Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ultrasound-guided continuous fascia iliaca compartment block for pre-operative pain control in very elderly patients with hip fracture: A randomized controlled trial

The present study presented the results of a prospective, randomized controlled trial. The present study enrolled 98 very elderly patients with hip fractures, complicated with at least one cardiovascular, neurological or pulmonary disease, of whom 10 patients were excluded. A total of 88 patients were randomly assigned into 2 groups: i) The control group, receiving traditional analgesia including 50 mg Tramadol and 500 mg paracetamol orally three times a day from admission to surgery; and ii) the study group, receiving ultrasound-guided continuous fascia iliaca compartment block (CFICB), a single 50 ml 0.4% ropivacaine injection with continuous infusion of 0.2% ropivacaine at a dose of 5 ml/h from admission to surgery. The primary outcome measure of pain relief or pain intensity was assessed preoperatively and up to 48 h postoperatively using a visual analog scale (VAS). The results of the present study indicated that in the preoperative period, in the morning of the day of surgery, the VAS pain at rest scores were lower in the study group compared with the control group (P=0.023). The VAS passive movement scores of the study group were also significantly lower compared with the control group 1 h following analgesia at the time of admission (P<0.05) and in the morning of the day of surgery (P<0.05). Scores for patients' satisfaction with the analgesic regimen in the preoperative period were greater in the study group compared with the control group (P<0.001). There was no difference in analgesia-associated side effects between groups. Duration of hospital stay of patients in the control group was significantly longer compared with the study group (P=0.001). Patients in the study group were less likely to have increased complications compared with patients in the control group over the N2-N4 period (from preoperative period to after surgery; P=0.016). The present study concluded that ultrasound guided CFICB was an effective method of providing analgesia for very elderly (≥80 years old) with hip fracture.
Senior Centres in Canada and the United States: A Scoping Review

RÉSUMÉ Les centres pour personnes âgées ont été identifiés comme des points focaux pour la prestation de services pour la population vieillissante, qui est en forte croissance au Canada et aux États-Unis. Malgré ce rôle important des centres pour personnes âgées, peu de recherches leur ont été consacrées. Cet examen de portée a ciblé les études empiriques en langue anglaise portant sur les centres pour personnes âgées qui ont été publiées dans des revues scientifiques depuis 2000. Un total de 58 études ont été repérées (n = 51 pour les études américaines, n = 7 pour les études canadiennes). La majorité de ces articles était centrée sur des thèmes liés à la participation d’individus dans les centres pour personnes âgées, et quelques études seulement traitaient du milieu associé aux centres pour personnes âgées. Ces résultats suggèrent que les recherches futures devraient cibler les avantages de la programmation des centres pour personnes âgées, avec une attention particulière sur les besoins des baby-boomers, sur les facteurs clés liés au financement, aux espaces et au personnel, ainsi que sur les caractéristiques et les rôles des centres pour personnes âgées dans le contexte canadien. ABSTRACT Senior centres have been identified as a “focal point” for delivering services to the rapidly growing older adult populations in Canada and the United States. Despite this important role, academic research studying senior centres has been limited. This scoping review identified English-language empirical research studies focusing on senior centres that were published in an academic journal in 2000 or later. A total of 58 studies were identified (n = 51 American and n = 7 Canadian). The majority of the articles focused on themes related to the participation of individuals at senior centres; a smaller number focused on themes related to the senior centre environment. Based on the findings, it is suggested that future research focus on benefits of senior centre programming, with specific focus on needs of baby boomers; key factors related to funding, space, and staffing; and the characteristics and role of senior centres in the Canadian context.
PRBS Selection for Velocity Measurements with Compressive Sampling-Based DS-CDMA Radio Navigation Receivers

