Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Prospective Randomized Trial Comparing Epidural Morphine Through Intraoperatively Placed Epidural Catheter and Intravenous Morphine in Major Lumbar Spinal Surgery

Study Design A randomized, controlled trial. Objective To compare the efficacy of pain control and complications between patients utilizing continuous infusion epidural morphine versus intravenous morphine in posterior spinal surgery. Summary of Background Data Recently, there has been increased interest in the use of epidural infusion analgesia for spinal surgery. By simply placing the tip of catheter at the level of operation before the wound closure, a continuous infusion of local anesthetics is directly delivered into the epidural space. Techniques used in the literature vary as per analgesic agents, number of catheters, and the infusion method. Few are the randomized control studies. Methods A total of 120 patients, who had posterior spinal operations, were randomly assigned to receive either continuous epidural infusion morphine, continuous epidural infusion morphine with Bupivacaine, or intravenous morphine as a postoperative analgesia. Visual analogue Pain scale (Pain VAS) was evaluated every 4 hours the first day, and at 36 and 48 hours postoperatively. Additional doses of intravenous Nalbuphine hydrochloride, complications, and the satisfaction score were recorded. Results Baseline characteristics of the 3 groups were similar. The mean Pain VAS in the epidural morphine group (groups 1 and 2) were less than that of group 3 at all times up to 48 hours postoperatively (P<0.05). Pain VAS for group 1 was more than that of group 2 at the 16- and 24-hour marks (P<0.05). Pruritus was a common complication in the epidural morphine group. There was no respiratory depression in this study. Patients in groups 1 and 2 had a high proportion of excellent and very good satisfaction (70% to 80%). Conclusion Epidural infusion analgesia is safe and effective for posterior spinal surgery.
Theoretical model for heterogeneous nucleation of grains during solidification

Abstract Grain nucleation during solidification is generally a heterogeneous process. In this work, a model for heterogeneous grain nucleation on substrates is proposed where the size distribution is given by a Weibull type expression. In this model, the nuclei density λz is described by a function of the maximum undercooling ΔT m through an expression of the type λ z =λ exp[(-b/Δ T m) Γ (1 + 1/n), where n is a positive integer, λ is the substrate density in the melt, b is the nucleation coefficient (b > 0), and Γ is the second order Euler function. When nucleation occurs on all possible substrates, the grain density N V after solidification equals λ z. Hence, measurements of N V can be employed to disclose the active nucleation process. The proposed model was experimentally corroborated for cast iron solidification after inoculation. In this case, precise determinations of grain densities versus cast iron undercooling were made experimentally. A comparison of the experimental results with the proposed model indicates that the nucleation process is in good agreement with this model for n = 1, with the λ and b terms being time dependent functions. In particular, the outcome suggests that the substrate size distribution is of an exponential nature.
CapG−/− Mice Have Specific Host Defense Defects That Render Them More Susceptible than CapG+/+ Mice to Listeria monocytogenes Infection but Not to Salmonella enterica Serovar Typhimurium Infection

ABSTRACT Loss of the actin filament capping protein CapG has no apparent effect on the phenotype of mice maintained under sterile conditions; however, bone marrow-derived macrophages from CapG−/− mice exhibited distinct motility defects. We examined the ability of CapG−/− mice to clear two intracellular bacteria, Listeria monocytogenes and Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium. The 50% lethal dose of Listeria was 10-fold lower for CapG−/− mice than for CapG+/+ mice (6 × 103 CFU for CapG−/− mice and 6 × 104 CFU for CapG+/+ mice), while no difference was observed for Salmonella. The numbers of Listeria cells in the spleens and livers were significantly higher in CapG−/− mice than in CapG+/+ mice at days 5 to 9, while the bacterial counts were identical on day 5 for Salmonella-infected mice. Microscopic analysis revealed qualitatively similar inflammatory responses in the spleens and livers of the two types of mice. Specific immunofluorescence staining analyzed by fluorescence-activated cell sorting revealed similar numbers of macrophages and dendritic cells in infected CapG−/− and CapG+/+ spleens. However, analysis of bone marrow-derived macrophages revealed a 50% reduction in the rate of phagocytosis of Listeria in CapG−/− cells but a normal rate of phagocytosis of Salmonella. Stimulation of bone marrow-derived dendritic cells with granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor resulted in a reduction in the ruffling response of CapG−/− cells compared to the response of CapG+/+ cells, and CapG−/− bone-marrowed derived neutrophils migrated at a mean speed that was nearly 50% lower than the mean speed of CapG+/+ neutrophils. Our findings suggest that specific motility deficits in macrophages, dendritic cells, and neutrophils render CapG−/− mice more susceptible than CapG+/+ mice to Listeria infection.
Assessment of early diastolic left ventricular function by two-dimensional echocardiographic speckle tracking.

