Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Concussions in the National Hockey League: Analysis of Incidence, Return to Play, and Performance

Background: Concussion injuries are common in professional hockey; however, their effect on player performance remains unclear. Purpose: To quantify the effect of concussions on the performance of position players in the National Hockey League (NHL). Study Design: Cohort study; Level of evidence, 3. Methods: Concussion data from the NHL were collected using publicly available databases for the seasons between 2009-2010 and 2015-2016, coinciding with new NHL concussion rules. Age, body mass index, position, number of concussions during a player’s NHL career, games played, and time on ice were recorded. Basic and advanced performance metrics were collected for 1 season pre- and postconcussion (short-term period) and 3 seasons before and after concussion (long-term period) to assess short- and long-term changes in performance. A control group of players without an identified concussion who competed during the study period was assembled for comparison. Wilcoxon signed rank tests were used to evaluate pre- to postconcussion data in the short- and long-term settings as well as to compare the cohorts at each time point. Results: Overall, 48 players were identified as having a concussion during the study period. Players missed 17.2 ± 15.1 days (mean ± standard deviation) and 7.5 ± 6.9 games postconcussion. There were no significant differences in any metric when pre- and postconcussion intraseason performance was assessed. Athletes who were concussed demonstrated significantly deceased performance metrics (assists per 60 minutes, points per 60 minutes, Corsi percentage, and Fenwick percentage) in the 3 years after the concussion as compared with the year before injury (P < .05). However, no difference was found between the concussed group and matched control group in the short- or long-term period. Players with concussion played fewer career games (856.4 ± 287.4 vs 725.7 ± 215.0; P < .05) than did controls. Conclusion: A high rate of NHL players were able to return to play after a concussion injury. Players with concussion did not experience a reduction in performance metrics in the short- or long-term setting when compared with matched controls. The concussed cohort maintained a similar workload up to 3 seasons postconcussion but played in fewer career games when compared with matched controls.
A social perspective on perceived distances reveals deep community structure

Significance Community structure arising through relationships and interactions is essential to our understanding of the world around us. Leveraging social concepts of conflict and support, we introduce a method to transform input dissimilarity comparisons into output pairwise relationship strengths (or cohesion) and resulting weighted networks. The introduced perspective may be particularly valuable for data with varying local density such as that arising from complex evolutionary processes. Mathematical results, together with applications in linguistics, genetics, and cultural psychology as well as to benchmark data, have been included. Together, these demonstrate how meaningful community structure can be identified without additional inputs (e.g., number of clusters or neighborhood size), optimization criteria, iterative procedures, or distributional assumptions. Community structure, including relationships between and within groups, is foundational to our understanding of the world around us. For dissimilarity-based data, leveraging social concepts of conflict and alignment, we provide an approach for capturing meaningful structural information resulting from induced local comparisons. In particular, a measure of local (community) depth is introduced that leads directly to a probabilistic partitioning conveying locally interpreted closeness (or cohesion). A universal choice of threshold for distinguishing strongly and weakly cohesive pairs permits consideration of both local and global structure. Cases in which one might benefit from use of the approach include data with varying density such as that arising as snapshots of complex processes in which differing mechanisms drive evolution locally. The inherent recalibrating in response to density allows one to sidestep the need for localizing parameters, common to many existing methods. Mathematical results together with applications in linguistics, cultural psychology, and genetics, as well as to benchmark clustering data have been included. Together, these demonstrate how meaningful community structure can be identified without additional inputs (e.g., number of clusters or neighborhood size), optimization criteria, iterative procedures, or distributional assumptions.
Ultrasound Radiomics Nomogram Integrating Three-Dimensional Features Based on Carotid Plaques to Evaluate Coronary Artery Disease

