Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Radiographic Results of Single Level Transforaminal Lumbar Interbody Fusion in Degenerative Lumbar Spine Disease: Focusing on Changes of Segmental Lordosis in Fusion Segment

Background To assess the radiographic results in patients who underwent transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion (TLIF), particularly the changes in segmental lordosis in the fusion segment, whole lumbar lordosis and disc height. Methods Twenty six cases of single-level TLIF in degenerative lumbar diseases were analyzed. The changes in segmental lordosis, whole lumbar lordosis, and disc height were evaluated before surgery, after surgery and at the final follow-up. Results The segmental lordosis increased significantly after surgery but decreased at the final follow-up. Compared to the preoperative values, the segmental lordosis did not change significantly at the final follow-up. Whole lumbar lordosis at the final follow-up was significantly higher than the preoperative values. The disc height was significantly higher in after surgery than before surgery (p = 0.000) and the disc height alter surgery and at the final follow-up was similar. Conclusions When performing TLIF, careful surgical techniques and attention are needed to restore and maintain the segmental lordosis at the fusion level.
Savings, subgoals, and reference points

Decision makers often save money for a specific goal by forgoing discretionary consumption and instead putting the money toward the savings goal. We hypothesized that reference points can be exploited to enhance this type of saving. In two hypothetical scenario studies, subjects made judgments of their likelihood to forgo a small expenditure in order to put the money toward the savings goal. In Experiment 1, judgments were higher if the savings goal was presented as composed of weekly subgoals (e.g., save $60 per week to buy a $180 iPod). Experiment 2 replicated this finding and demonstrated that the subgoal manipulation increased judgments of likelihood to save money only when the money saved from the foregone consumption would allow the decision maker to meet the weekly subgoal exactly (not under or overshoot it). These results suggest a reference point mechanism and point to ways that behavioral decision research can be harnessed to improve economic behaviors.
Verification of Secret Key Generation from UWB Channel Observations

Theoretical models of ultrawideband (UWB) radio channels indicate that pairs of UWB radio transceivers measure their common radio channel with a high degree of agreement and third parties are not be able to accurately estimate the state of the common channels. These properties allow generation of secret keys to support secure communications from UWB channels measurements. In this paper, the results of UWB propagation studies are presented that validate the required properties to support secret key generation in a typical indoor environment. Key generation algorithms are employed on the measured data and key lengths on the order of thousands of bits are obtained capable of supporting most popular cryptographic systems. The paper also reports measurements of the spatial and temporal correlation of the UWB channel from which the relative privacy of the secret keys can be determined as well as the rate new secret keys may be generated.
Inf-sup control of discontinuous piecewise affine systems

In this paper we consider optimal control of constrained, discontinuous, discrete-time, piecewise affine systems with state and input dependent disturbances. We seek to precompute, via dynamic programming, an explicit control law for these systems when a piecewise affine cost function is utilized. The main difficulty with this problem class is that, even for initial states for which the value function of the optimal control problem is finite, there might not exist a control law that attains the infimum. Hence, we propose a method that is guaranteed to obtain a sub-optimal solution, and where the degree of sub-optimality can be specified a priori. This is achieved by approximating the underlying sub-problems with a piecewise parametric linear program.
Multiple levels in job demands-resources theory: implications for employee well-being and performance

This chapter uses the most recent version of Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory to explain how working conditions influence employees, and how employees influence their own working conditions. We show how employee self-undermining activates a loss cycle of job demands, strain, and negative behaviors over time, whereas employee job crafting activates a gain cycle of job resources, work engagement, and positive behaviors. Moreover, we argue that employee well-being and organizational behavior is a function of factors located at different levels (i.e. organization, team, individual level), which influence each other within and over time. We propose cross-level interaction effects of organization-level initiatives and leader/employee behaviors on team and individual well-being and performance. Although JD-R theory provides answers to many questions regarding employee well-being and performance, we discuss several issues that deserve research attention. The chapter closes with practical implications. We discuss how managers and supervisors can help employees to avoid health problems and flourish at work.
A Preliminary Investigation of ADHD Symptoms in Persons With Celiac Disease

Objective: Several studies report a possible association of celiac disease (CD) with psychiatric and psychological disturbances, such as ADHD. Method: The authors assess 132 participants from 3 to 57 years of age (M = 19.3 years) affected by CD for the possibility of an associated ADHD-like symptomatology, using the Conner Scale Hypescheme, a behavioral scale similar to the Conners Rating Scales, before their gluten-free diet was started and 6 months later. Results: The overall score improves significantly as well as most of the ADHD-like symptomatology specific features (Bonferroni-corrected, paired-sample t tests). Conclusion: The data indicate that ADHD-like symptomatology is markedly overrepresented among untreated CD patients and that a gluten-free diet may improve symptoms significantly within a short period of time. The results of this study also suggest that CD should be included in the list of diseases associated with ADHD-like symptomatology.
Anaerobic performance in 30s Wingate test as one of the possible criteria for selection Czech hockey players into National Hockey League

