Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Correlation between the MRI changes in the lumbar multifidus muscles and leg pain.

AIM In the assessment of the lumbar spine by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), changes in the paraspinal muscles are frequently overlooked. In this study, our objective was to investigate the relationships between lumbar multifidus (MF) muscle atrophy and low back pain (LBP), leg pain and intevertebral disc degeneration. METHODS A retrospective study of 78 patients (aged 17-72) with LBP presenting with back pain with or without associated leg pain was undertaken. Their MR images were visually analysed for signs of lumbar MF muscle atrophy, disc degeneration and nerve root compression. The clinical history in each case was obtained from their case notes and pain drawing charts. RESULTS MF muscle atrophy was present in 80% of the patients with LBP. The correlation between MF muscle atrophy and leg pain was found to be significant (P < 0.01). However, the relationships between muscle atrophy and radiculopathy symptoms, nerve root compression, herniated nucleus pulposus and number of degenerated discs were statistically not significant. CONCLUSION Examination of the paraspinal muscles looking for atrophy of MF muscle should be considered when assessing MR images of lumbar spine. This may explain the referred leg pain in the absence of other MR abnormalities.
Evaluating a Preventive Services Index to Adjust for Healthy Behaviors in Observational Studies of Older Adults

Introduction Analysis of outcome measures from nonrandomized, observational studies of people participating or not participating in health programs may be suspect because of selection bias. For example, fitness programs may preferentially enroll people who are already committed to healthy lifestyles, including use of preventive services. Some of our earlier studies have attempted to account for this potential bias by including an ad hoc preventive services index created from the patient's number of earlier clinical preventive services, to adjust for health-seeking behaviors. However, this index has not been validated. We formally evaluated the performance of this preventive services index by comparing it with its component parts and with an alternative index derived from principal component analysis by using the weighted sums of the principal components. Methods We used data from a cohort of 38,046 older adults. We used the following variables from the administrative database of a health maintenance organization to create this index: fecal occult blood test, flexible sigmoidoscopy, screening mammogram, prostate cancer screening, influenza vaccination, pneumococcal vaccination, and preventive care office visits. Results The preventive services index was positively correlated with each of the following components: colon cancer screening (r = .752), screening mammogram (r = .559), prostate cancer screening (r = .592), influenza vaccination (r = .844), pneumococcal vaccination (r = .487), and preventive care office visits (r = .737). An alternative preventive services index, created by using principal component analysis, had similar performance. Conclusion A preventive services index created by using administrative data has good face validity and construct validity and can be used to partially adjust for selection bias in observational studies of cost and use outcomes.
Variations in important aerobic fitness parameters and physical characteristics during two consecutive preseason periods in adolescent soccer players

Purpose. This study examined the variations in selected aerobic fitness parameters, namely maximum oxygen consumption (VO2max), running velocity at VO2max (vVO2max), running velocity at ventilatory threshold (vAnT) and 1-minute post-exercise heart rate recovery (%Hrrec) as well as height, body mass and percentage of body fat (%bF) in high-level adolescent soccer players. The relationship between %bF and VO2max values was also analyzed. Methods. 25 athletes (mean age: 14.5 ± 1.3 years) were measured at the second week of the preseason period (1 period) and at the same corresponding week after a 12-month period (2 period). Results. VO2max, vVO2max and vAnT increased significantly by 6.6, 6.5 and 3.27%, respectively, from the 1 to 2 period (p 0.01 – 0.05; effect size (ES) = -0.35 – 0.66). In contrast, %Hrrec remained relatively unchanged (-0.5%) during the same period (p > 0.05; effect size (ES) = 0.01). %bF showed a negative trend, but no significant correlation with VO2max was found during the same period (r = -0.331; p > 0.05). Significant variations were found for height and body mass (2.64 and 11.17%; p 0.01; effect size (ES) = -0.56 and -0.72, respectively), but not for %bF (1.34%; p > 0.05; effect size (ES) = -0.27). Conclusions. This data can provide useful information regarding physiological aerobic adaptations and changes in physical characteristics as a result of a year of soccer training, including growth and maturations processes, during the specific periods tested.
Recent Advances in Screening of Anti-Campylobacter Activity in Probiotics for Use in Poultry

