Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Two millimetre biopsy punch: A painless and practical instrument for evacuation of subungual haematomas in adults and children

Dear Sir, Many surgeons consider the Sauvé–Kapandji (S-K) procedure to be better than the Darrach procedure for treating dysfunction of the distal radioulnar joint (DRUJ), with painful proximal ulna stump instability, ulnar carpal shift (UCS) and complaints about appearance being cited as complications of the Darrach procedure. We believe that this belief is not supported by published papers. We present a systematic review of studies comparing the procedures in DRUJ dysfunction. OvidMEDLINE and EMBASE were searched for the terms ‘Darrach’ or ‘Sauvé–Kapandji’. All articles in English with an abstract available were identified. Abstracts were screened to select those describing studies comparing the Darrach and S-K procedures. Out of 214 abstracts found, only five comparative studies were identified. All were retrospective. Three described treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), one osteoarthritis (OA) and one treatment after fractures of the distal radius. Kobayashi et al. (2005) considered only radiological outcomes; all the others considered clinical and radiological outcomes. The S-K and Darrach’s groups in the radiological study of Kobayashi et al. both consisted of 13 wrists in ten patients with a mean follow-up of 4 years. The authors found no statistical difference in UCS between groups. Only one article compared the S-K procedure to the Darrach procedure after fractures of the distal radius in patients less than 50 years old (George et al., 2004). The study demonstrated no significant difference in grip strength or UCS. Two of the RA studies suggested that UCS was more common after Darrach’s procedure, though no statistical analyses were done to confirm this finding (Hagino et al., 1999; Nakagawa et al., 2003). Hagino et al. did note that their Darrach group was small (n = 7) in comparison to the S-K group (n = 20); bias may have arisen from this limited and infrequent surgical experience. Minami et al. (2005) assessed 61 wrists in 61 patients with OA of the DRUJ treated either by the S-K procedure, Darrach’s procedure or hemiresection interposition arthroplasty. After an average follow-up of 10 years the authors found Darrach’s procedure to be inferior to the S-K procedure in terms of pain relief, though this was not statistically significant. When the data in the OA study was analysed statistically, no difference in instability between groups was demonstrated. The authors concluded that Darrach’s procedure is better indicated in patients with severe OA. There is a paucity of studies that compare outcomes between these procedures in osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis or after fractures of the distal radius. The evidence is limited to retrospective, non-randomized trials with small sample sizes. Given the increased technical difficulty and invasiveness of the S-K procedure and the results of our systematic review, is it time for a multicentre prospective study in the UK to determine the role for each operation?
Soft-core sandwich plate dynamics: Theory and blast analysis

This work presents an analytical and computational platform that aims to face the modeling, analytical, and computational challenges associated with highly transient dynamics of soft-core sandwich plates and shed light on the dynamic behavior of this unique structural form. This platform comprises a dynamic tri-layered plate analytical model and a corresponding specially tailored triangular finite element formulation. The model is based on extended high-order kinematics for the soft core layer, and it accounts for geometrical nonlinearity, high-order inertia terms, material orthotropy in the three physical layers, the presence of interfaces linking those layers, the interfacial tractions that develop across them, and the bi-directional dynamic response of the plate structure. The governing equations of the finite element formulation are solved in the time domain using a nonlinear Newmark-type time-stepping algorithm. The methodology is validated with regard to free vibration analysis and forced motion analysis against experimental results, 2D-, and 3D-elasticity-based closed form solutions, and multilayered plate finite elements reported in the literature. Following the validation, a numerical example considers the transient response of a soft-core sandwich plate subjected to highly transient air blast loading and compares the response with experimental results taken from the literature. The study examines the ability of present formulations to capture the experimentally observed response and to shed light on some aspects of the response, including the inherently 2D nature of the response, the propagation of stress fronts through the structural medium, and the interfacial interactions.
Increasing student success by modifying course delivery based on student submission data

Computer programming was originally a skill that was acquired and applied by scientists, engineers and mathematicians to support their disciplinary goals. Later it became a specialized field of study and, although this continues today, once again many non-specialists need to learn how to program as an adjunct to their daily work. Workers who do not identify themselves as “programmers” are increasingly required to do programming tasks for their jobs [29,33], and many of these people are doing so in the context of their business-oriented or STEM-related jobs. Thus, teaching programming as a “general education” requirement is of increasing relevance. However, introductory programming classes historically have been shown to have very high dropout rates ([3,15,30], possibly due to poor pedagogical practices [5]. Additionally, student achievement is often quite low; for example, a multi-national study [23] found that students finishing their first year programming courses scored an average of 22.89 out of 110 points (about 21%) on a standardized assessment of programming ability. And, as Woit and Mason point out [39], programming ability often is much poorer than course grades indicate. Months or even years into programming, many students still maintain conceptual misunderstandings of the field [24]. Increasing Student Success by Modifying Course Delivery Based on Student Submission Data
Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitor Reverses Mesenchymal to Epithelial Phenotype and Inhibits Metastasis in Inflammatory Breast Cancer

