Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Training on an inexpensive tablet-based device is equally effective as on a standard laparoscopic box trainer

Background:The aim of the study was to assess whether an inexpensive tablet-based box trainer (TBT) is at least equally effective compared with a standard box trainer (SBT) to learn basic laparoscopic skills (BLS). BLS training outside the operating room has been shown to be beneficial for surgical residency. However, simulation trainers are expensive and are not consistently available in all training centers. Therefore, TBT and other homemade box trainers were developed. Methods:Medical students were randomized to either a TBT or an SBT and trained 4 fundamentals of laparoscopic surgery (FLS) tasks for 1 hour twice a week for 4 weeks. A baseline test before the training period and a posttraining test were performed. All students then completed a questionnaire to assess their assigned box trainer. The primary outcome measure was the improvement in total test scores. Improvement in the scores for the 4 individual FLS tasks was chosen as a secondary outcome measure. Results:Thirty-two medical students were recruited. Baseline test scores did not differ significantly between the groups. BLS improved significantly in both groups for the total score and for all 4 tasks separately. Participants in the TBT group showed a greater improvement of total scores than those in the SBT group, although this did not reach statistical significance; noninferiority of the TBT compared with the SBT concerning the improvement of total scores could be demonstrated. Regarding the individual FLS tasks, noninferiority of the TBT could be shown for the pattern cutting and the suturing with intracorporeal knot-tying task. The acceptance of the TBT by the trainees was very good. Conclusion:Learning BLS on a homemade TBT is at least equally effective as on an SBT, with the advantage of being very cost saving. Therefore, this readily available box trainer may be used as an effective, flexible training device outside the operating room to improve accessibility to simulation training.
Effect of dietary supplementation of organic or inorganic zinc on carbonic anhydrase activity in eggshell formation and quality of aged laying hens

&NA; This study evaluated the effects of different dietary levels and sources of zinc (Zn) on performance and carbonic anhydrase (CA) activity in eggshell formation and quality in aged laying hens. A total of 504 Hy‐line Grey layers aged 59 wk were fed a basal diet (Zn, 28.4 mg/kg) for 4 wks, then randomly allocated to 7 groups that were fed a basal diet or a basal diet supplemented with inorganic (ZnSO4·H2O) or organic (amino acid metals, 9.58%) Zn at 35, 70, or 140 mg Zn per kg of feed for 6 weeks. Each group had 6 replicates of 12 hens. Results showed that egg weight decreased linearly with the supplemental level of organic Zn (P < 0.05). Dietary Zn supplementation had linear and quadratic effects on the CA activity in plasma (P < 0.05), and it was higher in the organic Zn‐added groups at wks 2 and 4 (P < 0.05). Dietary Zn supplementation had a quadratic effect on the CA activity in the eggshell gland (P < 0.05). Shell thickness was greater in the organic Zn‐added groups (P < 0.05), and its relationship with the supplemental level of Zn showed linearly and quadratically, increasing with the organic Zn and with the inorganic Zn at wk 4, while linearly increasing with the inorganic Zn at wk 6 (P < 0.05). At wk 4, the supplemental level of inorganic Zn had a linear effect on shell weight, and linear and quadratic effects on shell index and ratio (P < 0.05), while shell weight, the index, and ratio increased linearly and quadratically with the organic Zn level in the diet (P < 0.05), with more obvious effects in the organic Zn‐added groups (P < 0.05). Overall, dietary Zn supplementation, up to 140 mg/kg feed, could increase eggshell thickness by enhancing CA activity in the plasma and eggshell gland of aged layers; thicker eggshells were found in the organic Zn‐added groups, but the breaking strength did not increase despite the eggshell thickness increasing.
Understanding user acceptance of multimedia messaging services: An empirical study

Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS) is a new medium that enriches people's personal communication with their business partners, friends, or family. Following the success of Short Message Services, MMS has the potential to be the next mobile commerce “killer application” which is useful and popular among consumers; however, little is known about why people intend to accept and use it. Building upon the motivational theory and media richness theory, the research model captures both extrinsic (e.g., perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use) and intrinsic (e.g., perceived enjoyment) motivators as well as perceived media richness to explain user intention to use MMS. An online survey was conducted and 207 completed questionnaires were collected. By integrating the motivation and the media richness perspectives, the research model explains 65p of the variance. In addition, the results present strong support to the existing theoretical links as well as to those newly hypothesized in this study. Implications from the current investigation for research and practice are provided. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Sister chromatid exchanges in lymphocytes of dentists and chairside assistants: no indication of a mutagenic effect of exposure to waste nitrous oxide.

Cytogenetic methods are used increasingly for monitoring occupational exposure to potential mutagenic agents. By one such method, the sister chromatid exchange (SCE) test, previous studies of hospital operating room personnel did not indicate any mutagenic effect from exposure to waste anesthetic gases. Dentists and their assistants are exposed to much higher levels of nitrous oxide than hospital personnel, and in studies of dentists it is possible to eliminate bias from concomitant exposure to halogenated anesthetics by including unexposed persons engaged in the same professional activities as the exposed persons. SCE was examined in lymphocytes of venous blood from 38 female dentists and 74 chairside assistants, all working in the Child Dental Service, and 30 male dentists, of whom 23 worked in private practice. From studies of the model y = bo + b1 X age + b2 X cig. /day + b3 X hours of exposure to nitrous oxide/week, by multiple linear regression, there was no indication of any influence of exposure to nitrous oxide on SCE. It was concluded that, from the SCE test, there is no indication of a mutagenic effect from exposure to waste nitrous oxide, and that possible health hazards from such exposure would be induced by other effects of nitrous oxide.
Geotechnical Reconnaissance of the 2002 Denali Fault, Alaska, Earthquake

The 2002 M7.9 Denali fault earthquake resulted in 340 km of ruptures along three separate faults, causing widespread liquefaction in the fluvial deposits of the alpine valleys of the Alaska Range and eastern lowlands of the Tanana River. Areas affected by liquefaction are largely confined to Holocene alluvial deposits, man-made embankments, and backfills. Liquefaction damage, sparse surrounding the fault rupture in the western region, was abundant and severe on the eastern rivers: the Robertson, Slana, Tok, Chisana, Nabesna and Tanana Rivers. Synthetic seismograms from a kinematic source model suggest that the eastern region of the rupture zone had elevated strong-motion levels due to rupture directivity, supporting observations of elevated geotechnical damage. We use augered soil samples and shear-wave velocity profiles made with a portable apparatus for the spectral analysis of surface waves (SASW) to characterize soil properties and stiffness at liquefaction sites and three trans-Alaska pipeline pump station accelerometer locations.
Long-term outcome of division of the C8 nerve root for spasticity of the hand in cerebral palsy

Division of the C8 nerve root results in short-term relief of spasticity in the hands of cerebral palsy patients. In the present study, we assessed the long-term outcome of C8 nerve root division. Between March 1997 and January 2002, this procedure was done in 13 patients. All received consistent postoperative functional rehabilitation training. The hands were assessed before operation and at follow-up using the Lazareff grading system. The average follow-up time was 8.6 years. Two hands showed excellent improvement, three limbs showed good improvement and eight hands showed no improvement. No long-term complications occurred in any patient. These results indicate that the long-term outcome of C8 nerve root rhizotomy for the treatment of hand spasticity in CP is generally poor.
A broadband CPW-to-waveguide transition using quasi-Yagi antenna