AIMS To determine whether the degree of untwisting of the apex in early diastole is related to established parameters of diastolic function. METHODS AND RESULTS Data from 71 hospital inpatients with preserved left ventricular systolic function who underwent standard two-dimensional echocardiography was analysed using an off-line speckle tracking software package. Early diastolic mitral inflow velocity (e), mitral septal annular tissue Doppler velocity (e'), and the rate of early diastolic apical untwist in degrees per second (rotR) from a parasternal short-axis view of the apex were all measured. Of the 71 patients, 14 had normal diastolic function, 25 had an abnormal relaxation pattern, 27 had a pseudonormalized pattern, and 5 had a restrictive pattern as defined by standard echocardiography criteria. Both e' and the ratio of e:e' correlated with the rate (speed) of early diastolic apical untwist (rotR) (P < 0.001 for both). CONCLUSION This non-invasive assessment of apical diastolic untwist is related to established echocardiographic measures of diastolic function and may illustrate the importance of a ventricular suction effect in varying left ventricular filling states.
The multi-market analysis of a housing price transmission model

In this article, we examine dynamic relationships among housing prices from four first-tier cities in China from December 2000 to May 2010 and present an equilibrium model of housing price in multi-markets. By explicitly incorporating and modelling endogenous price series in competing housing markets, our empirical model is able to capture the existence of long-run equilibrium relationships and important short-run dynamics and price structures such as price leadership, price transmission lag and asymmetric price responses. Such multi-market analysis has generalized implications and can easily be applied to analyse the pricing dynamics among other real estate markets in the world. Our major contribution lies in two aspects. First, we employ an Error-Correction Model (ECM) with Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAG) to study the price dynamics in the four largest and key housing markets in China. Second, we uncover a price transmission among these housing markets in China and provide an insightful understanding of price adjustment across markets. The revealed effective price transmission and high correlation among these different markets actually is not a good thing for a stable financial system and for the defence against price bubbles in the housing market.
Interspecific Variation in Resistance of Asian, European, and North American Birches (Betula spp.) to Bronze Birch Borer (Coleoptera: Buprestidae)

ABSTRACT Bronze birch borer (Agrilus anxius Gory) is the key pest of birches (Betula spp.) in North America, several of which have been recommended for ornamental landscapes based on anecdotal reports of borer resistance that had not been confirmed experimentally. In a 20-yr common garden experiment initiated in 1979 in Ohio, North American birch species, including paper birch (Betula papyrifera Marshall), ‘Whitespire’ gray birch (Betula populifolia Marshall), and river birch (Betula nigra L.), were much more resistant to bronze birch borer than species indigenous to Europe and Asia, including European white birch (Betula pendula Roth), downy birch (Betula pubescens Ehrh.), monarch birch (Betula maximowicziana Regel), and Szechuan white birch (Betula szechuanica Jansson). Within 8 yr of planting, every European white, downy, and Szechuan birch had been colonized and killed, although 100% of monarch birch had been colonized and 88% of these plants were killed after nine years. Conversely, 97% of river birch, 76% of paper birch, and 73% Whitespire gray birch were alive 20 yr after planting, and river birch showed no evidence of colonization. This pattern is consistent with biogeographic theory of plant defense: North American birch species that share a coevolutionary history with bronze birch borer were much more resistant than naïve hosts endemic to Europe and Asia, possibly by virtue of evolution of targeted defenses. This information suggests that if bronze birch borer were introduced to Europe or Asia, it could threaten its hosts there on a continental scale. This study also exposed limitations of anecdotal observation as evidence of host plant resistance.
Mesenchymal Stem Cells and Cardiovascular Disease: A Bench to Bedside Roadmap

