Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Effect of Postoperative Nonsteroidal Anti‐inflammatory Drug Administration on Spinal Fusion

Study Design. The influence of ketorolac on spinal fusion was studied in a retrospective review of 288 patients who underwent an instrumented spinal fusion. Objective. To assess the effect of postoperative ketorolac administration on subsequent fusion rates. Summary of Background Data. Nonsteroidal anti‐inflammatory drugs are widely used compounds, which are known to inhibit osteogenic activity and have been shown to decrease spinal fusion in an animal model. No previous studies have examined the influence of nonsteroidal anti‐inflammatory drugs on spinal fusion in clinical practice. Methods. The medical records of 288 patients who underwent instrumented spinal fusion from L4 to the sacrum between 1991 and 1993 were reviewed retrospectively. The 121 patients who received no nonsteroidal anti‐inflammatory drugs were compared with the 167 patients who received ketorolac after surgery. The groups were demographically equivalent. Results. Ketorolac had a significant adverse effect on fusion, with five nonunions in the nondrug group and 29 nonunions in the ketorolac group (P > 0.001). Ketorolac administration also significantly decreased the fusion rate for subgroups including men, women, smokers, and nonsmokers. The odds ratio demonstrated that nonunion was approximately five times more likely after ketorolac administration. Cigarette smoking also decreased the fusion rate (P > 0.01); smokers were 2.8 times more likely to develop nonunion. Conclusion. These data suggest that nonsteroidal anti‐inflammatory drugs significantly inhibit spinal fusion at doses typically used for postoperative pain control. The authors recommend that these drugs be avoided in the early postoperative period.
A search for autosomal linkage in a trisomic population: blood group frequencies in Mongols.

SEVERAL RECENT ADVANCES in human cytogenetics have provided different avenues of approach to the mapping of autosomal genes. The discovery of inherited morphological variants of the chromosomes furnishes cytologic markers which may be used in tests for linkage. For example, Ellis and Penrose (1961) described a kindred in which a giant satellite is segregating and supplied serological data on the individuals who were karyotyped. Pedigrees with a chromosomal aberration are also beginning to yield autosomal linkage data. Penrose and Delhanty (1961), Shaw (1962), and Atkins, O'Sullivan and Pryles (1962) have performed blood typing in families in which a translocation chromosome is segregating. The discovery of trisomy in mongolism by Lejeune, Gautier and Turpin (1959) has paved the way for another approach to human autosomal mapping. This method, which would utilize statistical procedures rather than direct cytologic observations and classical genetic linkage tests, involves a search for a deviation in the frequency distribution of certain phenotypes in the trisomic population compared to the general population (Bateman, 1960). This paper describes an attempt to determine whether any of eight markers could be placed on chromosome 21 by typing the blood and saliva of a large sample of mongols. Several authors have reported blood groups of mongols for other reasons, and their findings will be summarized.
Changes in Platelet Count as a Predictive Tool in Sickle Cell Acute Vaso-Occlusive Crises: A Pediatric Study

Objective. Studies have shown that platelets play an important role in the pathophysiology of vaso-occlusive crises (VOC) in sickle cell disease. This study investigates whether changes in platelet indices from baseline can be predictive of complications during acute pain crisis. Methods. Data were obtained from pediatric sickle cell patients in the well-clinic setting and compared with data gathered during VOC (n = 67). Primary outcome was complicated (admission, acute chest syndrome, transfusion, etc) versus uncomplicated (discharge from emergency department without subsequent return) course. Results. Patients with uncomplicated courses had larger platelet declines (53.7) than those with complicated courses (14.8, P = .005). Conclusions. The study suggests that patients with uncomplicated VOC are more likely to experience a larger decline in platelets. The predictive value is limited by the need to have preexisting steady-state data and relatively small decline. Ongoing studies are needed to identify useful laboratory data to help predict severity of VOC.
When Customer base is not loyalty! : Differences in the Consumers' Appraisal of Performance of Mobile Telecommunications Service Providers in Port Harcourt

