column framed structures were the main causes for many building collapses. Such vulnerability and defects are in general the consequences of many factors. External strengthening with composite materials represents an alternative and a sound and efficient technique to improve the performances and aptitude to withstand seismic action. However, while the use of such strengthening technique offers many advantages, it has some disadvantages, particularly a remarkable loss of ductility. The present study examines the effects of an external strengthening of reinforced concrete beam–column joints against cyclic loading using CFRP laminates and GFRP sheet. The experimental program is constituted of three beam–column reinforced concrete joints at a scale of one to three (1/3) tested under the effect of a prestressing axial load acting over the column. The beams were subjected at their ends to a reverse cyclic loading under displacement control to simulate a seismic action. Strain and cracking fields were monitored with the help a digital recording camera. Following the analysis of the results, a comparison was made concerning the performances in terms of ductility, strength and mode of failure of the different strengthening solutions.
Optimal temporal planning using the plangraph framework

The past few years have seen a rapid development in AI Planning and Scheduling. Many algorithms and techniques have been studied and improved to deal with more complex and difficult planning domains. One such innovation was Graphplan, first developed by Blum and Furst in 1995 and soon became one of the best approaches for optimal classical planning systems. Planning systems that use Graphplan’s plangraph framework can find optimal plans for temporal planning problems, in which actions have durations. However, these systems have had strict assumptions on the preconditions and effects of actions, for instance, effects happen only at the end of the execution. In addition, the algorithm used in the solution extraction phase of these plangraph-based systems does not take full advantage of the information provided by the expansion phase to prune irrelevant search branches early. With the ambition to make temporal planning problems more realistic, the thesis proposes an extension to the Planning Domain Definition Language (PDDL) 2.1 level 3, to allow actions to have intermediate effects. Our optimal temporal planning system, CPPlanner, is introduced as the first Graphplan-based optimal planner to handle the richer temporal domains (i.e. actions can have intermediate effects). Futhermore, the planner applies “critical paths” as a backbone for the search in the solution extraction phase, so that irrelevant search branches are pruned early. This improves the performance even in more restricted temporal planning domains. In our experimental evaluation, CPPlanner outperforms two leading plangraph-based optimal temporal planning systems, TGP and TPSYS, in almost all test cases. The state-of-theart optimal planner CPT and latest temporal planning domains in the international planning competition in 2004 and 2006 are also used in the experimental evaluation.
Oxidative DNA damage and obesity in type 2 diabetes mellitus.

OBJECTIVE This study illustrates the relationship between oxidative DNA damage and obesity in patients with prediabetes and type 2 diabetes compared with controls. DESIGN AND METHODS Participants attended the School of Community Health, Diabetes Screening Clinic, Charles Sturt University, Australia, between February 2006 and June 2008. A total of 162 participants (35 type 2 diabetic patients; eight prediabetic subjects; and 119 age-, gender-, and weight-matched controls) were investigated. All patients were selected on clinical grounds. RESULTS Serum 8-hydroxy 2'-deoxy-guanosine (8-OHdG) level was significantly greater in the prediabetic subjects (671.3±140 pg/ml) compared with controls (210.1±166 pg/ml; P<0.01). The diabetic group (1979.6±1209 pg/ml) had the highest level of 8-OHdG. There was a significant increase in serum 8-OHdG in obese subjects (848.5±103 pg/ml; P<0.001) and overweight subjects (724±102 pg/ml; P=0.005) compared with the lean subjects (196.5±327 pg/ml). CONCLUSION Our results indicate that serum 8-OHdG is increased already in prediabetes suggesting oxidative DNA damage to be present with minor elevation of blood glucose levels (BGLs). The statistically significant positive correlation between serum 8-OHdG and body mass index in the diabetic group indicates that obesity has an additive effect to increased BGL contributing to oxidative DNA damage.
Oligomeric Size of the M2 Muscarinic Receptor in Live Cells as Determined by Quantitative Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer*

Fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET), measured by fluorescence intensity-based microscopy and fluorescence lifetime imaging, has been used to estimate the size of oligomers formed by the M2 muscarinic cholinergic receptor. The approach is based on the relationship between the apparent FRET efficiency within an oligomer of specified size (n) and the pairwise FRET efficiency between a single donor and a single acceptor (E). The M2 receptor was fused at the N terminus to enhanced green or yellow fluorescent protein and expressed in Chinese hamster ovary cells. Emission spectra were analyzed by spectral deconvolution, and apparent efficiencies were estimated by donor-dequenching and acceptor-sensitized emission at different ratios of enhanced yellow fluorescent protein-M2 receptor to enhanced green fluorescent protein-M2 receptor. The data were interpreted in terms of a model that considers all combinations of donor and acceptor within a specified oligomer to obtain fitted values of E as follows: n = 2, 0.495 ± 0.019; n = 4, 0.202 ± 0.010; n = 6, 0.128 ± 0.006; n = 8, 0.093 ± 0.005. The pairwise FRET efficiency determined independently by fluorescence lifetime imaging was 0.20–0.24, identifying the M2 receptor as a tetramer. The strategy described here yields an explicit estimate of oligomeric size on the basis of fluorescence properties alone. Its broader application could resolve the general question of whether G protein-coupled receptors exist as dimers or larger oligomers. The size of an oligomer has functional implications, and such information can be expected to contribute to an understanding of the signaling process.
Assessing breast cancer knowledge, beliefs, and misconceptions among Latinas in Houston, Texas.

BACKGROUND Limited breast cancer knowledge and beliefs, risk factors, screening procedures, and cultural barriers may keep Latinas from seeking health care. METHOD We examined the breast cancer knowledge, beliefs, and misconceptions of 63 Latinas residing in Houston, Texas. RESULTS More than a third of participants held a negative or fatalistic view of breast cancer, 29% believed pain was a warning sign for the disease, and 11.1% had never heard of breast cancer. CONCLUSIONS Our findings indicate this population holds many misconceptions about breast cancer, which may have a negative impact on preventive behaviors on this minority population.
Development of Allergic Airway Disease in Mice following Antibiotic Therapy and Fungal Microbiota Increase: Role of Host Genetics, Antigen, and Interleukin-13

ABSTRACT Lending support to the hygiene hypothesis, epidemiological studies have demonstrated that allergic disease correlates with widespread use of antibiotics and alterations in fecal microbiota (“microflora”). Antibiotics also lead to overgrowth of the yeast Candida albicans, which can secrete potent prostaglandin-like immune response modulators, from the microbiota. We have recently developed a mouse model of antibiotic-induced gastrointestinal microbiota disruption that is characterized by stable increases in levels of gastrointestinal enteric bacteria and Candida. Using this model, we have previously demonstrated that microbiota disruption can drive the development of a CD4 T-cell-mediated airway allergic response to mold spore challenge in immunocompetent C57BL/6 mice without previous systemic antigen priming. The studies presented here address important questions concerning the universality of the model. To investigate the role of host genetics, we tested BALB/c mice. As with C57BL/6 mice, microbiota disruption promoted the development of an allergic response in the lungs of BALB/c mice upon subsequent challenge with mold spores. In addition, this allergic response required interleukin-13 (IL-13) (the response was absent in IL-13−/− mice). To investigate the role of antigen, we subjected mice with disrupted microbiota to intranasal challenge with ovalbumin (OVA). In the absence of systemic priming, only mice with altered microbiota developed airway allergic responses to OVA. The studies presented here demonstrate that the effects of microbiota disruption are largely independent of host genetics and the nature of the antigen and that IL-13 is required for the airway allergic response that follows microbiota disruption.
Estimation Method of User Satisfaction Using N-gram-based Dialog History Model for Spoken Dialog System

In this paper, we propose an estimation method of user satisfaction for a spoken dialog system using an N-gram-based dialog history model. We have collected a large amount of spoken dialog data accompanied by usability evaluation scores by users in real environments. The database is made by a field-test in which naive users used a client-server music retrieval system with a spoken dialog interface on their own PCs. An N-gram model is trained from the sequences that consist of users' dialog acts and/or the system's dialog acts for each one of six user satisfaction levels: from 1 to 5 and φ (task not completed). Then, the satisfaction level is estimated based on the N-gram likelihood. Experiments were conducted on the large real data and the results show that our proposed method achieved good classification performance; the classification accuracy was 94.7% in the experiment on a classification into dialogs with task completion and those without task completion. Even if the classifier detected all of the task incomplete dialog correctly, our proposed method achieved the false detection rate of only 6%.
Effects of Pink Bollworm Resistance to Bacillus thuringiensis on Phenoloxidase Activity and Susceptibility to Entomopathogenic Nematodes