The use of spread spectrum techniques is well consolidated in satellite radio navigation and communication systems, since several years. More recently, the Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum approach has found adoption also in Random Demodulation-based schemes implementing the so-called Compressive Sampling theory, that allows spread spectrum receivers to lower their sampling rate, thus overcoming the need to tradeoff sampling frequency and resolution in Analog to Digital Conversion. The obtainable performance are affected by several conditions, among which the selection of the chipping sequence to use. In this paper, different families of pseudorandom binary sequences are analyzed with respect to relevant identified metrics, for the possible improvement of velocity measurements with DS-CDMA radio navigation systems, when the classic Nyquist sampling receiver is replaced by a Compressive-Sensing based one. The simulation results show that the classical maximal length sequences can satisfy the requirements of both velocity measurements improvement and spread spectrum receiver at lower sampling rate.
A Low-Profile Differential-Fed Patch Antenna With Bandwidth Enhancement and Sidelobe Reduction Under Operation of TM10 and TM12 Modes

A low-profile differential-fed microstrip patch antenna (MPA) using TM<sub>10</sub> and TM<sub>12</sub> modes is proposed in this communication toward simultaneously achieving the impedance-bandwidth enhancement and sidelobe reduction. Based on the transmission-line model, the radiation patterns of TM<sub>10</sub> mode of the MPA loaded with shorting pins and slots are at first deeply investigated. The results demonstrate that the E-plane sidelobe could be gradually reduced by lowering the resonant frequency of TM<sub>10</sub> mode (f<sub>10</sub>) less than two times of the fundamental frequency (f<sub>0</sub>). After that, the two adjacent TM<sub>10</sub> and TM<sub>12</sub> modes of the MPA are relocated to resonate in proximity to each other for bandwidth improvement and sidelobe reduction. By inserting the shorting pins underneath the radiating patch, f<sub>10</sub> is progressively pushed up with a slight effect on that of TM<sub>12</sub> mode (f<sub>12</sub>). Then, the patch width is enlarged with the parallel slots etched out on it to move f<sub>12</sub> closely to f<sub>10</sub>. Moreover, a narrow slot is etched at the center of the patch for good impedance matching. With these arrangements, f<sub>10</sub>/f<sub>0</sub> can be decreased dramatically to about 1.27. Finally, the antenna prototype is fabricated and measured. Experimental results show that the impedance bandwidth of the MPA is tremendously extended to about 10%, while keeping a low profile of 0.039 free-space wavelength. In particular, the sidelobe level of the antenna is dramatically reduced to about −12 dB.
Comparative Study of Soft Motion for Motion Copying System with Environmental Variations

Technologies for the skill succession and machine automation are strongly demanded in some developed countries under the circumstance of declining working population due to the lower birth rate and the aged society. Motion copying system (MCS) is one of the methods for the skill succession and machine automation. MCS is able to play back the saved motion in the case that the environmental conditions between the saving and the loading phases are the same. Conventionally, the pure position controller, the pure force controller, or Hybrid Position and Force Control (HPFC) is applied to MCS. The reproduction performance is, however, degraded when the environmental variations happen. In such case, impedance control is applicable to MCS instead of HPFC. The purpose of this paper is to conduct the comparative study of some control strategies: position control, force control, HPFC, the Position-Based Impedance Control (PBIC), and the Force-Based Impedance Control (FBIC), and clarify which control strategy is appropriate for the tasks. Simulations were conducted for supporting the argument.
Towards Protected and Cancelable Multi-Spectral Face Templates Using Feature Fusion and Kernalized Hashing

Multi-spectral imaging has been explored to handle a set of deficiencies found in traditional imaging that capture the images only in visible spectrum (VIS) or Near-Infra Red (NIR) spectrum. The promising performance obtained in the experimental works indicates the use-case in real-life biometric systems. As biometric systems should also consider protecting biometric templates, it is required to have an efficient template protection scheme for multi-spectral biometric systems to avoid the leakage of biometric data and subsequent linkability issues. In this work, we propose a new template protection scheme for multi-spectral biometric systems through the use of biometric information across different spectra to provide protected templates. Through the proposed approach of kernalized hashing, we can reach a fully unlinkable template protection scheme that works across all spectra in a multi-spectral system with a comparable performance to unprotected system. Further, we propose a template level fusion across all the spectral bands to improve the performance of the multi-spectral biometric system with integrated template protection. Through the use of a relatively large sized multispectral face biometric database of 168 subjects captured in 9 narrow spectral bands in VIS and NIR bands (530nm to l000nm), we illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in achieving a robust and secure template protection while accounting for irreversibility, unlinkability and renewability. Through the experiments we establish the performance of the proposed template protection approach and demonstrate a high Genuine Match Rate $(GMR\approx 100\%$ at False Accept Rate of $FMR=0.01\%$ and low Equal Error Rate $EER=\approx 0\%$, while satisfying other requirements of biometric template protection. Further, we present a security analysis of the proposed approach to demonstrate the unlinkability of the biometric templates.
Switching to peginterferon for chronic hepatitis B patients with hepatitis B e antigen seroconversion on entecavir – A prospective study