Purpose: Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is a rare but aggressive type of advanced breast cancer. Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) expression is an independent poor prognostic factor in IBC. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect on IBC tumorigenicity and metastasis of blocking the EGFR pathway. Experimental Design: IBC cell lines, which express high level of EGFR, were treated with EGFR small interfering RNA and with the EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor erlotinib. The role of EGFR in IBC cell proliferation, motility, invasiveness, and change of the expression levels of epithelial-mesenchymal transition markers was examined. The role of extracellular signal–regulated kinase (ERK)-1/2 in erlotinib activity was also studied. The activity of erlotinib in tumor growth and metastasis was examined in an orthotopic xenograft model of IBC. Results: Erlotinib inhibited proliferation and anchorage-independent growth of IBC cells, and this inhibition was ERK dependent. Erlotinib inhibited cell motility and invasiveness and reversed the mesenchymal phenotype of IBC cells to epithelial phenotype in three-dimensional culture. Erlotinib dramatically inhibited IBC tumor growth in a xenograft model. Interestingly, erlotinib inhibited spontaneous lung metastasis, even at a low dose that had no significant effect on primary tumor growth. These erlotinib-treated tumors were converted to epithelial phenotype from mesenchymal phenotype. Conclusions: The EGFR pathway is involved in tumor growth and metastasis of IBC. Targeting EGFR through the ERK pathway may represent an effective therapeutic approach to suppress tumorigenicity and prevent metastasis in EGFR-expressing IBC. (Clin Cancer Res 2009;15(21):6639–48)
Recognition of H3K9 methylation by GLP is required for efficient establishment of H3K9 methylation, rapid target gene repression, and mouse viability

GLP and G9a are major H3K9 dimethylases essential for mouse early embryonic development. Here, Liu et al. report that the histone methyltransferase activities of GLP and G9a are stimulated by neighboring nucleosomes that are premethylated at H3K9. In mouse embryonic stem cells harboring a mutant GLP that lacks H3K9me1-binding activity, critical pluripotent genes displayed inefficient establishment of H3K9me2 and delayed gene silencing during differentiation. Mice carrying the H3K9me1-binding mutant form of GLP displayed embryonic growth retardation and defects in calvaria bone formation.
Determining optimal warranty periods from the seller's perspective and optimal out-of-warranty replacement age from the buyer's perspective

This paper considers a general repairable product sold under a failure-free renewing warranty agreement. In the case of a general repair model, there can be two types of failure: Type I failure (a minor failure), which can be rectified by minimal repairs: and type II failure (a catastrophic failure). which can be rectified only by replacement. After a minimal repair. the product is operational but the failure rate of the product remains unchanged. The aim of this paper is to determine the optimal warranty period and the optimal out-of-warranty replacement age. from the perspective of the seller (manufacturer) and the buyer (consumer), respectivels, while minimizing the corresponding cost functions. We prove under mild conditions, that the optimal solution of minimizing the cost function exists and is finite. Further a concise numerical example is demonstrated, and the sensitivity analysis of some of the parameters related to costs is carried out as well. Finally, some practical aspects of renewing the warranty policy for the practitioner and reader are addressed
Rivulet: a fault-tolerant platform for smart-home applications

Rivulet is a fault-tolerant distributed platform for running smart-home applications; it can tolerate failures typical for a home environment (e.g., link losses, network partitions, sensor failures, and device crashes). In contrast to existing cloud-centric solutions, which rely exclusively on a home gateway device, Rivulet leverages redundant smart consumer appliances (e.g., TVs, Refrigerators) to spread sensing and actuation across devices local to the home, and avoids making the Smart-Home Hub a single point of failure. Rivulet ensures event delivery in the presence of link loss, network partitions and other failures in the home, to enable applications with reliable sensing in the case of sensor failures, and event processing in the presence of device crashes. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of Rivulet, and evaluate its effective handling of failures in a smart home.
Fault diagnosis under temporal constraints

The authors describe an approach to associating temporal knowledge with a diagnostic system. They present a summary of work done in developing an algebra of relations for temporal reasoning, and proceed to extend the work using an interval based approach, but incorporating point intervals in the model. A propositional calculus representation of the temporal relations is derived and combined with the transitive closure algorithm that operates on a bit matrix. The result is an efficient and relatively simple approach to modeling relations between temporal intervals and propagating the constraints imposed by these relations through the knowledge base. <<ETX>>
Elevated serum insulin is an independent risk factor for hepatocellular carcinoma: a case control study from Nepal.