This study aimed to explore the feasibility of ultrasound radiomics analysis before invasive coronary angiography (ICA) for evaluating the severity of coronary artery disease (CAD) quantified by the SYNTAX score (SS). This study included 105 carotid plaques from 105 patients (64 low-SS patients, 41 intermediate-high-SS patients). The clinical characteristics and three-dimensional ultrasound (3D-US) features before ICA were assessed. Ultrasound images of carotid plaques were used for radiomics analysis. Least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression, which generated several nonzero coefficients, was used to select features that could predict intermediate-high SS. Based on those coefficients, the radiomics score (Rad-score) was calculated. The selected clinical characteristics, 3D-US features, and Rad-score were finally integrated into a radiomics nomogram. Among the clinical characteristics and 3D-US features, high-density lipoprotein (HDL), apolipoprotein B (Apo B), and plaque volume were identified as predictors for distinguishing between low SS and intermediate-high SS. During the radiomics process, 8 optimal radiomics features most capable of identifying intermediate-high SS were selected from 851 candidate radiomics features. The differences in Rad-score between the training and the validation set were significant (p = 0.016 and 0.006). The radiomics nomogram integrating HDL, Apo B, plaque volume, and Rad-score showed excellent results in the training set (AUC, 0.741 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.646–0.835)) and validation set (AUC, 0.939 (95% CI: 0.860–1.000)), with good calibration (mean absolute errors of 0.028 and 0.059 in training and validation sets, respectively). Decision curve analysis showed that the radiomics nomogram could identify patients who could obtain the most benefit. We concluded that the radiomics nomogram based on carotid plaque ultrasound has favorable value for the noninvasive prediction of intermediate-high SS. This radiomics nomogram has potential value for the risk stratification of CAD before ICA and provides clinicians with a noninvasive diagnostic tool.
Concert attendee behaviour: the influence of motivations, fan identification and product involvement

The ability to draw consumers to live music performances is vital to the success of both distinct musical acts, and the perpetuation of the music industry as a whole. Analysis of popular music concert attendees, however, is sparse. Therefore, this project investigates the behaviour of concert attendees by considering consumers’ motivations for attendance, level of fan identification and involvement in popular music concerts. The investigation comprises three studies which examine the influence of these consumer behaviour variables on popular music concert attendee behaviour, measured by: the average number of popular music concerts a consumer will attend per year, the number of concerts a consumer will attend for a particular artist, the amount consumers are willing to pay for popular music concert tickets and the distance consumers were willing to travel to popular music concerts. With limited attention given to popular music concerts in the marketing literature, a netnographic analysis was employed in Study 1 and focus groups conducted in Study 2, in order to gain a deeper understanding of fan behaviour in a popular music context. These studies explore how popular music fans differ in relation to their attachment to popular music artists, their level of involvement with popular music performances and the internal drivers for their behaviour. The findings reveal nine motivations that drive popular music concert attendance including hero worship, aesthetics, nostalgia, social interaction, uninhibited behaviour, physical attractiveness, escape, status enhancement and physical skills. The results also indicate that fan identification and product involvement are likely to be important determinants of concert attendee behaviour.
An Improvement in Constrained Studded Pressing for Producing Ultra-Fine-Grained Copper Sheet

In this study, constrained studded pressing (CSP) was modified to produce ultra-fine-grained copper sheets and is called modified-CSP. In modified-CSP, due to the selection of asymmetric semicircle studs, the maximum groove depth can increase up to three times the sheet thickness. In the CSP method, the groove depth is selected to be equal to the sheet thickness. To investigate the effective plastic strain, a finite element model (FEM) of modified-CSP was established. For this purpose, DEFORM-3D commercial software was used. A simulation showed that the modified-CSP process was capable of using higher strain, about 0.8 in each pass than in CSP. Copper sheets were deformed up to 10 passes by modified-CSP. The microstructure of the produced samples was analyzed. The results show that the grain size decreases in the first pass. In addition, with increasing plastic strain, the structure of the twins bands was observed. Mechanical properties, including tensile properties and Vickers microhardness, of the samples during the process were investigated. The strain inhomogeneity factor (SIF) and the hardness inhomogeneity factor (HIF) were used to quantitatively express the uniformity of distribution of effective plastic strain and Vickers microhardness, respectively. Compared with CSP and constrained groove pressing (CGP), the results showed that although the ultimate tensile strength (UTS) has significantly increased, the ductility values have remained almost constant. Moreover, in modified-CSP, the load-die stroke diagram increases almost evenly due to the removal of the stud interface area and progressive engagement. Therefore, modified-CSP copper sheets showed superior tensile properties such as good toughness.
Adaptive task‐space cooperative tracking control for manipulators with a desired trajectory estimator and a velocity observer