Nucleos(t)ide analogues (NA) are effective in suppressing hepatitis B virus (HBV) replication, but most patients require long‐term treatment. This study aimed to investigate switching to peginterferon as a strategy to stop NA. Hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg)‐positive chronic hepatitis B patients who developed HBeAg seroconversion during NA treatment were studied. All patients received open‐label peginterferon alfa‐2a 180 μg/wk for 48 weeks, and NA was stopped at week 4 of peginterferon treatment. The primary endpoint was sustained response, which was defined as negative HBeAg, positive anti‐HBe and HBV DNA <2000 IU/mL at week 72. Other secondary endpoints including HBsAg loss at week 72 were also studied. Forty‐one patients treated with entecavir for 56 ± 23 months were recruited. Sustained response was achieved in 30 patients (73%, 95% confidence interval 58%‐84%). At week 72, 31 (76%) patients had HBeAg seroconversion, 56 (23%) patients had undetectable HBV DNA, 31 (76%) patients had normal ALT, and 6 patients (15%) had HBsAg loss. Baseline HBsAg level was the best predictor for both sustained response and HBsAg loss; the best HBsAg cut‐off for sustained response was <1500 IU/mL and that for HBsAg loss was <500 IU/mL by receiver operating characteristic curve analysis. Twenty‐two of 25 (88%) patients with baseline HBsAg <1500 IU/mL had sustained response. Five of 10 (50%) patients with baseline HBsAg <500 IU/mL developed HBsAg loss. Switching to peginterferon can be considered as a treatment option in NA‐treated patients with HBeAg seroconversion, particularly among those with lower HBsAg levels.
Permission Analysis of Health and Fitness Apps in IoT Programming Frameworks

Popular IoT programming frameworks, such as Google Fit, enable third-party developers to build apps to store and retrieve user data from a variety of data sources (e.g., wearables). The problem of overprivilege stands out due to the diversity and complexity of IoT apps, and developers rushing to release apps to meet the high demand in the IoT market. Any incorrect API usage of the IoT frameworks by third-party developers can lead to security risks, especially in health and fitness apps. Protecting sensitive user information is critically important to prevent financial and psychological harms. This paper presents PGFIT, a static permission analysis tool that precisely and efficiently identifies overprivilege issues in third-party apps built on top of a popular IoT programming framework, Google Fit. PGFIT extracts the set of requested permission scopes and the set of used data types in Google Fitenabled apps to determine whether the requested permission scopes are actually necessary. In this way, PGFIT serves as a quality assurance tool for developers and a privacy checker for app users. We used PGFIT to perform overprivilege analysis on a set of 20 Google Fit-enabled apps and with manual inspection, we found that 6 (30%) of them are overprivileged.
Long‐term outcomes and quality of life following ligation of the intersphincteric fistula tract for high transsphincteric fistulas

Published outcomes following ligation of the intersphincteric fistula tract (LIFT) for high transsphincteric fistulas (HTFs) are equivocal probably because most trials are small and comprise mixed patient populations. The aim of this study was to highlight the long‐term efficacy of LIFT for HTFs in a large homogeneous sample and to determine the risk factors that contribute to non‐healing resulting in failure and recurrence.
Engineering Trust: A Graph-Based Algorithm for Modeling, Validating, and Evaluating Trust