AIM To investigate associations of fasting insulin and glucose levels in serum with hepatocellular carcinoma risk. MATERIALS AND METHODS This hospital based study was carried out using data retrieved from the register maintained in the Department of Biochemistry of the Nepalese Army Institute of Health Sciences, between 1st December, 2011 and 31st June, 2013. The variables collected were age, fasting plasma glucose, fasting plasma insulin and ALT. Quantitative determination of human insulin concentrations was accomplished by chemiluminescence enzyme immunoassay. RESULTS Of the total 220 subjects enrolled in our present study, 20 cases were of HCC and 200 were healthy controls. The maximum number of cases of hepatocellular carcinoma in category cutpoints of fasting insulin levels fell in the range of >6.10 μU/ml. The highest insulin levels (>6.10 μU/ml) were seen to be associated with an 2.36 fold risk of HCC when compared with fasting insulin levels of (<2.75 μU/ml). Furthermore, the insulin levels (2.75-4.10 μU/ml) of category cutpoints also conferred a 1.57 fold risk for HCC when compared with lowest fasting insulin levels of (<2.75 μU/ml). CONCLUSIONS The effect of an insulin level in increasing HCC risk appeared consistent, influencing incidence, risk of recurrence, overall survival, and treatment-related complications in HCC patients.
Event patterns for distributed runtime verification

A fundamental problem in networked embedded systems is to know the runtime behaviour. Especially, the behaviour of self-organizing and adaptive systems is difficult to predict, because of the strong coupling with the environment. Monitoring this at runtime is difficult, because the only access is via the network. However, some properties need to be satisfied irrespective of the situation. Therefore the goal of this thesis is to monitor correctness properties at runtime efficiently. The focus is on temporal and distributed system-level properties. The system is modelled as a network of communicating finite-state machines, that operate asynchronous. Each node produces a stream of locally observable primitive events. High-level knowledge can be obtained by specifying an interest in temporal and distributed patterns in the events. From the specification an event detection tree is generated, which monitors the runtime behaviour by detecting the patterns. We show that event ordering is of fundamental importance for the implementation. To make efficient use of the scarce resources the tree is distributed in the network with a centralized distribution algorithm. A proof-of-concept is developed to evaluate the taken approach. Experiments run on a network of wireless nodes show that the cost of distributed monitoring is lower than when centralized in certain topologies. Simulations show that this is not the case with a random topology. Further, in the experiments only a few seconds delay is measured in the detection process. A limitation of the taken approach is that the unreliability of the network has a negative impact on the performance; missing events is an issue. Finally, the applicability is shown to the verification of an application for structural integrity monitoring.
Renormalization group scaling in nonrelativistic QCD

We discuss the matching conditions and renormalization group evolution of non-relativistic QCD. A variant of the conventional $\overline{\mathrm{MS}}$ scheme is proposed in which a subtraction velocity $\ensuremath{\nu}$ is used rather than a subtraction scale $\ensuremath{\mu}. $ We derive a novel renormalization group equation in velocity space which can be used to sum logarithms of $v$ in the effective theory. We apply our method to several examples. In particular we show that our formulation correctly reproduces the two-loop anomalous dimension of the heavy quark production current near threshold.
SOS: A Screening Instrument to Identify Children with Handwriting Impairments

ABSTRACT Poor handwriting has been shown to be associated with developmental disorders such as Developmental Coordination Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, autism, and learning disorders. Handwriting difficulties could lead to academic underachievement and poor self-esteem. Therapeutic intervention has been shown to be effective in treating children with poor handwriting, making early identification critical. The SOS test (Systematic Screening for Handwriting Difficulties) has been developed for this purpose. A child copies a sample of writing within 5 min. Handwriting quality is evaluated using six criteria and writing speed is measured. The Dutch SOS test was administered to 860 Flemish children (7–12 years). Inter- and intrarater reliability was excellent. Test–retest reliability was moderate. A correlation coefficient of 0.70 between SOS and “Concise Assessment Methods of Children Handwriting” test (Dutch version) confirmed convergent validity. The SOS allowed discrimination between typically developing children and children in special education, males and females, and different age groups.
A rapid technique for assessing assimilable organic carbon of UV/H2O2-treated water