Reports from both local and international telecommunications agencies attest that Nigerian telecommunications industry is the fastest growing in Africa and one of the fastest growing in the world. Currently, the sector boasts of about 157 million active subscribers being serviced by four dominant operators. However, there have been strident calls by consumers to the regulatory agencies to apply sanctions to the operators as a result of persistent poor quality of service. As a matter of fact, all the service providers do not deliver uniform level of service. This study is therefore aimed at examining the differences in the consumers’ appraisal of the quality of service and offerings of the service providers. SPSS 24 was employed in the analysis with analytical tools such as analysis of variance (ANOVA) and T-Test. Our study found that having large customer base does not translate to customer loyalty. Additionally, women subscribers were more emotionally responsive to the value-based offerings than the men as older subscribers were more satisfied than younger subscribers. Theoretically, our study extends the debate on the differences between customer retention and customer loyalty in the context of an emerging market. It is recommended that managers should focus on customer loyalty which has a more profitable longrun effect for the firm.
Employability of international graduates from the field of technology and business

The amount of degree students in Finland has more than doubled in the recent ten years. Since then, the employability of international graduates has been in discussion as many of the internationals face unemployment issues. The goal of this study is to find out what factors increase the employability of international university graduates. As a background for the research, an employability model for university graduates is used. This model is designed by Lee Harvey (2005). This study first presents the employability model and how other studies support the model. A glance to diversity issues is also presented. Based on the employability model and previous research data, a survey was created for international graduates. The survey received 67 answers from Aalto University. The response rate was about 20 percent. In this study, it was found that graduates feel that the lack of Finnish language and the lack of networks are the main obstacles for finding employment. Additionally, it was found that time spent to graduate had some impact on employability. Also, the sector where Master’s Thesis was done had an effect on employability. Many other factors were also researched but the number of respondents was too low to have accurate information about these. Because of this the main suggestion for universities is to create a better alumni contact database to be able to have research information from graduates.
Glioblastoma Growth Noscapine Crosses the Blood-Brain Barrier and Inhibits

The opium alkaloid noscapine is a commonly used antitussive agent available in Europe, Asia, and South America. Although the mechanism by which it suppresses coughing is currently unknown, it is presumed to involve the central nervous system. In addition to its antitussive action, noscapine also binds to tubulin and alters microtubule dynamics in vitro and in vivo. In this study, we show that noscapine inhibits the proliferation of rat C6 glioma cells in vitro (IC50 100 M) and effectively crosses the blood-brain barrier at rates similar to the ones found for agents such as morphine and [Met]enkephalin that have potent central nervous system activity (P < 0.05). Daily oral noscapine treatment (300 mg/kg) administered to immunodeficient mice having stereotactically implanted rat C6 glioblasoma into the striatum revealed a significant reduction of tumor volume (P < 0.05). This was achieved with no identifiable toxicity to the duodenum, spleen, liver, or hematopoietic cells as determined by pathological microscopic examination of these tissues and flow cytometry. Furthermore, noscapine treatment resulted in little evidence of toxicity to dorsal root ganglia cultures as measured by inhibition of neurite outgrowth and yielded no evidence of peripheral neuropathy in animals. However, evidence of vasodilation was observed in noscapine-treated brain tissue. These unique properties of noscapine, including its ability to cross the blood-brain barrier, interfere with microtubule dynamics, arrest tumor cell division, reduce tumor growth, and minimally affect other dividing tissues and peripheral nerves, warrant additional investigation of its therapeutic potential.
What’s in a crowd? Exploring crowdsourced versus traditional customer participation in the innovation process