A novel CPW-to-waveguide transition utilizing a uniplanar quasi-Yagi antenna is presented. The X-band back-to-back transition demonstrates 33% bandwidth with return loss better than -10 dB. This transition should find a wide variety of applications due to its high MIC/MMIC compatibility and low cost.
YC-1 [3-(5′-Hydroxymethyl-2′-furyl)-1-benzyl Indazole] Exhibits a Novel Antiproliferative Effect and Arrests the Cell Cycle in G0-G1 in Human Hepatocellular Carcinoma Cells

This study delineates the antiproliferative activities and in vivo efficacy of YC-1 [3-(5′-hydroxymethyl-2′-furyl)-1-benzyl indazole] in human hepatocellular carcinoma cells. YC-1 inhibited the growth of HA22T and Hep3B cells in a concentration-dependent manner without significant cytotoxicity. YC-1 induced G1 phase arrest in the cell cycle, as detected by an increase in the proportion of cells in the G1 phase using FAC-Scan flow cytometric analysis. It was further shown that cGMP, p42/p44 mitogen-activated protein kinase, or AKT kinase-mediated signaling pathways did not contribute to the YC-1-induced effect. Of note, YC-1 induced a dramatic increase in the expression of cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK)-inhibitory protein, p21CIP1/WAP1, and a modest increase in p27KIP1. The association of p21CIP1/WAP1 with CDK2 was markedly increased in cells responsive to YC-1. YC-1 did not modify the expression of cyclin D1, cyclin E, CDK2, or CDK4. In a corollary in vivo study, YC-1 induced dose-dependent inhibition of tumor growth in mice inoculated with HA22T cells. Immunohistochemical analysis revealed an inverse relationship between the staining of p21CIP1/WAF and the staining of Ki-67, a cell proliferation marker. Based on the results reported herein, we suggest that YC-1 induces cell cycle arrest and inhibits tumor growth both in vitro and in vivo via the up-regulation of p21CIP1/WAP1 expression in HA22T cells. Because of this, YC-1 is a potential antitumor agent worthy of further investigation.
Barrier Trees of Degenerate Landscapes

The heights of energy barriers separating two (macro-)states are useful for estimating transition frequencies. In non-degenerate landscapes the decomposition of a landscape into basins surrounding local minima connected by saddle points is straightforward and yields a useful definition of macro-states. In this work we develop a rigorous concept of barrier trees for degenerate landscapes. We present a program that efficiently computes such barrier trees, and apply it to two well known examples of landscapes.
The Effect of Different Parameters on the Development of Compressive Strength of Oil Palm Shell Geopolymer Concrete

This paper presents the experimental results of an on-going research project on geopolymer lightweight concrete using two locally available waste materials—low calcium fly ash (FA) and oil palm shell (OPS)—as the binder and lightweight coarse aggregate, respectively. OPS was pretreated with three different alkaline solutions of sodium hydroxide (NaOH), potassium hydroxide, and sodium silicate as well as polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) for 30 days; afterwards, oil palm shell geopolymer lightweight concrete (OPSGPC) was cast by using both pretreated and untreated OPSs. The effect of these solutions on the water absorption of OPS, and the development of compressive strength in different curing conditions of OPSGPC produced by pretreated OPS were investigated; subsequently the influence of NaOH concentration, alkaline solution to FA ratio (A/FA), and different curing regimes on the compressive strength and density of OPSGPC produced by untreated OPS was inspected. The 24-hour water absorption value for OPS pretreated with 20% and 50% PVA solution was about 4% compared to 23% for untreated OPS. OPSGPC produced from OPS treated with 50% PVA solution produced the highest compressive strength of about 30 MPa in ambient cured condition. The pretreatment with alkaline solution did not have a significant positive effect on the water absorption of OPS aggregate and the compressive strength of OPSGPC. The result revealed that a maximum compressive strength of 32 MPa could be obtained at a temperature of 65°C and curing period of 4 days. This investigation also found that an A/FA ratio of 0.45 has the optimum amount of alkaline liquid and it resulted in the highest level of compressive strength.
Distributed Detection in Sensor Networks Over Fading Channels With Multiple Antennas at the Fusion Centre

