Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fluoride‐induced fractures: Relation to osteogenic effect

The possible effects of fluoride in inducing fractures were studied in 61 patients treated with sodium fluoride (NaF), 40–60 mg daily in combination with calcium and vitamin D. Nine patients developed the fluoride‐(F) related lower extremity pain syndrome. Four other patients had stress fractures associated with trauma. Seven of the 61 patients had 10 upper femur fractures of which 5 were stress fractures. The bone mineral mass of the central skeleton including the hips was measured by neutron activation and the results expressed as a calcium bone index (CaBI) which normalizes the results to that of young adults of the same body size (normal range 0.75–1.2). At the time of hip fracture, 4 patients with a minimal increase in bone mass (mean ΔCaBI 0.01) had 4 femur fractures and 3 patients with a marked increase (mean ΔCaBI 0.24) had 6. The 7 patients with upper femur fractures at 4 years had a significantly higher bone fluoride retention, 30 mg/g Ca compared with 23.9 mg/g Ca for the other 54 (p < 0.02) and were older, 73.1 versus 64.2 years (p < 0.01). Using all 61 fluoride‐treated patients, femur fractures/patient were significantly correlated to bone fluoride (p < 0.05) and to age (p < 0.05). By partial correlation, only the correlation between hip fractures/patient and bone fluoride remained significant after controlling for the effect of age (p < 0.05). These results suggest that fluoride therapy may be implicated in the pathogenesis of hip fractures which may occur in treated patients despite a rapid, marked increase in bone mass. The lower extremity pain syndrome is not frequently associated with stress fractures in this study.
Removing the Noise in Monte Carlo Rendering with General Image Denoising Algorithms

Monte Carlo rendering systems can produce important visual effects such as depth of field, motion blur, and area lighting, but the rendered images suffer from objectionable noise at low sampling rates. Although years of research in image processing has produced powerful denoising algorithms, most of them assume that the noise is spatially‐invariant over the entire image and cannot be directly applied to denoise Monte Carlo rendering. In this paper, we propose a new approach that enables the use of any spatially‐invariant image denoising technique to remove the noise in Monte Carlo renderings. Our key insight is to use a noise estimation metric to locally identify the amount of noise in different parts of the image, coupled with a multilevel algorithm that denoises the image in a spatially‐varying manner using a standard denoising technique. We also propose a new way to perform adaptive sampling that uses the noise estimation metric to identify the noisy regions in which to place more samples. We show that our framework runs in a few seconds with modern denoising algorithms and produces results that outperform state‐of‐the‐art techniques in Monte Carlo rendering.
Capillary Flow in PDMS Cylindrical Microfluidic Channel Using 3-D Printed Mold

This letter investigates the capillary filling in polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microchannels using 3-D printed molds to produce channels with circular cross sections. The circular cross sections are prevalent in biology and anatomy, yet they cannot readily be mimicked with existing soft-lithography techniques. The molds are printed directly from computer-aided design files, making rapid prototyping of microfluidic devices possible in hours, demonstrating microscale features in PDMS channels. The PDMS channels with variable channel diameters ranging from 200 to 1000 μm in a single device that are obtained from four different 3-D printers are compared in terms of capillary flow. Technology limits, including surface roughness and resolution, are also characterized, and estimated as an equivalent contact angle which is a fit parameter dependent on the 3-D printer.
Quality of life and its association with insight, adverse effects of medication and use of atypical antipsychotics in patients with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in remission.

OBJECTIVE The present study aimed: (i) to compare the level of quality of life (QOL) among subjects with bipolar disorder (BD) and schizophrenia who were in remission and healthy control subjects and (ii) to examine the association of QOL with insight, adverse effects of medication and use of atypical antipsychotics among subjects with BD and schizophrenia who were in remission by controlling other confounding factors. METHODS The QOL on the four domains of the World Health Organization Questionnaire on Quality of Life: Short Form - Taiwan version (WHOQOL-BREF) were compared between 96 subjects with BD in remission, 96 subjects with schizophrenia in remission and 106 healthy control subjects. The association between the four QOL domains and subjects' insight, adverse effects of medication and use of atypical antipsychotics were examined using multiple regression analyses in the subjects with BD and schizophrenia in remission. RESULTS The results demonstrated that the subjects with BD in remission had similarly poor levels of QOL in all four domains as those subjects with schizophrenia in remission, and both subjects with BD and schizophrenia had poorer QOL than those in the control group. For both subjects with BD and schizophrenia in remission, insight was negatively associated with QOL on the physical domain, and adverse effects of medication were negatively associated with QOL on the physical and environment domains. Use of atypical antipsychotics was not associated with QOL, but subjects with BD receiving olanzapine perceived better psychological QOL than those receiving risperidone and better psychological and social relationship QOL than those receiving no atypical antipsychotic. CONCLUSIONS The results of the present study indicate that subjects with BD are dissatisfied with their QOL, even when they are in a remitted state. Clinicians must consider the negative influences of insight and adverse effects of medication on QOL of patients with BD and schizophrenia in remission.
Improved successive cancellation flip decoding of polar codes based on error distribution