In recent years, the incredible boost in stem cell research has kindled the expectations of both patients and physicians. Mesenchymal progenitors, owing to their availability, ease of manipulation, and therapeutic potential, have become one of the most attractive options for the treatment of a wide range of diseases, from cartilage defects to cardiac disorders. Moreover, their immunomodulatory capacity has opened up their allogenic use, consequently broadening the possibilities for their application. In this review, we will focus on their use in the therapy of myocardial infarction, looking at their characteristics, in vitro and in vivo mechanisms of action, as well as clinical trials.
Respiratory Response of the Deep-Sea Amphipod Stephonyx biscayensis Indicates Bathymetric Range Limitation by Temperature and Hydrostatic Pressure

Depth zonation of fauna on continental margins is well documented. Whilst increasing hydrostatic pressure with depth has long been considered a factor contributing significantly to this pattern, discussion of the relative significance of decreasing temperature with depth has continued. This study investigates the physiological tolerances of fed and starved specimens of the bathyal lysianassoid amphipod Stephonyx biscayensis at varying temperature to acute pressure exposure by measuring the rate of oxygen consumption. Acclimation to atmospheric pressure is shown to have no significant interaction with temperature and/or pressure effects. Similarly, starvation is shown to have no significant effect on the interaction of temperature and pressure. Subsequently, the effect of pressure on respiration rate is revealed to be dependent on temperature: pressure equivalent to 2000 m depth was tolerated at 1 and 3°C; pressure equivalent to 2500 m depth was tolerated at 5.5°C; at 10°C pressure equivalent to 3000 m depth was tolerated. The variation in tolerance is consistent with the natural distribution range reported for this species. There are clear implications for hypotheses relating to the observed phenomenon of a biodiversity bottleneck between 2000 and 3000 metres, and for the potential for bathymetric range shifts in response to global climate change.
Relating Three-Dimensional Structures to Protein Networks Provides Evolutionary Insights

Most studies of protein networks operate on a high level of abstraction, neglecting structural and chemical aspects of each interaction. Here, we characterize interactions by using atomic-resolution information from three-dimensional protein structures. We find that some previously recognized relationships between network topology and genomic features (e.g., hubs tending to be essential proteins) are actually more reflective of a structural quantity, the number of distinct binding interfaces. Subdividing hubs with respect to this quantity provides insight into their evolutionary rate and indicates that additional mechanisms of network growth are active in evolution (beyond effective preferential attachment through gene duplication).
Stationary common spatial patterns for brain–computer interfacing

Classifying motion intentions in brain–computer interfacing (BCI) is a demanding task as the recorded EEG signal is not only noisy and has limited spatial resolution but it is also intrinsically non-stationary. The non-stationarities in the signal may come from many different sources, for instance, electrode artefacts, muscular activity or changes of task involvement, and often deteriorate classification performance. This is mainly because features extracted by standard methods like common spatial patterns (CSP) are not invariant to variations of the signal properties, thus should also change over time. Although many extensions of CSP were proposed to, for example, reduce the sensitivity to noise or incorporate information from other subjects, none of them tackles the non-stationarity problem directly. In this paper, we propose a method which regularizes CSP towards stationary subspaces (sCSP) and show that this increases classification accuracy, especially for subjects who are hardly able to control a BCI. We compare our method with the state-of-the-art approaches on different datasets, show competitive results and analyse the reasons for the improvement.
A Querying Method with Feedback Mechanism for Protein Interaction Network