Introduction: The selection into the National Hockey League (NHL) is based on criteria reflecting job analysis of a professional ice hockey player and the requirements of the game. Only few Czech elite ice hockey players succeed to participate in NHL and their number is decreasing in the last decade. Aim of Study: The aim of the study was to find out and evaluate the level of anaerobic readiness of Czech hockey forwards and defenders playing in the NHL and to compare their anaerobic performance with that in elite national hockey players from the Czech extra-league. Material and Methods: Results of 30s Wingate anaerobic test obtained in 26 forwards and 16 defenders, Czech hockey players from the NHL (from 2001/2002 to 2015/2016 seasons) were compared with the reference values of elite Czech ice hockey players. The comparison was based on the mean values, rate of dispersion, and effect sizes were calculated using Cohen's d coefficient. Results: In forwards, both absolute and relative values of peak power (PP) and anaerobic capacity (AnC) found in Czech players in NHL were higher (d>1) than in elite Czech national players. In defenders, only the value of AnC relative to body mass showed small effect (d=0.36), but absolute and relative values of PP and absolute value of AnC were higher (d>1) than in elite Czech national players. Conclusion: The results of the study indicate that anaerobic readiness evaluated by 30s Wingate test may be, besides dominant on-ice skills, one of the criteria for entry to the top ice hockey competition.
A genome-wide association study of COPD identifies a susceptibility locus on chromosome 19 q 13

Channing Laboratory and Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA, School of Public Health and School of Medicine, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA, Veterans Administration Boston Healthcare System, Boston, MA, USA, National Jewish Health, Denver, CO, USA, Department of Epidemiology, Colorado School of Public Health, University of Colorado Denver, Aurora, CO, USA, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA, GlaxoSmithKline Research and Development, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA, King of Prussia, PA, USA, Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, University of British Columbia Department of Radiology and James Hogg Research Centre, Institute for Heart and Lung Health, Vancouver, BC, Canada, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK, Hvidovre Hospital, Hvidovre, Denmark, Thorax Institute, Hospital Clinic IDIBAPS, Universitat Pompeu-Fabra (Barcelona) and CIBER Enfermedades Respiratorias (CIBERES), Fundación Caubet-Cimera, Mallorca, Spain, University Hospital Aintree, Liverpool, UK, University of Nebraska, Omaha, NE, USA, University of Maastricht, Maastricht, the Netherlands and Haukeland University Hospital and Institute of Medicine, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
Optimal Rectangle Packing: An Absolute Placement Approach

We consider the problem of finding all enclosing rectangles of minimum area that can contain a given set of rectangles without overlap. Our rectangle packer chooses the x-coordinates of all the rectangles before any of the y-coordinates. We then transform the problem into a perfect-packing problem with no empty space by adding additional rectangles. To determine the y-coordinates, we branch on the different rectangles that can be placed in each empty position. Our packer allows us to extend the known solutions for a consecutive-square benchmark from 27 to 32 squares. We also introduce three new benchmarks, avoiding properties that make a benchmark easy, such as rectangles with shared dimensions. Our third benchmark consists of rectangles of increasingly high precision. To pack them efficiently, we limit the rectangles' coordinates and the bounding box dimensions to the set of subset sums of the rectangles' dimensions. Overall, our algorithms represent the current state-of-the-art for this problem, outperforming other algorithms by orders of magnitude, depending on the benchmark.
Systemic β-Adrenergic Stimulation of Thermogenesis Is Not Accompanied by Brown Adipose Tissue Activity in Humans

Brown adipose tissue (BAT) is currently considered as a target to combat obesity and diabetes in humans. BAT is densely innervated by the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and can be stimulated by β-adrenergic agonists, at least in animals. However, the exact role of the β-adrenergic part of the SNS in BAT activation in humans is not known yet. In this study, we measured BAT activity by 2-deoxy-2-[18F]fluoro-d-glucose ([18F]FDG) positron emission tomography/computed tomography imaging in 10 lean men during systemic infusion of the nonselective β-agonist isoprenaline (ISO) and compared this with cold-activated BAT activity. ISO successfully mimicked sympathetic stimulation as shown by increased cardiovascular and metabolic activity. Energy expenditure increased to similar levels as during cold exposure. Surprisingly, BAT was not activated during β-adrenergic stimulation. We next examined whether the high plasma free fatty acid (FFA) levels induced by ISO competed with glucose ([18F]FDG) uptake in BAT locations by blocking lipolysis with acipimox (ACI). ACI successfully lowered plasma FFA, but did not increase [18F]FDG-uptake in BAT. We therefore conclude that systemic nonselective β-adrenergic stimulation by ISO at concentrations that increase energy expenditure to the same extent as cold exposure does not activate BAT in humans, indicating that other tissues are responsible for the increased β-adrenergic thermogenesis.
The Cerebellum and SIDS: Disordered Breathing in a Mouse Model of Developmental Cerebellar Purkinje Cell Loss during Recovery from Hypercarbia