ABSTRACT This study explores the emerging crowdsourcing phenomenon, that is, the outsourcing of idea generation to the product users (‘the crowd’), typically via online platforms to interact with many and diverse customers and glean valuable market insights. The study focuses on this phenomenon and the factors that determine the value of crowdsourced customer participation over more traditional market research methods. The authors present the results of an extensive, in-depth qualitative case-study analysis pertaining to the media industry. The authors find that crowdsourced customer participation is not consistently superior in enabling firms to discover how to serve their customers better. Instead, the results unearth a catalogue of seven interrelated value determinants that show where the boundaries of both crowdsourcing and traditional customer participation in innovation lie. These value determinants fall into three main categories: (1) innovation-specific value determinants, (2) firm-specific value determinants, and (3) managerial value determinants.
Interspecies conservation of gene order and intron-exon structure in a genomic locus of high gene density and complexity in Plasmodium.

A 13.6 kb contig of chromosome 5 of Plasmodium berghei, a rodent malaria parasite, has been sequenced and analysed for its coding potential. Assembly and comparison of this genomic locus with the orthologous locus on chromosome 10 of the human malaria Plasmodium falciparum revealed an unexpectedly high level of conservation of the gene organisation and complexity, only partially predicted by current gene-finder algorithms. Adjacent putative genes, transcribed from complementary strands, overlap in their untranslated regions, introns and exons, resulting in a tight clustering of both regulatory and coding sequences, which is unprecedented for genome organisation of PLASMODIUM: In total, six putative genes were identified, three of which are transcribed in gametocytes, the precursor cells of gametes. At least in the case of two multiple exon genes, alternative splicing and alternative transcription initiation sites contribute to a flexible use of the dense information content of this locus. The data of the small sample presented here indicate the value of a comparative approach for Plasmodium to elucidate structure, organisation and gene content of complex genomic loci and emphasise the need to integrate biological data of all Plasmodium species into the P.falciparum genome database and associated projects such as PlasmodB to further improve their annotation.
Issue Publics in the New Information Environment

The present research revisits citizen competence in the changing political and information environment, considering citizens as pluralistic issue publics. Using 2000 and 2004 American National Election Study data, Study 1 explores the conceptual premises of issue publics and the impact of the Web on domain-specific knowledge and extremity. Study 2 uses a unique data set combining an innovative direct measure of users' Web behavior records with survey responses from those users in the context of the 2004 U.S. general election. The results shed light on issue publics' information acquisition on the Web. This complementary data set provides a more complete picture of how issue publics develop unique patterns of information acquisition and make voting decisions. The findings indicate that issue publics enhanced their domain-specific knowledge by using information highly selectively. In addition, their selective information use contributed to increases in extremity and issue voting patterns. Implications for the functioning of democracy are discussed.
Scintillation properties of praseodymium doped LuAG scintillator compared to cerium doped LuAG, LSO and LaBr

Properties of praseodymium and cerium doped Lutetium Aluminum Garnet (LuAG) were compared with cerium doped Lutetium Oxyorthosilicate (LSO) and Lanthanum Bromide (LaBr3). Light yield, its non-proportionality relative to 662 keV γ-rays and the dependence of the energy resolution on energy of the detected γ-rays were measured. LuAG:Pr turned out to have good proportionality, with deviation from unity around 10% at 16.6 keV and 3% at 59.5 keV. This, together with relatively high light yield of 5600 phe/MeV results in a very good energy resolution of LuAG:Pr of 5.1% measured with 662 keV γ-rays. Coincidence time resolution was measured to be 308 ps, significantly larger than that of LSO:Ce - 166 ps. This can be explained by smaller light yield of LuAG:Pr and the fact that only around 25% of its scintillation is emitted in short decay time modes of 17.6 ns and 52 ns, while the rest is decaying with long time modes of 1.4 μs and 9 μs.
New Modality: Emoji Challenges in Prediction, Anticipation, and Retrieval