Polar codes are a class of linear block codes that provably achieves channel capacity, and have been selected as a coding scheme for 5th generation wireless communication standards. Successive-cancellation (SC) decoding of polar codes has mediocre error-correction performance on short to moderate codeword lengths: the SC-Flip decoding algorithm is one of the solutions that have been proposed to overcome this issue. On the other hand, SC-Flip has a higher implementation complexity compared to SC due to the required log-likelihood ratio (LLR) selection and sorting process. Moreover, it requires a high number of iterations to reach good error-correction performance. In this work, we propose two techniques to improve the SC-Flip decoding algorithm for low-rate codes, based on the observation of channel-induced error distributions. The first one is a fixed index selection (FIS) scheme to avoid the substantial implementation cost of LLR selection and sorting with no cost on error-correction performance. The second is an enhanced index selection (EIS) criterion to improve the error-correction performance of SC-Flip decoding. A reduction of 24.6% in the implementation cost of logic elements is estimated with the FIS approach, while simulation results show that EIS leads to an improvement on error-correction performance improvement up to 0.34 dB at a target FER of 10−4.
Extreme-velocity quasar outflows and the role of X-ray shielding

Quasar accretion disk winds observed via broad absorption lines (BALs) in the UV produce strong continuous absorption in X-rays. The X-ray absorber is believed to serve critically as a radiative shield to enable radiative driving. However, "mini-BAL" and narrow absorption line outflows have dramatically less X-ray absorption than BALs. Here we examine X-ray and rest-frame UV spectra of 8 mini-BAL quasars with outflow speeds in the range 0.1c to 0.2c to test whether extreme speeds require a strong shield. We find that the X-ray absorption is weak or moderate, with neutral-equivalent column densities N_H < few times 10^22 cm^-2, consistent with mini-BALs at lower speeds. We use photoionization models to show that this amount of shielding is too weak to control the outflow ionizations and, therefore, it is not important for the acceleration. Shielding in complex geometries also seems unlikely because the alleged shield would need to extinguish the ionizing far-UV flux while avoiding detection in X-rays and the near-UV. We argue that the outflow ionizations are kept moderate, instead, by high gas densities in small clouds. If the mini-BALs form at radial distances of order R ~ 2 pc from the central quasar (broadly consistent with theoretical models and with the mini-BAL variabilities observed here and in previous work), and the total column densities in the mini-BAL gas are N_H ~ ~ 8 x 10^15 cm (based on measured line depths), the outflows have shapes like thin "pancakes" viewed face-on, or they occupy larger volumes like a spray of many dense clouds with a small volume filling factor. These results favor models with magnetic confinement in magnetic disk winds.
Employment following traumatic head injuries.

OBJECTIVE Determine rates of, and factors predictive of, return to work in patients with civilian traumatic head injuries. DESIGN Inception cohort study with 1- to 2-year follow-up. SETTING Hospitalized patients in a level I trauma center. PATIENTS Three hundred sixty-six hospitalized head-injured subjects who were workers before injury and 95 comparison subjects participated in prospective, longitudinal investigations of employment following head injury. Head-injured and comparison subjects were similar on basic demographics and preinjury employment status. The comparison subjects consisted of patients who sustained traumatic injury to the body but not to the head. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Time taken to return to work following head injury. RESULTS Survival methodology was used for analysis. Whether patients returned to work and when related to both the characteristics of the injured patients (eg, education, preinjury work history), the severity of head injury and associated neuropsychologic problems, and severity of other system injuries. More precise predictions were possible using the multivariate model. CONCLUSIONS The present study provides a means of assessing employment potential predictively. This can be useful for clinical and research purposes. The results should be used cautiously and should stimulate discussions of appropriate use of services and resources to meet individual patients' needs.
Heterogeneity in Consumer Demands and the Income Effect: Evidence from Panel Data

This paper uses unique Spanish panel data on household expenditures to test whether unobservable heterogeneity in household demands (taste, etc.) is correlated with total expenditures (income). The main finding is that tastes are indeed correlated with income for about half of the goods considered, implying that cross-sectional estimates of income elasticities for these goods are biased. The goods are the following: food eaten outside home, alcohol and tobacco, transportation, and energy. The elasticity of alcohol and tobacco is more than halved when taking unobserved heterogeneity into account. For transportation, the bias is sufficiently large to misclassify the good as a luxury.
Estimation of prognosis and prevalence of retinitis pigmentosa and Usher syndrome in Norway