A rapid technique was adopted and customized to assess the assimilable organic carbon (AOC) content of water for UV/H2O2 treatment applications. Indigenous consortium was used as inoculum and cells grown were counted using flow cytometry. Residual H2O2 after UV/H2O2 treatment was found to inhibit microorganisms’ regrowth, leading to incorrect AOC measurement. Therefore, Catalase immobilized on a polymeric support was used to eliminate the residual H2O2 prior to the AOC bioassay without affecting the water quality and the AOC. The choice of microbial consortium was found to influence the result of the AOC bioassay, suggesting that indigenous inoculum should be used for each individual sample set. Three days of incubation at 30°C were enough for the microorganisms to reach their stationary phase. Addition of minerals was found to be necessary, affecting the outcome of the AOC test. The method presented in this article will be valuable for monitoring AOC levels at different stages of water treatment train, especially when UV/H2O2 is used as one of treatment steps.
Impact of Substrate Modification by Catheter Ablation on Implantable Cardioverter–Defibrillator Interventions in Patients With Unstable Ventricular Arrhythmias and Coronary Artery Disease: Results From the Multicenter Randomized Controlled SMS (Substrate Modification Study)

Background— The implantable cardioverter–defibrillator (ICD) is the standard therapy to prevent sudden cardiac death in patients with coronary artery disease and unstable ventricular tachyarrhythmias. The prospective multinational SMS (Substrate Modification Study) was designed to assess whether prophylactic ablation of the arrhythmogenic substrate reduces or prevents the recurrence of ventricular tachycardia/ventricular fibrillation in such patients. Methods and Results— Of 111 patients included in an intention-to-treat analysis, 54 were randomly assigned catheter ablation plus ICD implantation (ablation group: 68±8 years; 47 men), whereas 57 were assigned ICD implantation without catheter ablation (ICD-only group: 66±8 years; 46 men). Primary study end point was the time to first recurrence of ventricular tachycardia/ventricular fibrillation. ICD episodes were assessed and verified by an independent board. Patients were followed up for 2.3±1.1 years. The primary end point was reached by 25 ablation patients and 26 ICD-only patients. Two-year event-free survival was estimated at 49.0% (95% confidence interval, 33.3%–62.9%) in the former and 52.4% (36.7%–65.9%) in the latter groups. Comparison of episode incidence revealed no significant difference in the primary end point (P=0.84). In an Andersen–Gill regression model with multiple end point recurrences, the difference between the study arms significantly favored catheter ablation for both the primary end point and all but one of the predefined subgroups of detected arrhythmia events. Conclusions— SMS failed to meet the primary end point of time to first ventricular tachycardia/ventricular fibrillation recurrence. However, catheter ablation did reduce the total number of ICD interventions during the duration of follow-up. Clinical Trial Registration— https://clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT00170287.
Reduction of Ins-1 gene expression and tissue insulin levels in n 5-STZ rats

Objective: The high global incidence of type 2 diabetes has challenged researchers to establish animal models that resemble the chronic stage observed in type 2 diabetes patients. One such model is induced by neonatal streptozotocin (n-STZ) administration to rat pups at 0, 2, or 5 days after birth. In this study, we assessed Ins-1 gene expression and tissue insulin levels as well as serum concentration of glucose and insulin, insulin resistance, and histological changes of the islets of Langerhans in n5-STZ rats after 20-weeks post-induction. Methods: Wistar rat pups were randomly distributed into a control group and a streptozotocin-induced group. Experimental induction involved a single intraperitoneal injection of streptozotocin (150 mg/kg) into neonates at fi ve days after birth. Results: At 20 weeks post-induction, streptozotocin-induced rats exhibited increased serum glucose levels, reduced serum insulin levels, impaired glucose metabolism and insulin resistance compared to control rats. Histologically, streptozotocin-induced rats exhibited atrophic islets, vacuolization, and signifi cantly fewer insulin-positive cells. Ins-1 gene expression was signifi cantly decreased in n5-STZ rats in comparison to the control group. Conclusion: Our fi ndings support that the n5-STZ model 20 weeks post-induction represents an appropriate experimental tool to study T2D and to evaluate novel therapeutic agents and targets that involve insulin gene expression and secretion, as well as complications caused by chronic diabetes.
Prior regular exercise improves clinical outcome and reduces demyelination and axonal injury in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis

Although previous studies have shown that forced exercise modulates inflammation and is therapeutic acutely for experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), the long‐term benefits have not been evaluated. In this study, we investigated the effects of preconditioning exercise on the clinical and pathological progression of EAE. Female C57BL/6 mice were randomly assigned to either an exercised (Ex) or unexercised (UEx) group and all of them were induced for EAE. Mice in the Ex group had an attenuated clinical score relative to UEx mice throughout the study. At 42 dpi, flow cytometry analysis showed a significant reduction in B cells, CD4+ T cells, and CD8+ T cells infiltrating into the spinal cord in the Ex group compared to UEx. Ex mice also had a significant reduction in myelin damage with a corresponding increase in proteolipid protein expression. Finally, Ex mice had a significant reduction in axonal damage. Collectively, our study demonstrates for the first time that a prolonged and forced preconditioning protocol of exercise improves clinical outcome and attenuates pathological hallmarks of EAE at chronic disease.