Over the past decade, emoji have emerged as a new and widespread form of digital communication, spanning diverse social networks and spoken languages. We propose treating these ideograms as a new modality in their own right, distinct in their semantic structure from both the text in which they are often embedded as well as the images which they resemble. As a new modality, emoji present rich novel possibilities for representation and interaction. In this paper, we explore the challenges that arise naturally from considering the emoji modality through the lens of multimedia research, specifically the ways in which emoji can be related to other common modalities such as text and images. To do so, we first present a large-scale data set of real-world emoji usage collected from Twitter. This data set contains examples of both text-emoji and image-emoji relationships within tweets. We present baseline results on the challenge of predicting emoji from both text and images, using state-of-the-art neural networks. Further, we offer a first consideration into the problem of how to account for new, unseen emoji—a relevant issue as the emoji vocabulary continues to expand on a yearly basis. Finally, we present results for multimedia retrieval using emoji as queries.
Body size and risk of MS in two cohorts of US women

Objective: To examine whether obesity during childhood, adolescence, or adulthood is associated with an increased risk of multiple sclerosis (MS). Methods: Women in the Nurses’ Health Study (n = 121,700) and Nurses’ Health Study II (n = 116,671) provided information on weight at age 18 and weight and height at baseline, from which body mass index was derived. Women also selected silhouettes representing their body size at ages 5, 10, and 20. Over the total 40 years of follow-up in both cohorts combined, we confirmed 593 cases of MS. Cox proportional hazards models, adjusting for age, latitude of residence, ethnicity, and cigarette smoking, were used to estimate the rate ratios and 95% confidence intervals (CI). Results: Obesity at age 18 (body mass index ≥30 kg/m2) was associated with a greater than twofold increased risk of MS (multivariate relative riskpooled = 2.25, 95% CI: 1.50-3.37, p trend <0.001). After adjusting for body size at age 20, having a large body size at ages 5 or 10 was not associated with risk of MS, whereas a large body size at age 20 was associated with a 96% increased risk of MS (95% CI: 1.33-2.89, p trend = 0.009). No significant association was found between adult body mass and MS risk. Conclusions: Obese adolescents have an increased risk of developing multiple sclerosis (MS). Although the mechanisms of this association remain uncertain, this result suggests that prevention of adolescent obesity may contribute to reduced MS risk. 25(OH)D = 25-hydroxyvitamin D; BMI = body mass index; CI = confidence interval; MS = multiple sclerosis; NHS = Nurses’ Health Study; NHSII = Nurses’ Health Study II; RR = relative risk.
PHYSICAL ACTIVITY, PHYSICAL FITNESS, AND LONGEVITY

It is well documented that both physical fitness and physical activity (PA) are associated with reduction of the mortality from all causes and from cardiovascular diseases. In addition, it has been shown that not only in the young or middle-aged but also in the older people the increase in the level of PA coincides with the reduced morbidity and mortality from a coronary heart disease as well as with the reduced rate of deaths from all causes. It is not clear, however, which of the two - physical fitness or physical activity - reduces the risk of a premature death to a greater extent. Also, no conclusion has been reached about how intensive physical exercising should be to substantially decrease the mortality rate. Some authors suggested that it is moderate to moderately vigorous activity that suffices to beneficially affect longevity. Moreover, moderate activity is safer, especially for the previously sedentary people. However, in case of the healthy subjects adapted to the high intensity training, the beneficial effect of vigorous exercising should not be neglected. (Biol.Sport 21:3-24, 2004)
Appropriate Information System to Improve Physical Condition after Carpal Tunnel Release

This study aimed to develop appropriate information systems to improve physical condition after carpal tunnel release. This survey was conducted with 136 patients who have visited orthopedic surgery of a university hospital located in Chungnam area from December 8, 2014 to March 27, 2015. Analysis of data revealed that skill was the highest value of Cronbach’s alpha=0.86 for internal consistency, Cronbach’s alpha=0.81 in physical condition, Cronbach’s alpha=0.83 in psychiatric condition. The results of this study are as follows. Firstly, for marital status, the proportion of single(28.4%) of the experimental group were significantly a lower rate than the proportion(39.5%) of control group(X2=8.35, p=.04). for carpal tunnel syndrome, the carpal status in subjects who have suffered from hand tingling decreased after the system application(t=4.05, p=.027). Therefore, this system will contribute to improve efficient operation strategies to apply the guidelines to improve physical function after carpal tunnel release in patients with carpal tunnel syndrome
Affective Valence and Arousal in Self-Rated Depression and Anxiety