Retinitis pigmentosa was diagnosed in 101 persons from 53 families. The prognosis for visual function was most favourable for the autosomal dominant group (38 patients from 8 families). The autosomal recessive group (40 patients from 25 families) and the 19 solitary cases were very heterogeneous, with prognosis ranging from favourable to very bad. There was a higher intrafamiliar correlation in the autosomal recessive than in the autosomal dominant group. In 28 patients from 18 families with Usher syndrome, almost all had good visual function until 30 years of age, and few had useful visual function after the age of 50. The age when the patients were registered varied between the different genetic types of retinitis pigmentosa, reflecting differences in prognosis. Therefore, ascertainment probability and prevalence were calculated for each genetic group separately. The prevalence of retinitis pigmentosa in Norway, all genetic groups included, was calculated to be 1/4440, the autosomal dominant type of the disease being the most frequent. The prevalence of Usher syndrome was calculated to be 3.6/ 100000. Both retinitis pigmentosa and Usher syndrome were more prevalent in Laps.
Comparison of ThinPrep and conventional smears in salivary gland fine‐needle aspiration biopsies

ThinPrep (TP) cytology for evaluation of nongynecological specimens is being increasingly used. There are few studies comparing TP with conventional smears (CS) in salivary gland (SG) fine‐needle aspiration biopsies (FNAB). This study compares diagnostic accuracy and morphology of TP and CS in SG FNABs.
Dynamical evolution of boson stars: Perturbing the ground state.

This is the first paper in a series in which we study the dynamical evolution of self-gravitating complex scalar field configurations (boson stars) in numerical relativity. Boson stars have equilibrium configurations corresponding to different levels of excitation of the scalar fields (i.e., different numbers of nodes). In this paper we report on the dynamical evolution of the perturbed ground-state boson stars. The major results are the following. (i) Under finite perturbations (with possibly finite changes in the total mass {ital M} and the particle number {ital N}), the ground-state configurations of a boson star consist of a stable branch and an unstable branch. The transition point corresponds to a critical mass of {ital M}=0.633({ital M}{sub Planck}{sup 2}/{ital m}), where {ital m} is the mass of the scalar field, depending slightly on the type of perturbation considered. This extends the previous result obtained by other authors that there are two such branches under infinitesimal perturbations with fixed {ital M} and {ital N}. (ii) The configurations on the stable branch, when perturbed, will oscillate, emit scalar field radiation with a characteristic frequency, and settle down into a new configuration with less mass and a larger radius than the initial perturbed configuration. Themore » quasinormal frequency and the decay rate have been studied. The decay rate is an increasing function of the oscillation amplitude. (iii) The configurations on the unstable branch, when perturbed, either collapse to a black hole or migrate to and eventually settle down on the stable branch, depending on the type of perturbation. This behavior has been seen in initial configurations with both positive and negative binding energies. These results have implications on the actual existence and the formation of boson stars in an astrophysical environment. « less
Does the expression of BCL2 have prognostic significance in malignant peritoneal mesothelioma?

UNLABELLED Background Malignant peritoneal mesothelioma (MPM) is a rare neoplasm of the peritoneal membrane that is causally related to asbestos exposure. Survival after treatment is poor. Current therapy involving hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy has improved survival in selective patients. In the past, several prognostic factors have been identified in MPM patients and this has prompted the development of new therapies and patient management. Since BCL2, an antiapoptotic oncoprotein, is a favourable prognostic factor in breast cancer, we investigated to determine the significance of BCL2 in MPM. Materials and Methods Forty two archival patient tumour sections embedded in paraffin blocks were sectioned and subjected to immunohistochemistry to detect BCL2. The staining intensity and abundance was classified using standard procedures and classified into two groups (0-4 = low & 5-8 = high expression). The distribution of BCL2 groups was examined in the different clinicopathological categories to determine prognosis using Kaplan-Meier survival analysis. RESULTS Univariate analysis revealed that in almost all clinicopathological categories, high BCL2 expression predisposed patients to a favourable prognosis. Independent of BCL2 expression, univariate analysis also showed that male gender, sarcomatoid histology, high PCI and age at diagnosis ≥ 60 years were associated poor prognosis. Multivariate analysis indicated that for all tumours, males and females, high BCL2 expression was associated with good prognosis. Further, independent of BCL2, age ≥ 60 years is an unfavourable prognostic factor. CONCLUSION Expression of BCL2 may serve to distinguish prognosis within the individual clinicopathological categories. BCL2 is also an independent variable in all tumours, males and females, with high expression being associated with good prognosis.
The Elusive Costs and the Immaterial Gains of Fiscal Constraints

We study whether fiscal restrictions affect volatilities and correlations of macrovariables and the probability of excessive debt for a sample of 48 US states. Fiscal constraints are characterized with a number of indicators and volatility and correlations are computed in several ways. The second moments of macroeconomic variables in states with different fiscal constraints are economically and statistically similar. Excessive debt and the mechanism linking budget deficit and excessive debts are independent of whether tight or loose fiscal constraints are in place. Creative budget accounting may account for the results.
A Feminist Generation in Iran?