Campylobacteriosis is the most common cause of bacterial gastroenteritis worldwide. Campylobacter species involved in this infection usually include the thermotolerant species Campylobacter jejuni. The major reservoir for C. jejuni leading to human infections is commercial broiler chickens. Poultry flocks are frequently colonized by C. jejuni without any apparent symptoms. Risk assessment analyses have identified the handling and consumption of poultry meat as one of the most important sources of human campylobacteriosis, so elimination of Campylobacter in the poultry reservoir is a crucial step in the control of this foodborne infection. To date, the use of probiotics has demonstrated promising results to reduce Campylobacter colonization. This review provides recent insights into methods used for probiotic screening to reduce the prevalence and colonization of Campylobacter at the farm level. Different eukaryotic epithelial cell lines are employed to screen probiotics with an anti-Campylobacter activity and yield useful information about the inhibition mechanism involved. These in vitro virulence models involve only human intestinal or cervical cell lines whereas the use of avian cell lines could be a preliminary step to investigate mechanisms of C. jejuni colonization in poultry in the presence of probiotics. In addition, in vivo trials to evaluate the effect of probiotics on Campylobacter colonization are conducted, taking into account the complexity introduced by the host, the feed, and the microbiota. However, the heterogeneity of the protocols used and the short time duration of the experiments lead to results that are difficult to compare and draw conclusions at the slaughter-age of broilers. Nevertheless, the combined approach using complementary in vitro and in vivo tools (cell cultures and animal experiments) leads to a better characterization of probiotic strains and could be employed to assess reduced Campylobacter spp. colonization in chickens if some parameters are optimized.
Understanding Knowledge Coordination Dynamics in Traditional and Fast-Response IT Organizations

This research takes a dynamic view on the knowledge coordination process, aiming to explain how the process is affected by changes in the operating environment, from normal situations to emergencies in traditional and fast-response organizations, and why these changes occur. We first conceptualize the knowledge coordination process by distinguishing between four dimensions - what, when, how and who - that together capture the full scope of the knowledge coordination process. We use these dimensions to analyze knowledge coordination practices and the activities constituting these practices, in the IT functions of traditional and fast-response (military) organizations where we distinguish between "normal" and "emergency" operating conditions. Our findings indicate that (i) inter-relationships between knowledge coordination practices change under different operating conditions, and (ii) the patterns of change are different in traditional and fast-response organizations.
Efficient reversible jump MCMC for Bayesian object recognition

Computational efficiency is a bottleneck for the use of stochastic geometry models in high-level Bayesian object recognition. In this paper we examine various approaches to reversible jump MCMC that lead to higher acceptance rates than the traditional approach of using a uniform proposal density. This is achieved by exploiting information about the posterior gained through a deterministic image processing tool, the Hough transform. We discuss how to choose an appropriate scaling of our proposal distributions following suggestions made in (Brooks et al., 2003). The scaling is based on an examination of the acceptance probability at a chosen point. We then extend the approach from uni-modal proposal distributions to multi-modal distributions and choose the scaling based on an examination of the acceptance probability at a number of points.
Patent Paradox Revisited: Determinants of Patenting in the Us Semiconductor Industry, 1980-94

This paper examines the patenting behavior of firms in an industry characterized by rapid technological change and cumulative innovation. Recent evidence suggests that semiconductor firms do not rely heavily on patents, despite the strengthening of US patent rights in the early 1980s. Yet the propensity of semiconductor firms to patent has risen dramatically over the past decade. This paper explores this apparent paradox by analyzing the patenting activities of almost 100 US semiconductor firms during 1980-94. The results suggest that stronger patents may have facilitated entry by firms in niche product markets, while spawning "patent portfolio races" among capital-intensive firms. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.) (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
Computer Vision and Image Understanding Bag of Visual Words and Fusion Methods for Action Recognition: Comprehensive Study and Good Practice

Video based action recognition is one of the important and challenging problems in computer vision research. Bag of visual words model (BoVW) with local features has been very popular for a long time and obtained the state-of-the-art performance on several realistic datasets, such as the HMDB51, UCF50, and UCF101. BoVW is a general pipeline to construct a global representation from local features, which is mainly composed of five steps; (i) feature extraction, (ii) feature pre-processing, (iii) codebook generation , (iv) feature encoding, and (v) pooling and normalization. Although many effort s have been made in each step independently in different scenarios, their effects on action recognition are still unknown. Meanwhile, video data exhibits different views of visual patterns , such as static appearance and motion dynamics. Multiple descriptors are usually extracted to represent these different views. Fusing these de-scriptors is crucial for boosting the final performance of an action recognition system. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive study of all steps in BoVW and different fusion methods, and uncover some good practices to produce a state-of-the-art action recognition system. Specifically, we explore two kinds of local features, ten kinds of encoding methods, eight kinds of pooling and normalization strategies, and three kinds of fusion methods. We conclude that every step is crucial for contributing to the final recognition rate and improper choice in one of the steps may counteract the performance improvement of other steps. Furthermore, based on our comprehensive study, we propose a simple yet effective representation , called hybrid supervector , by exploring the complementarity of different BoVW frameworks with improved dense trajectories. Using this representation, we obtain impressive results on the three
Augmented Reality for the Assessment of Children's Spatial Memory in Real Settings