To evaluate the predictive utility of Russell's two-dimensional model of affect to the experience of depression and anxiety, self-report ratings of pleasure and arousal were obtained from 200 undergraduates using the Affect Grid. Ratings of Pleasure and Arousal each accounted for significant variance in predicting depression scores on the Beck Depression Inventory and Profile of Mood States. Only ratings of Pleasure, however, were predictive of Anxiety scores on the Profile of Mood States, whereas the relationship between Arousal ratings and Anxiety scores was more complex, demonstrating possible moderation by variables consistent with a third dimension of Dominance–Submissiveness, as postulated by other investigators.
The Value of Codesign

Codesign allows a design team to combine two sets of knowledge that are key to service design: Customer insights into latent user needs and in-house professionals’ conversion of promising new ideas into viable concepts. While some studies highlight the potential of codesign, others are more skeptical pointing to a lack of clarity over how the involvement of customers affects the design process and outcomes. This article addresses this knowledge gap by reporting on a real-world comparison of design concepts generated by codesign teams with those generated by an in-house professional team and a team solely made up of users in the course of a library service ideation contest. The comparison indicates that codesign teams generate concepts that score significantly higher in user benefit and novelty but lower in feasibility. However, these outcomes are only possible in cohesive teams that develop design concepts collaboratively. In contrast, in teams where individuals dominate, conflict, less collaboration, and diminished innovation outcomes are more likely. The findings add to a better understanding of the value of codesign and shed light on the complex relationship between design team composition, intrateam factors, and innovation outcomes. Service designers obtain recommendations for selecting customers, assembling teams, and managing intrateam dynamics to enhance codesign success.
UNDERSTANDING EFFECTS OF INNOVATIVE AND COLLABORATIVE APPROACHES ON SUPPLY CHAIN PERFORMANCE

Purpose - Main goal of this paper is to perform an exploratory and empirical research on the interactions of collaboration and innovation elements that are presented in the literature; co-creation, service dominant logic, open innovation, negative entropy and entrepreneurship orientation. Moreover, this study aims to examine the effects of these elements on supply chain performance attributes (reliability, responsiveness, flexibility, costs and asset management). Methodology- In order to understand the effects of innovative and collaborative dynamics on supply chain performance, prominent logistics service providers and firms with officially approved R&D departments were surveyed. Findings - This study provides evidence on strong relationships between supply chain performance and co-creation, SDL, and open innovation. One of the findings that grabs our attention is the remarkable effect of negative entropy on co-creation, SDL and open innovation. Moreover, according to results, negative entropy has the highest individual effect on supply chain performance in comparison with other collaboration and innovation elements. Conclusion- This paper highlights the importance of innovative and collaborative dynamics in supply chain performance measurements. This research also provides evidence to supply chain performance literature by suggesting negative entropy as a powerful instrument of integration and preservation in supply chains.
2-[2-Hydroxy-4-(pyrrolidin-1-yl)benzoyl]benzoic acid

The title compound, C18H17NO4, crystallizes with two independent molecules in the asymmetric unit. The pyrrolidine ring in one molecule is disordered over two positions, with refined site-occupancy factors of 0.853 (5) and 0.147 (5). The dihedral angles between the planes of the benzene rings in the two independent molecules are 56.8 (2) and 68.2 (5)°. The molecular conformations are stabilized by intramolecular O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds. In the crystal structure, molecules are linked by intermolecular O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, forming dimers and generating rings of graph-set motif R 2 2(8).