ABSTRACT Widespread planting of crops genetically engineered to produce insecticidal toxins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) imposes selection on many key agricultural pests to evolve resistance to Bt. Fitness costs can slow the evolution of Bt resistance. We examined effects of entomopathogenic nematodes on fitness costs of Bt resistance in the pink bollworm, Pectinophora gossypiella (Saunders) (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae), a major pest of cotton, Gossypium hirsutum L. , in the southwestern United States that is currently controlled by transgenic cotton that produces Bt toxin Cry1Ac. We tested whether the entomopathogenic nematodes Steinernema riobrave Cabanillas, Poinar, and Raulston (Rhabditida: Steinernematidae) and Heterorhabditis bacteriophora Poinar (Rhabditida: Heterorhabditidae) affected fitness costs of resistance to Cry1Ac in two laboratory-selected hybrid strains of pink bollworm reared on non-Bt cotton bolls. The nematode S. riobrave imposed a recessive fitness cost for one strain, and H. bacteriophora imposed a fitness cost affecting heterozygous resistant individuals for the other strain. Activity of phenoloxidase, an important component of insects' immune response, did not differ between Bt-resistant and Bt-susceptible families. This suggests phenoloxidase does not affect susceptibility to entomopathogenic nematodes in Bt-resistant pink bollworm. Additionally, phenoloxidase activity does not contribute to Bt resistance, as has been found in some species. We conclude that other mechanisms cause higher nematode-imposed mortality for pink bollworm with Bt resistance genes. Incorporation of nematode-imposed fitness costs into a spatially explicit simulation model suggests that entomopathogenic nematodes in non-Bt refuges could delay resistance by pink bollworm to Bt cotton.
Discriminative Training for direct minimization of deletion, insertion and substitution errors

In this paper, we follow the minimum error principle for acoustic modeling and formulate error objectives in insertion, deletion, and substitution separately for minimization during training. This new training paradigm generalized from the MVE criterion can explain the direct relationship between recognition errors and detection errors by re-interpreting deletion, insertion, and substitution errors as miss, false alarm, and miss/false-alarm errors happening together. Under the MVE criterion, by applying two mis-verification measures for miss and false alarm errors selectively along with the types of recognition error definition, we developed three individual objective training criteria, minimum deletion error (MDE), minimum insertion error (MIE), and minimum substitution error (MSE), of which each objective function can directly minimize each of the three types of the recognition errors. In the TIMIT phone recognition task, the experimental results confirm that each objective criterion of MDE, MIE, and MSE results in primarily minimizing its target error type, respectively. Furthermore, a simple combination of the individual objective criteria outperforms the conventional string-based MCE in the overall recognition error rate.
Implementation of cervical cancer prevention services for HIV-infected women in Zambia: measuring program effectiveness

Groesbeck P, Mwanahamuntu M, Sahasrabuddhe V, et al. HIV Ther 2010;4:713–722[OpenUrl][1][CrossRef][2] Groesbeck and his team report on the outcomes of the new public sector cervical cancer screening programme, which was launched in Zambia in 2006. The programme is the product of a partnership between the Zambian Ministry of Health, the National Centre for Infectious Disease Research, Lusaka University Teaching Hospital, Zambia and the University of Alabama, USA. The cervical screening programme is open to all women but this article described the outcomes in HIV-positive women from the ‘screen and treat’ service. This is an area of current interest, as not only is cervical cancer a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in low-income countries, it is also known that women worldwide who are HIV-positive have the highest risk of being affected by both cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) and invasive cervical cancer (ICC). 1 HIV prevalence continues to grow, with over 40 million people affected worldwide. If programmes for screening and treating can be shown to be effective, they could make significant improvements in the lives of thousands of women. The issue the article aimed to address … [1]: {openurl}? query=rft.jtitle%253DHIV%2BTher%26rft.volume%253D4%26rft.spage%253D713%26rft_id%253Dinfo%253Adoi%252F10.2217%252Fhiv.10. 52%26rft.genre%253Darticle%26rft_val_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Ajournal%26ctx_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ctx_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Actx [2]: /lookup/external-ref? access_num=10.2217/hiv.10. 52&link_type=DOI
Sheet Metal Forming Limit Prediction with Maximum Thickness Reduction Ratio

Maximum thickness reduction ratio is used to predict sheet metal forming limit in the numerical simulation of forming process. The maximum thickness reduction ratio under different stain path is not a constant for the same material. The effect of strain path and strain hardening exponent on forming limit is considered. The relationship between the maximum thickness reduction ratio that the material can obtained and the strain path between tensile to equi-biaxial is established. The parameter in the criterion can be determined by tensile experiment combined with numerical simulation of the same forming process. Then the limit strains under other linear strain paths between tensile to equi-biaxial can be determined by the criterion combined with numerical simulation of corresponding forming process. Forming limits of three kinds of sheet metals are predicted with the modified maximum thickness reduction ratio criterion. Good agreement is achieved between the predicted data and the experimental data.
Power pattern synthesis of reconfigurable conformal arrays with near-field constraints