Numerous observers have noted that a feminist generation of educated young women appears to be emerging in Iran, despite the anti-feminist discourse of the Iranian government. Evidence from three surveys conducted in 2000–2003 confirms and complicates these observations. Educated young women are significantly more likely to espouse feminist attitudes of various sorts than other Iranians, including educated young men. In addition, educated young women are significantly more likely to work outside the home, marry later, give birth later, have fewer children, and have more egalitarian marriages than other Iranian women. However, surprising proportions of older Iranians also espouse feminist attitudes, and a majority of respondents in one nationally representative sample of urban Iranians identify themselves as proponents of women's rights.
Distributed Maximum Likelihood Estimation with Time-Varying Network Topology

Abstract We consider a sensor network in which each sensor may take at every time iteration a noisy linear measurement of some unknown parameter. In this context, we study a distributed consensus diffusion scheme that relies only on bidirectional communication among neighbor nodes (nodes that can communicate and exchange data), and allows every node to compute an estimate of the unknown parameter that asymptotically converges to the true parameter. At each time iteration, a measurement update and a spatial diffusion phase are performed across the network, and a local least-squares estimate is computed at each node. We show that the local estimates converge to the true parameter value, under suitable hypotheses. The proposed scheme works in networks with dynamically changing communication topology, and it is robust to unreliable communication links and widespread failures in measuring nodes.
Candida krusei fungemia. An escalating serious infection in immunocompromised patients.

BACKGROUND Candida krusei is inherently resistant to fluconazole and is emerging as a frequent cause of fungemia in patients with hematologic malignant neoplasms. OBJECTIVE To determine the risk and prognostic factors associated with C krusei fungemia in comparison with Candida albicans fungemia in patients with cancer. METHODS Retrospective study of 57 cases of C krusei fungemia occurring at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Tex, from 1989 to 1996. The C krusei cases were compared with 57 cases of C albicans fungemia with respect to demographics, underlying cancer, Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II score, immunosuppression status, chemotherapy, and the use of central venous catheters, as well as fluconazole prophylaxis. RESULTS At our institution, C krusei accounted for 5% of fungemias during 1989 through 1992 and for 10% during 1993 through 1996. Patients with C krusei fungemia more often had leukemia than patients with C albicans (77% vs 11%; P =.02), whereas catheter-related infections were more common among patients with C albicans fungemia (42% vs 0%; P<.001). Patients with C krusei fungemia had a lower response rate (51% vs 69%; P =.05), largely because they more frequently were neutropenic and had disseminated infection. Mortality related to fungemia was 49% in the cases with C krusei vs 28% in C albicans. Multiple logistic regression analysis showed that persistent neutropenia (P =.02) and septic shock (P =.002) were predictors of poor prognosis. CONCLUSION In neutropenic patients, C krusei fungemia is associated with high mortality. It should be suspected in patients with leukemia who are receiving fluconazole prophylaxis and should be treated aggressively with an amphotericin B regimen.
A General Self-Adaptive Reputation System Based on the Kalman Feedback

With the rapid development of the web services, e-commerce and social network applications, a robust reputation system to establish trustworthiness between mutually unknown entities is becoming increasingly important. This paper proposes a general self-adaptive reputation model, which uses the weight factor of each feedback to inherently support the defense of fake feedbacks. Moreover, we design a reputation system by using the improved Kalman Filter based on the factor of weight. With this method, we can not only get an accurate prediction for the service provider, but also resist malicious feedback attacks. Our reputation system is proved to be more robust and accurate compared with the traditional methods in the simulation and experiment.
Transfer Learning with Binary Neural Networks

Previous work has shown that it is possible to train deep neural networks with low precision weights and activations. In the extreme case it is even possible to constrain the network to binary values. The costly floating point multiplications are then reduced to fast logical operations. High end smart phones such as Google's Pixel 2 and Apple's iPhone X are already equipped with specialised hardware for image processing and it is very likely that other future consumer hardware will also have dedicated accelerators for deep neural networks. Binary neural networks are attractive in this case because the logical operations are very fast and efficient when implemented in hardware. We propose a transfer learning based architecture where we first train a binary network on Imagenet and then retrain part of the network for different tasks while keeping most of the network fixed. The fixed binary part could be implemented in a hardware accelerator while the last layers of the network are evaluated in software. We show that a single binary neural network trained on the Imagenet dataset can indeed be used as a feature extractor for other datasets.