We develop new and optimal algorithms for distributed detection in sensor networks over fading channels with multiple receive antennas at the Fusion Centre (FC). Sensors observe a hidden physical phenomenon over fading channels and transmit their observations using the amplify-and-forward scheme over fading channels to the FC which is equipped with multiple antennas. We derive the optimal decision rules and the associated probabilities of detection and false alarm for three scenarios of Channel State Information (CSI) availability. For the most difficult case of unknown CSI, we develop two new algorithms to derive the optimal decision rule. The first is based on a Gaussian approximation method where we quantify the approximation error and its rate of convergence (to a true Normal distribution) via a multivariate version of the Berry-Esseen bound. The second is based on a multivariate Saddle-point (Laplace) approximation which is obtained via a non-convex optimisation problem which is solved efficiently via Bayesian Expectation-Maximisation method. We show under which system configuration which algorithm is suitable and should be used. For cases where the distribution of the optimal decision rule can not be derived exactly, we develop a Laguerre series expansion to approximate the resulting distribution. The performance of the proposed algorithms is evaluated via analytic bounds and numerical simulations. We show that the detection performance of the proposed algorithms is significantly superior to a local vote decision fusion based algorithms.
Hybrid TLB coalescing: Improving TLB translation coverage under diverse fragmented memory allocations

To mitigate excessive TLB misses in large memory applications, techniques such as large pages, variable length segments, and HW coalescing, increase the coverage of limited hardware translation entries by exploiting the contiguous memory allocation. However, recent studies show that in non-uniform memory systems, using large pages often leads to performance degradation, or allocating large chunks of memory becomes more difficult due to memory fragmentation. Although each of the prior techniques favors its own best chunk size, diverse contiguity of memory allocation in real systems cannot always provide the optimal chunk of each technique. Under such fragmented and diverse memory allocations, this paper proposes a novel HW-SW hybrid translation architecture, which can adapt to different memory mappings efficiently. In the proposed hybrid coalescing technique, the operating system encodes memory contiguity information in a subset of page table entries, called anchor entries. During address translation through TLBs, an anchor entry provides translation for contiguous pages following the anchor entry. As a smaller number of anchor entries can cover a large portion of virtual address space, the efficiency of TLB can be significantly improved. The most important benefit of hybrid coalescing is its ability to change the coverage of the anchor entry dynamically, reflecting the current allocation contiguity status. By using the contiguity information directly set by the operating system, the technique can provide scalable translation coverage improvements with minor hardware changes, while allowing the flexibility of memory allocation. Our experimental results show that across diverse allocation scenarios with different distributions of contiguous memory chunks, the proposed scheme can effectively reap the potential translation coverage improvement from the existing contiguity.
Some new signal processors for arrays of sensors

The problem of estimating the strengths of signals arriving at an array of receivers when the arrival directions are known, is addressed. Several new estimators are derived and relationships between them and the conventional and adaptive beamformers are given. Algorithms are provided for numerical solutions for these estimators, with examples using experimental data. The techniques are not confined to sensor-array processing but can be applied to a wide range of other estimation problems.
Autism-Like Behavior and Epigenetic Changes Associated with Autism as Consequences of In Utero Exposure to Environmental Pollutants in a Mouse Model