A conformal array power pattern synthesis technique is presented which makes it possible to take into account near-field constraints and to reconfigure the radiated pattern by controlling only the phases of the excitation coefficients. Far-field pattern specifications are given by masks while near-field constraints are given by prescribing the maximum allowable field intensity at points arbitrarily located in a given near-field region. The amplitude of the excitations, common to all radiated beams, and the phases corresponding to each one are obtained as a result of the synthesis algorithm.
Optimal control for exploiting the natural dynamics of Variable Stiffness robots

In contrast to common rigid or actively compliant systems, Variable Stiffness Arms are capable of storing potential energy in their joint and convert it into kinetic energy, respectively speed. This capability is well known from humans and is a good example for the outstanding performance of biological systems. However, only since some years intrinsic compliance is considered as a key feature and not a drawback in robot design. Therefore, only very little work has been carried out on exploiting the natural dynamics of elastic arms for such explosive motion sequences. In this paper, we treat the problem of how to optimally achieve maximum link velocity at a given final time for Variable Stiffness Arms. We show that solutions to this problem lead to excitation motions, which enable the robot to move on the link side at much higher speed than on the motor side. In particular, the robot uses the dynamic transfer of elastic joint energy into link side kinetic energy for further acceleration. In our work we consider the practically relevant input and state constraints, and give experimental verification of the developed methods on the new DLR Hand-Arm system.
The role of preparation in tuning anticipatory and reflex responses during catching

The pattern of muscle responses associated with catching a ball in the presence of vision was investigated by independently varying the height of the drop and the mass of the ball. It was found that the anticipatory EMG responses comprised early and late components. The early components were produced at a roughly constant latency (about 130 msec) from the time of ball release. Their mean amplitude decreased with increasing height of fall. Late components represented the major build-up of muscle activity preceding the ball's impact and were accompanied by limb flexion. Their onset time was roughly constant (about 100 msec) with respect to the time of impact (except in wrist extensors). This indicates that the timing of these responses was based on an accurate estimate of the instantaneous values of the time-to- contact (time remaining before impact). The mean amplitude of the late anticipatory responses increased linearly with the expected momentum of the ball at impact. The reflex responses evoked by the ball's impact consisted in a short-latency coactivation of flexor and extensor muscles at the elbow and wrist joints. Their mean amplitude generally increased with the intensity of the perturbation both in the stretched muscles and in the shortening muscles. We argue that both the anticipatory and the reflex coactivation are centrally preset in preparation for catching and are instrumental for stabilizing limb posture after impact. A model with linear, time-varying viscoelastic coefficients was used to assess the neural and mechanical contributions to the damping of limb oscillations induced by the ball's impact. The model demonstrates that (1) anticipatory muscle stiffening and anticipatory flexion of the limb are synergistic in building up resistance of the hand to vertical displacement and (2) the reflex coactivation produces a further increment of hand stiffness and viscosity which tends to offset the decrement which would result from the limb extension produced by the impact.
The new World Health Organization classification of lung tumours

Tumour classification systems provide the foundation for tumour diagnosis and patient therapy and a critical basis for epidemiological and clinical studies. This updated classification was developed with the aim to adhere to the principles of reproducibility, clinical significance, and simplicity in order to minimize the number of unclassifiable lesions. Major changes in the revised classification as compared to the previous one (WHO 1981 1) include the addition of two pre-invasive lesions to squamous dysplasia and carcinoma in situ; atypical adenomatous hyperplasia and diffuse idiopathic pulmonary neuroendocrine cell hyperplasia. Another change is the subclassification of adenocarcinoma: the definition of bronchioalveolar carcinoma has been restricted to noninvasive tumours. There has been substantial evolution of concepts in neuroendocrine lung tumour classification. Large cell neuroendocrine carcinoma (LCNEC) is now recognized as a histologically high grade non small cell carcinoma showing histopathological features of neuroendocrine differentiation as well as immunohistochemical neuroendocrine markers. The large cell carcinoma class has been enriched with several variants, including the LCNEC and the basaloid carcinoma, both with a dismal prognosis. Finally, a new class was defined called carcinoma with pleomorphic, sarcomatoid, or sarcomatous elements, which brings together a number of proliferations characterized by a spectrum of epithelial to mesenchymal differentiation. Immunohistochemistry and electron microscopy are invaluable techniques for diagnosis and subclassification, but our intention was to render the classification simple and practical to every surgical laboratory, so that most lung tumours could be classified by light microscopic criteria.