Comparative analysis of protein interaction networks plays a key role in the study of evolution and molecular etiology of diseases. A topology-based method is proposed in this paper to search biologically significant sub networks in protein interaction networks with relatively high accuracy. Different with other methods, the present method takes into account incorrectness and incompleteness of biological experiment data. It reduces influence made by these errors and introduces feedback mechanism to obtain more accurate results in the sense of biology. The effectiveness of the present method is verified by studying a Parkinson Disease related network. The results indicate that the present method is more efficient in terms of computational accuracy compared with other methods for network querying.
SysPal: System-Guided Pattern Locks for Android

To improve the security of user-chosen Android screen lock patterns, we propose a novel system-guided pattern lock scheme called "SysPal" that mandates the use of a small number of randomly selected points while selecting a pattern. Users are given the freedom to use those mandated points at any position. We conducted a large-scale online study with 1,717 participants to evaluate the security and usability of three SysPal policies, varying the number of mandatory points that must be used (upon selecting a pattern) from one to three. Our results suggest that the two SysPal policies that mandate the use of one and two points can help users select significantly more secure patterns compared to the current Android policy: 22.58% and 23.19% fewer patterns were cracked. Those two SysPal policies, however, did not show any statistically significant inferiority in pattern recall success rate (the percentage of participants who correctly recalled their pattern after 24 hours). In our lab study, we asked participants to install our screen unlock application on their own Android device, and observed their real-life phone unlock behaviors for a day. Again, our lab study did not show any statistically significant difference in memorability for those two SysPal policies compared to the current Android policy.
Further characterization of a potent immunogen and the chromosomal gene encoding it in the Lyme disease agent, Borrelia burgdorferi

Further characterization of a previously reported 83-kDa antigen of Borrelia burgdorferi and the gene encoding it is reported. The DNA sequence of the gene and the amino acid sequence of the protein were determined. On the basis of the amino acid content, the actual size of the antigen was determined to be 79.8 kDa, rather than 83 kDa as previously reported. The expression of the antigen in several representative North American and European B. burgdorferi isolates was demonstrated. The conservation of the gene within the species was demonstrated by DNA hybridization of a labeled gene probe to several North American and European B. burgdorferi isolates. Of other Borrelia spp. assayed (B. hermsii, B. coriaceae, B. duttonii, and B. anserina), only B. anserina, a poultry pathogen, hybridized to the gene probe and expressed the 79.8-kDa antigen.
The association of proximal femur geometry with hip fracture risk

We aimed to discuss the risk assessments of patients with hip fractures due to the fall‐related moderate or minimal trauma and compare them with non‐fractured control patients by bone mineral density (BMD) and proximal femur geometric measurements to assess whether geometric measurements of femoral dimensions were associated with femoral strength and hip fracture risk. Forty‐two osteoporotic patients with proximal femur fracture and 40 osteoporotic non‐fractured age and gender‐matched controls were included in the study. Lunar DXA was used for BMD measurements and proximal femur geometric measurements were performed manually on direct X‐rays as hip axial length (HAL), femoral length (FL), and femoral neck width (FW). The trochanteric and total BMD values of the fracture group were significantly lower than the control group. There was a significant increase in FW/FL ratio in the fracture group that would be of specific importance for guidance: if FL values did not increase as did FW, it would point out a risk for fracture. The trochanteric BMD values were correlated with all increased measurements in the control group. There are genetically determined adaptive differences among individuals concerning bone morphology and bone mineral distribution. These different adaptations result in different bone strengths and fracture formation risk. Clin. Anat. 21:575–580, 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Efficient 3D Audio Processing with the GPU