Trust is an important topic in today's interconnected world. Breaches of trust in today's systems has had profound effects upon us all, and they are very difficult and costly to fix especially when caused by flaws in the system's architecture. Trust modeling can expose these types of issues, but modeling trust in complex multi-tiered system architectures can be very difficult. Often experts have differing views of trust and how it applies to systems within their domain. This work presents a graph-based modeling methodology that normalizes the application of trust across disparate system domains allowing the modeling of complex intersystem trust relationships. An algorithm is proposed that applies graph theory to model, validate and evaluate trust in system architectures. Also, it provides the means to apply metrics to compare and prioritize the effectiveness of trust management in system and component architectures. The results produced by the algorithm can be used in conjunction with systems engineering processes to ensure both trust and the efficient use of resources
The auditory region of dermoptera: Morphology and function relative to other living mammals

The dermopteran basicranium combines a primitively constructed and oriented auditory bulla formed by ectotympanic, rostral entotympanic, and tubal cartilage with derived features of the middle ear transformer and internal carotid circulation. Living dermopterans possess a primitive eutherian auditory region that has been structurally modified to perceive a lower frequency sound spectrum than probably was utilized by ancestral Mesozoic therians. Perception of the low to midfrequency range is enhanced in Dermoptera by reducing stiffness in the mechanical transformer while maintaining low mass of the component parts. Stiffness has been reduced by (1) development of an epitympanic sinus about four times the volume of the middle ear cavity proper, (2) detachment of the anterior process of the malleus from the ectotympanic, and (3) by delicate suspension of the ear ossicles within the middle ear.
Study on Robust Control of Industrial Manipulator for Assembly Based on SMCSPO

This paper presents a method of controlling a robot manipulator using a sliding mode controller with sliding perturbation observer(SMCSPO) that are robust to nonlinear components of a multi-axis manipulator. Inverse kinematics analysis method is proposed to know the angle of each axis corresponding to the desired position coordinates as reference input. The signal compression method is used to find out the dynamic characteristics of the system. The linear parameters of the unknown system can be obtained by this method. The system is classified into linear term and nonlinear term by considering Coriolis term, inertial term, and centripetal term as disturbances. Robot manipulator is controlled using the sliding mode control with compensating the nonlinear component which is estimated by the sliding perturbation observer. In this paper, the inverse kinematic analysis of the 7-axis manipulator is used to determine the angle of each axis to the desired position, the unknown parameters are determined using the signal compression method, and then the SMCSPO and the PID are applied from 4 to 7axis of the manipulator system to show the robustness of the SMCSPO experiment.
Photonic Generation of Neuron-Like Dynamics Using VCSELs Subject to Double Polarized Optical Injection

We propose to generate excitatory and inhibitory neuron-like dynamics in vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) by applying simultaneously the orthogonally-polarized CW optical injection (OPCWOI) and parallelly-polarized pulse optical injection stimulus. Based on the spin flip model, excitatory and inhibitory neuron-like dynamics accompanying with reverse polarization switching is numerically investigated. It is found that, due to the injection locking effect or beating effect between two injected fields, the excitatory phasic and tonic spiking dynamics can be obtained in the originally dominated polarization mode. Moreover, the unwanted relaxation oscillation followed by the excitatory spiking dynamics at the end of the stimulus pulse, which is present in previous reported photonic neuron based on the VCSELs subject to a single orthogonally-polarized optical pulse injection, can be completely suppressed. In addition, the inhibition of tonic spiking dynamics can also be achieved, and the transition from tonic spiking dynamics to phasic bursting dynamics can be obtained, when the two injected fields have the same frequency. These results are interesting and valuable for the ultrafast photonic neuromorphic systems and neuron-inspired photonic information processing.
Aflatoxin B1 adsorption/desorption dynamics in the presence of Lactobacillus rhamnosus RC007 in a gastrointestinal tract‐simulated model