The cerebellum assists coordination of somatomotor, respiratory, and autonomic actions. Purkinje cell alterations or loss appear in sudden infant death and sudden death in epilepsy victims, possibly contributing to the fatal event. We evaluated breathing patterns in 12 wild-type (WT) and Lurcher mutant mice with 100% developmental cerebellar Purkinje cell loss under baseline (room air), and recovery from hypercapnia, a concern in sudden death events. Six mutant and six WT mice were exposed to 4-min blocks of increasing CO2 (2, 4, 6, and 8%), separated by 4-min recovery intervals in room air. Breath-by-breath patterns, including depth of breathing and end-expiratory pause (EEP) durations during recovery, were recorded. No baseline genotypic differences emerged. However, during recovery, EEP durations significantly lengthened in mutants, compared to WT mice, following the relatively low levels of CO2 exposure. Additionally, mutant mice exhibited signs of post-sigh disordered breathing during recovery following each exposure. Developmental cerebellar Purkinje cell loss significantly affects compensatory breathing patterns following mild CO2 exposure, possibly by inhibiting recovery from elevated CO2. These data implicate cerebellar Purkinje cells in the ability to recover from hypercarbia, suggesting that neuropathologic changes or loss of these cells contribute to inadequate ventilatory recovery to increased environmental CO2. Multiple disorders, including sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP), appear to involve both cardiorespiratory failure and loss or injury to cerebellar Purkinje cells; the findings support the concept that such neuropathology may precede and exert a prominent role in these fatal events.
Accessing primary care Big Data: the development of a software algorithm to explore the rich content of consultation records

Objective To develop a natural language processing software inference algorithm to classify the content of primary care consultations using electronic health record Big Data and subsequently test the algorithm's ability to estimate the prevalence and burden of childhood respiratory illness in primary care. Design Algorithm development and validation study. To classify consultations, the algorithm is designed to interrogate clinical narrative entered as free text, diagnostic (Read) codes created and medications prescribed on the day of the consultation. Setting Thirty-six consenting primary care practices from a mixed urban and semirural region of New Zealand. Three independent sets of 1200 child consultation records were randomly extracted from a data set of all general practitioner consultations in participating practices between 1 January 2008–31 December 2013 for children under 18 years of age (n=754 242). Each consultation record within these sets was independently classified by two expert clinicians as respiratory or non-respiratory, and subclassified according to respiratory diagnostic categories to create three ‘gold standard’ sets of classified records. These three gold standard record sets were used to train, test and validate the algorithm. Outcome measures Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and F-measure were calculated to illustrate the algorithm's ability to replicate judgements of expert clinicians within the 1200 record gold standard validation set. Results The algorithm was able to identify respiratory consultations in the 1200 record validation set with a sensitivity of 0.72 (95% CI 0.67 to 0.78) and a specificity of 0.95 (95% CI 0.93 to 0.98). The positive predictive value of algorithm respiratory classification was 0.93 (95% CI 0.89 to 0.97). The positive predictive value of the algorithm classifying consultations as being related to specific respiratory diagnostic categories ranged from 0.68 (95% CI 0.40 to 1.00; other respiratory conditions) to 0.91 (95% CI 0.79 to 1.00; throat infections). Conclusions A software inference algorithm that uses primary care Big Data can accurately classify the content of clinical consultations. This algorithm will enable accurate estimation of the prevalence of childhood respiratory illness in primary care and resultant service utilisation. The methodology can also be applied to other areas of clinical care.
Rheology of Silica Dispersions in Organic Liquids: New Evidence for Solvation Forces Dictated by Hydrogen Bonding

Dispersions of hydrophilic fumed silica are investigated in a range of polar organic media. The silica forms stable, low-viscosity sols exhibiting shear thickening behavior in a host of liquids, including ethylene glycol and its oligomers and short-chain alcohols, such as n-propanol. In contrast, the silica flocculates into colloidal gels in other liquids, such as glycols with methyl end-caps and longer-chain alcohols. We suggest that there is a causal relationship between the hydrogen-bonding ability of the liquid and the colloidal microstructure observed. In strongly hydrogen-bonding liquids, a solvation layer is envisioned to form on the silica surface through hydrogen bonding between liquid molecules and surface silanol groups (Si−OH). This gives rise to short-range, non-DLVO repulsions (“solvation forces”) which stabilize the silica particles. In contrast, in the case of liquids with limited hydrogen-bonding ability, silanols on adjacent silica particles are envisioned to interact directly by hydroge.
Improved Genetic Algorithm Approach for Sensitive Association Rules Hiding