Short-term memory can be defined as the capacity for holding a small amount of information in mind in an active state for a short period of time. Although some instruments have been developed to study spatial short-term memory in real environments, there are no instruments that are specifically designed to assess visuospatial short-term memory in an attractive way to children. In this paper, we present the ARSM (Augmented Reality Spatial Memory) task, the first Augmented Reality task that involves a user's movement to assess spatial short-term memory in healthy children. The experimental procedure of the ARSM task was designed to assess the children's skill to retain visuospatial information. They were individually asked to remember the real place where augmented reality objects were located. The children (N = 76) were divided into two groups: preschool (5–6 year olds) and primary school (7–8 year olds). We found a significant improvement in ARSM task performance in the older group. The correlations between scores for the ARSM task and traditional procedures were significant. These traditional procedures were the Dot Matrix subtest for the assessment of visuospatial short-term memory of the computerized AWMA-2 battery and a parent's questionnaire about a child's everyday spatial memory. Hence, we suggest that the ARSM task has high verisimilitude with spatial short-term memory skills in real life. In addition, we evaluated the ARSM task's usability and perceived satisfaction. The study revealed that the younger children were more satisfied with the ARSM task. This novel instrument could be useful in detecting visuospatial short-term difficulties that affect specific developmental navigational disorders and/or school academic achievement.
Social Protection as an Automatic Stabilizer

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of social protection systems in Europe and the US to provide (income) insurance against macro level shocks in terms of automatic stabilizers. We find that automatic stabilizers absorb 38% of a proportional income shock and 47% of an idiosyncratic unemployment shock in Europe, compared to 32% and 34% in the US. There is large heterogeneity within Europe with stabilization being much lower in Eastern and Southern than in Central and Northern Europe. Our results suggest that social transfers, in particular the rather generous systems of unemployment insurance in Europe, play a key role for the stabilization of disposable incomes and explain a large part of the difference in automatic stabilizers between Europe and the US.
Quality of Life of Postmenopausal Women and Their Spouses: A Community-Based Study

Background: Most women spend more than one-third of their lives after menopause. Due to physiologic changes in that period, menopause can cause a series of symptoms such as vasomotor symptoms, psychologic problems, and sexual dysfunction, which can affect the women’s quality of life (QoL) and other family members, especially their spouse. Objectives: The present study aimed to determine the association between the QoL of postmenopausal women and their husbands. Patients and Methods: This descriptive-inferential cross-sectional study was conducted according to the census of 2006 in Iran. A total of 400 postmenopausal women aging 50 to 59 years and their spouses in 80 cluster heads of Ilam City residents were selected and studied in collaboration with the Statistical Center of Iran. The required data were gathered using the short-form health survey (SF-36) questionnaire and demographic questionnaire developed by the researcher-trained interviewers. Data were analyzed by SPSS 18 through Kruskal Wallis test, Wilcoxon signed ranks test, and correlation. Results: The participants’ mean age was 54.2 ± 2.8 years for women and 61.1 ± 6.1 years for their spouses. More than half of the women (57%) and about one-third of men (32.8%) were illiterate. The employed educated women aging 50 to 54 years had a higher mean score of SF-36 domains. The difference in education was significant in all domains except for mental health. There was a significant difference in age in all domains except in general health. The mean score of all domains of QoL was significantly less in the illiterate men than in the literate ones (P < 0.05). The results of the present study showed a significant correlation (P < 0.05) between the couples’ QoL, vasomotor symptoms, and aging. Spearman test showed a significant positive correlation in all domains of QoL between postmenopausal women and their spouses (correlation coefficient, 0.48-0.63). Conclusions: Based on the results of the present study and other performed studies in this regard, menopause, aging, vasomotor symptoms, and education had significant association with the QoL of postmenopausal women. The reduced QoL in postmenopausal women could eventually lead to the reduced QoL of their spouses. Therefore, it is necessary to plan for the education of these women and their husbands to broaden their understanding of the changes of menopause and ways to improve their QoL.
Culture influence on aesthetic perception of Chinese and western paintings: evidence from eye movement patterns