(i) To determine the aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) adsorption and desorption dynamics in the presence of Lactobacillus rhamnosus RC007 under simulated transit of AFB1 at each gastrointestinal tract (GIT—saliva, stomach and intestine) stage consecutively and then, separately, (ii) to study the ability of L. rhamnosus RC007 to biotransform AFB1 as a strategy that complements the adsorption process.
Hypoglossal Nerve Stimulator Implantation in a Non‐Academic Setting: Two‐Year Result

Upper Airway Stimulation (UAS) is an FDA approved treatment option for patients with moderate‐to‐severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) who could not adhere to continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP). Previous studies have shown UAS reduced apnea‐hypopnea index (AHI) in controlled clinical trials and from academic institutions. We report patient outcomes and therapy adherence of UAS in a non‐academic hospital and clinic setting.
A Review of Nanoscale Characterizing Individual DNA Behaviors Using Atomic Force Microscopy

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the structural basis of genetics, plays a crucial role in the life of cells. The abnormal behaviors of DNA are closely related to the pathological changes of living organisms. The advent of atomic force microscopy (AFM) provides an exciting instrument for biophysically probing the nanoscale dynamic activities of the individual native molecules, considerably complementing the results obtained by traditional biochemical population-averaged measurements. In the past decades, AFM has been widely used in DNA studies, significantly providing novel insights into molecular biology. In this paper, the methodologies and progresses of utilizing AFM to characterize the behaviors of individual DNA molecules from several facets (including DNA topography imaging, DNA mechanics measurements, DNA origami, and DNA nanorobotics) are reviewed, and the future directions are discussed.
A Noninvasive Blood-based Combinatorial Proteomic Biomarker Assay to Detect Breast Cancer in Women over age 50 with BI-RADS 3, 4, or 5 Assessment

Purpose: With improvements in breast cancer imaging, there has been a corresponding increase in false-positives and avoidable biopsies. There is a need to better differentiate when a breast biopsy is warranted and determine appropriate follow-up. This study describes the design and clinical performance of a combinatorial proteomic biomarker assay (CPBA), Videssa Breast, in women over age 50 years. Experimental Design: A BI-RADS 3, 4, or 5 assessment was required for clinical trial enrollment. Serum was collected prior to breast biopsy and subjects were followed for 6–12 months and clinically relevant outcomes were recorded. Samples were split into training (70%) and validation (30%) cohorts with an approximate 1:4 case:control ratio in both arms. Results: A CPBA that combines biomarker data with patient clinical data was developed using a training cohort (469 women, cancer incidence: 18.5%), resulting in 94% sensitivity and 97% negative predictive value (NPV). Independent validation of the final algorithm in 194 subjects (breast cancer incidence: 19.6%) demonstrated a sensitivity of 95% and a NPV of 97%. When combined with previously published data for women under age 50, Videssa Breast achieves a comprehensive 93% sensitivity and 98% NPV in a population of women ages 25–75. Had Videssa Breast results been incorporated into the clinical workflow, approximately 45% of biopsies might have been avoided. Conclusions: Videssa Breast combines serum biomarkers with clinical patient characteristics to provide clinicians with additional information for patients with indeterminate breast imaging results, potentially reducing false-positive breast biopsies.
Evaluation for Combination of Shuffle and Diversity on Moving Target Defense Strategy for Cloud Computing

Moving Target Defence (MTD) has been recently proposed and is an emerging proactive approach which provides an asynchronous defensive strategies. Unlike traditional security solutions that focused on removing vulnerabilities, MTD makes a system dynamic and unpredictable by continuously changing attack surface to confuse attackers. MTD can be utilized in cloud computing to address the cloud's security-related problems. There are many literature proposing MTD methods in various contexts, but it still lacks approaches to evaluate the effectiveness of proposed MTD method. In this paper, we proposed a combination of Shuffle and Diversity MTD techniques and investigate on the effects of deploying these techniques from two perspectives lying on two groups of security metrics (i) system risk: which is the cloud providers' perspective and (ii) attack cost and return on attack: which are attacker's point of view. Moreover, we utilize a scalable Graphical Security Model (GSM) to enhance the security analysis complexity. Finally, we show that combining MTD techniques can improve both aforementioned two groups of security metrics while individual technique cannot.