Audio processing applications are among the most computeintensive and often rely on additional DSP resources for realtime performance. However, programmable audio DSPs are in general only available to product developers. Professional audio boards with multiple DSPs usually support specific effects and products while consumer “game-audio” hardware still only implements fixed-function pipelines which evolve at a rather slow pace. The widespread availability and increasing processing power of GPUs could offer an alternative solution. GPU features, like multiply-accumulate instructions or multiple execution units, are similar to those of most DSPs [3]. Besides, 3D audio rendering applications require a significant number of geometric calculations, which are a perfect fit for the GPU. Our feasibility study investigates the use of GPUs for efficient audio processing.
Prediction of Flow-Induced Vibrations in Tubular Heat Exchangers—Part II: Experimental Investigation

It has become evident that the modeling of the complex dynamics of fluidelastic forces that give rise to vibrations of tube bundles requires a great deal of experimental insight. Accordingly, the prediction of the flow-induced vibration due to unsteady cross-flow can be greatly aided by semi-analytical models, in which some coefficients are determined experimentally. A laboratory test rig with an instrumented test bundle is constructed to measure the fluidelastic coefficients to be used in conjunction with the mathematical model derived in Part I of this paper. The test rig admits two different test bundles, namely, the inline-square and 45 deg rotated-square tube arrays. Measurements were conducted to identify the flow-induced dynamic coefficients. The developed scheme was utilized in predicting the onset of flow-induced vibrations in two configurations of tube bundles, and results were examined in the light of Tubular Exchange Manufacturers Association (TEMA) predictions. The comparison demonstrated that TEMA guidelines are more conservative in the two configurations considered.
Effective force control by muscle synergies

Muscle synergies have been proposed as a way for the central nervous system (CNS) to simplify the generation of motor commands and they have been shown to explain a large fraction of the variation in the muscle patterns across a variety of conditions. However, whether human subjects are able to control forces and movements effectively with a small set of synergies has not been tested directly. Here we show that muscle synergies can be used to generate target forces in multiple directions with the same accuracy achieved using individual muscles. We recorded electromyographic (EMG) activity from 13 arm muscles and isometric hand forces during a force reaching task in a virtual environment. From these data we estimated the force associated to each muscle by linear regression and we identified muscle synergies by non-negative matrix factorization. We compared trajectories of a virtual mass displaced by the force estimated using the entire set of recorded EMGs to trajectories obtained using 4–5 muscle synergies. While trajectories were similar, when feedback was provided according to force estimated from recorded EMGs (EMG-control) on average trajectories generated with the synergies were less accurate. However, when feedback was provided according to recorded force (force-control) we did not find significant differences in initial angle error and endpoint error. We then tested whether synergies could be used as effectively as individual muscles to control cursor movement in the force reaching task by providing feedback according to force estimated from the projection of the recorded EMGs into synergy space (synergy-control). Human subjects were able to perform the task immediately after switching from force-control to EMG-control and synergy-control and we found no differences between initial movement direction errors and endpoint errors in all control modes. These results indicate that muscle synergies provide an effective strategy for motor coordination.
Facultative bacterial symbionts in aphids confer resistance to parasitic wasps

Symbiotic relationships between animals and microorganisms are common in nature, yet the factors controlling the abundance and distributions of symbionts are mostly unknown. Aphids have an obligate association with the bacterium Buchnera aphidicola (the primary symbiont) that has been shown to contribute directly to aphid fitness. In addition, aphids sometimes harbor other vertically transmitted bacteria (secondary symbionts), for which few benefits of infection have been previously documented. We carried out experiments to determine the consequences of these facultative symbioses in Acyrthosiphon pisum (the pea aphid) for vulnerability of the aphid host to a hymenopteran parasitoid, Aphidius ervi, a major natural enemy in field populations. Our results show that, in a controlled genetic background, infection confers resistance to parasitoid attack by causing high mortality of developing parasitoid larvae. Compared with uninfected controls, experimentally infected aphids were as likely to be attacked by ovipositing parasitoids but less likely to support parasitoid development. This strong interaction between a symbiotic bacterium and a host natural enemy provides a mechanism for the persistence and spread of symbiotic bacteria.