Previous research showed that different cultures play a significant role in influencing people's perception and cognition: Eastern people attend more to the background and context, whereas western people focus more on objects. However, the culture influence on people's aesthetic perception and experience has not been systematically explored. In the first part of our study, we measured the eye movements of Chinese and western participants while they viewed Chinese traditional Ink-wash paintings, and we found that the Chinese participants had longer fixation time in the white space areas than did the western participants. In the second part of the study, we measured their eye movements while they viewed different paintings composed by the linear perspective or scattered perspective techniques, and the results suggest that the western participants are more sensitive to the perspective difference between paintings. The findings contribute to the understanding of culture influence on people's aesthetic perception of visual art and visual communication.
Effects of multinational team and team member characteristics on subgroup formation, group identification, and trust in team

Multinational teams (MNTs) consist of members from different national backgrounds who work interdependently to achieve a shared objective (Earley & Gibson, 2002). These teams are frequently employed in global organizations because they provide several advantages, such as meeting the needs of customers from different cultures and getting diverse perspectives on how to lead projects and approach problems (Connaughton & Shuffler, 2007; Earley & Mosakowski, 2000). Much of the previous research on MNTs has focused on whether members’ national background diversity has an impact on MNT effectiveness (Connaughton & Shuffler, 2007; Stahl, Makela, Zander, & Maznevski, 2010a; Stahl, Maznevski, Voigt, & Jonsen, 2010b). Recent research, however, suggests that defining the conditions under which diversity increases team effectiveness is a more fruitful approach than trying to reach rigid conclusions about the overall effectiveness of diverse teams (Roberge & van Dick, 2010; van Knippenberg, De Dreu, & Homan, 2004a; van Knippenberg, Haslam, & Platow, 2007). In the present study, perceptions and behaviors of MNT members were examined using the Input-Mediator-Output-Input (IMOI) framework of team effectiveness (Ilgen, Hollenbeck, Johnson, & Jundt, 2005). Specifically, the salient team-level inputs in MNTs were defined as national diversity (Earley & Gibson, 2002) and reliance on virtual communication (Gibson & Gibbs, 2006), and the salient individual-level inputs were defined as team members’ collectivism orientation (Mockaitis, Rose, & Zettinig, 2012) and diversity beliefs (van Dick, van Knippenberg, Hagele, Guillaume, & Brodbeck, 2008). Critical MULTINATIONAL TEAMS xii mediators that were tested include identification with one’s in-group, out-group, and the team as a unit; and one’s trust in the team, since those mediators are components of team cohesion. Team commitment was examined as the output. Data were collected from 184 participants via an online survey. During the time the data were collected, the participants were working as MNT members at multinational organizations such as consulting firms. Results of the study did not support a majority of the hypothesized relationships. However, a final model was developed and tested based on exploratory analyses. According to this model, collectivism orientation and leader’s effectiveness directly predicted commitment to one’s team; there was also an indirect relationship that was mediated by identification with the team and trust in the team. The results show that selecting team members with high collectivism orientation and developing the skills of team leaders are crucial for increasing MNT members’ commitment to their teams.
Experimental induction of necrotic enteritis in chickens by a netB-positive Japanese isolate of Clostridium perfringens

Necrotic enteritis (NE) is one of the most important bacterial diseases in terms of economic losses. Clostridium perfringens necrotic enteritis toxin B, NetB, was recently proposed as a new key virulent factor for the development of NE. The goal of this work was to develop a necrotic enteritis model in chickens by using a Japanese isolate of C. perfringens. The Japanese isolate has been found to contain netB gene, which had the same nucleotide and deduced amino acid sequences as those of prototype gene characterized in Australian strain EHE-NE18, and also expressed in vitro a 33-kDa protein identified as NetB toxin by nano-scale liquid chromatographic tandem mass spectrometry. In the challenge experiment, broiler chickens fed a commercial chicken starter diet for 14 days post-hatch were changed to a high protein feed mixed 50:50 with fishmeal for 6 days. At day 21 of age, feed was withheld for 24 hr, and each chicken was orally challenged twice daily with 2 ml each of C. perfringens culture (109 to 1010 CFU) on 5 consecutive days. The gross necrotic lesions were observed in 90 and 12.5% of challenged and control chickens, respectively. To our knowledge, this is the first study that demonstrated that a netB-positive Japanese isolate of C. perfringens is able to induce the clinical signs and lesions characteristic of NE in the experimental model, which may be useful for evaluating the pathogenicity of field isolates, the efficacy of a vaccine or a specific drug against NE.