We tested the hypothesis that in utero exposure to heavy metals increases autism-like behavioral phenotypes in adult animals and induces epigenetic changes in genes that have roles in the etiology of autism. Mouse dams were treated with cadmium, lead, arsenate, manganese, and mercury via drinking water from gestational days (E) 1–10. Valproic acid (VPA) injected intraperitoneally once on (E) 8.5 served as a positive control. Young male offspring were tested for behavioral deficits using four standardized behavioral assays. In this study, in utero exposure to heavy metals resulted in multiple behavioral abnormalities that persisted into adulthood. VPA and manganese induced changes in perseverative/impulsive behavior and social dominance behavior, arsenic caused changes only in perseverative/impulsive behavior, and lead induced abnormalities in social interaction in comparison to the control animals. Brain samples from Mn, Pb, and VPA treated and control animals were evaluated for changes in CpG island methylation in promoter regions and associated changes in gene expression. The Chd7 gene, essential for neural crest cell migration and patterning, was found to be hypomethylated in each experimental animal tested compared to water-treated controls. Furthermore, distinct patterns of CpG island methylation yielded novel candidate genes for further investigation.
Comparative Digital Gene Expression Analysis of the Arabidopsis Response to Volatiles Emitted by Bacillus amyloliquefaciens

Some plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) regulated plant growth and elicited plant basal immunity by volatiles. The response mechanism to the Bacillus amyloliquefaciens volatiles in plant has not been well studied. We conducted global gene expression profiling in Arabidopsis after treatment with Bacillus amyloliquefaciens FZB42 volatiles by Illumina Digital Gene Expression (DGE) profiling of different growth stages (seedling and mature) and tissues (leaves and roots). Compared with the control, 1,507 and 820 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified in leaves and roots at the seedling stage, respectively, while 1,512 and 367 DEGs were identified in leaves and roots at the mature stage. Seventeen genes with different regulatory patterns were validated using quantitative RT-PCR. Numerous DEGs were enriched for plant hormones, cell wall modifications, and protection against stress situations, which suggests that volatiles have effects on plant growth and immunity. Moreover, analyzes of transcriptome difference in tissues and growth stage using DGE profiling showed that the plant response might be tissue-specific and/or growth stage-specific. Thus, genes encoding flavonoid biosynthesis were downregulated in leaves and upregulated in roots, thereby indicating tissue-specific responses to volatiles. Genes related to photosynthesis were downregulated at the seedling stage and upregulated at the mature stage, respectively, thereby suggesting growth period-specific responses. In addition, the emission of bacterial volatiles significantly induced killing of cells of other organism pathway with up-regulated genes in leaves and the other three pathways (defense response to nematode, cell morphogenesis involved in differentiation and trichoblast differentiation) with up-regulated genes were significantly enriched in roots. Interestingly, some important alterations in the expression of growth-related genes, metabolic pathways, defense response to biotic stress and hormone-related genes were firstly founded response to FZB42 volatiles.
“Age is Just a Number, Init?”: Interrogating Perceptions of Age and Women within Social Gerontology

Coming afresh to the field of social gerontology, some of the ideas abounding within the discourse seem counterintuitive or downright odd; the idea of the ageing body as a “masking device,” which “conceals and distorts the self which others interact with,” as Featherstone and Wernick put it, assumes a peculiar essentialism—some kind of constant self that is undiminished and unchanging through time, subject to disembodied social relations, which can then be “masked” (11). Likewise, the notion of a “mask of ageing” that is “hard to remove,” postulated by Featherstone and Hepworth, or a “spoiled identity (Goffman), would appear to fall into the same trap. These ideas are very influential within British social gerontology and are often reiterated. We all interact through our bodies all the time, do we not? We have an embodied consciousness. As Leder put it: “The lived body is not just one thing in the world, but a way in which the world comes to be” (Body, 25). It is both, simultaneously. The dichotomy between “self” and “mask” is surely problematic? Our bodies (their shape, size, color, sex) determine our social relations; we experience ourselves differently in varying contexts and we reiterate or “perform” norms associated with our embodied selves as active agents, as philosopher Judith Butler put it, without necessarily thinking about it too much, with a nearly intuitive sense (le Sens Pratique as Pierre Bourdieu called it in his Outline of a Theory of Practice); or more simply we do sex and age is surely just one aspect of this complexity of being? As the British sociologist Ann Oakley asserts in her book, Fracture: “The problem with bodies is that they’re both material objects and the site of human experience. They’re how