2 Abstract: Association rule mining is interesting area of data mining research which discovers correlations between different item sets in a transaction database. Efforts have been made for efficient hiding of sensitive association rules, but these techniques do not consider the consequences such as loss of information, lost rules and increase in ghost rules production. In this paper, we propose improved genetic algorithm architecture with a new fitness function for hiding sensitive rules by reducing loss of information, lost rules and generation of ghost rules. Different datasets have been used for experimental analysis. The results show the superiority of our work over the existing techniques.
Transition in circular Couette flow

Two distinct kinds of transition have been identified in Couette flow between concentric rotating cylinders. The first, which will be called transition by spectral evolution, is characteristic of the motion when the inner cylinder has a larger angular velocity than the outer one. As the speed increases, a succession of secondary modes is excited; the first is the Taylor motion (periodic in the axial direction), and the second is a pattern of travelling waves (periodic in the circumferential direction). Higher modes correspond to harmonics of the two fundamental frequencies of the doubly-periodic flow. This kind of transition may be viewed as a cascade process in which energy is transferred by non-linear interactions through a discrete spectrum to progressively higher frequencies in a two-dimensional wave-number space. At sufficiently large Reynolds numbers the discrete spectrum changes gradually and reversibly to a continuous one by broadening of the initially sharp spectral lines. These periodic flows are not uniquely determined by the Reynolds number. For the case of the inner cylinder rotating and the outer cylinder at rest, as many as 20 or 25 different states (each state being defined by the number of Taylor cells and the number of tangential waves) have been observed at a given speed. As the speed changes, theso states replace each other in a repeatable but irreversible pattern of transitions; vortices appear or disappear in pairs, and waves are added or subtracted. More than 70 such transitions have been found in the speed range up to about 10 times the first critical speed. Regardless of the state, however, the angular velocity of the tangential waves is nearly constant at 0.34 times the angular velocity of the inner cylinder. The second kind of transition, which will be called catastrophic transition, is characteristic of the motion when the outer cylinder has a larger angular velocity than the inner one. At a fixed Reynolds number, the fluid is divided into distinct regions of laminar and turbulent flow, and these regions are separated by interfacial surfaces which may be propagating in either direction. Under some conditions the turbulent regions may appear and disappear in a random way; under other conditions they may form quite regular patterns. One common pattern of particular interest is a spiral band of turbulence which rotates at very nearly the mean angular velocity of the two walls without any change in shape except possibly an occasional shift from a right-hand to a left-hand pattern. One example of this spiral turbulence is being studied in some detail in an attempt to clarify the role played in transition by interfaces and intermittency.
Identifying Barriers to Patient Acceptance of Active Surveillance: Content Analysis of Online Patient Communications

Objectives Qualitative research aimed at identifying patient acceptance of active surveillance (AS) has been identified as a public health research priority. The primary objective of this study was to determine if analysis of a large-sample of anonymous internet conversations (ICs) could be utilized to identify unmet public needs regarding AS. Methods English-language ICs regarding prostate cancer (PC) treatment with AS from 2002–12 were identified using a novel internet search methodology. Web spiders were developed to mine, aggregate, and analyze content from the world-wide-web for ICs centered on AS. Collection of ICs was not restricted to any specific geographic region of origin. NLP was used to evaluate content and perform a sentiment analysis. Conversations were scored as positive, negative, or neutral. A sentiment index (SI) was subsequently calculated according to the following formula to compare temporal trends in public sentiment towards AS: [(# Positive IC/#Total IC) - (#Negative IC/#Total IC) x 100]. Results A total of 464 ICs were identified. Sentiment increased from -13 to +2 over the study period. The increase sentiment has been driven by increased patient emphasis on quality-of-life factors and endorsement of AS by national medical organizations. Unmet needs identified in these ICs include: a gap between quantitative data regarding long-term outcomes with AS vs. conventional treatments, desire for treatment information from an unbiased specialist, and absence of public role models managed with AS. Conclusions This study demonstrates the potential utility of online patient communications to provide insight into patient preferences and decision-making. Based on our findings, we recommend that multidisciplinary clinics consider including an unbiased specialist to present treatment options and that future decision tools for AS include quantitative data regarding outcomes after AS.