In this article, the task‐space cooperative tracking control problem of robotic manipulators without velocity measurements is investigated, where the desired trajectory of an unknown object is only available to the root manipulator. A cooperative tracking control scheme is presented, which is composed of a task‐space desired trajectory estimator, a task‐space velocity observer and an adaptive cooperative control law. The estimator is presented to provide the desired trajectory for each manipulator, and the observer is designed to obtain the task‐space velocity in the absence of velocity measurements. Based on the estimator and velocity observer, an adaptive cooperative control law is proposed to satisfy task tracking and motion synchronization of manipulators in the presence of kinematic and dynamic uncertainties. Furthermore, strict stability analysis is conducted to prove that the task‐space tracking and synchronization errors converge to zero under a connected directed graph. Finally, simulation results are given to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed scheme.
Renin-Angiotensin-Aldosterone System Inhibitors and Risk of Cancer: A Population-Based Cohort Study Using a Common Data Model

Studies have reported conflicting results on the association between the use of renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) inhibitors and cancer development. We compared the incidence of cancer between patients using RAAS inhibitors and other antihypertensive drugs. This retrospective observational cohort study used data from seven hospitals in Korea that were converted for use in the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership Common Data Model. A total of 166,071 patients on antihypertensive therapy across the databases of the seven hospitals were divided into two groups according to the use of RAAS inhibitors. The primary outcome was the occurrence of cancer. A total of 166,071 patients across the databases of the seven hospitals was included in the final analysis; 26,650 (16%) were in the RAAS inhibitors group and 139,421 (84%) in the other antihypertensive drugs group. The meta-analysis of the whole cohort showed a lower incidence of cancer occurrence in the RAAS inhibitor group (9.90 vs. 13.28 per 1000 person years; HR, 0.81; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.75–0.88). After propensity-score matching, the RAAS inhibitor group consistently showed a lower incidence of cancer (9.90 vs. 13.28 per 1000 person years; HR, 0.86; 95% CI, 0.81–0.91). The patients using RAAS inhibitors showed a lower incidence of cancer compared with those using other antihypertensive drugs. These findings support the association between the use of RAAS inhibitors and cancer occurrence.
Deployment Optimization of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface for Relay Systems

To harness the benefits of both relay and reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), we consider in this paper an RIS-aided wireless relaying system, in which a decode-and-forward relay (R) forwards data from a source (S) to a destination (D) with the assistance of an RIS. We first derive the closed-form of the upper bound of the achievable rate of the system. Under the homogeneous transmit power and noise, we derive the optimal RIS deployment in closed-form expressions to draw insights for practical design. Then, for general system setups, we formulate the achievable rate maximization problem by optimizing the RIS deployment. Though the problem is non-convex, we propose an solution to find the optimal RIS deployment and provide some mathematical and theoretical insights. It is unveiled that the optimal strategy is to deploy the RIS near the relay, rather than near S or D in the traditional RIS-aided systems without relay. The numerical results validate our theoretical analysis and show that the RIS and relay can complement each other, and the rate performance is significantly improved over the benchmark schemes.
Dilemmas of Religious Education, Freedom of Religion and Education in Cyprus

The boundaries between secularism, democracy, pluralism, and religious diversity cannot easily be demarcated. Bringing democratic and secular values together with religious pluralism, accommodating different religious communities, and acknowledging individual rights is a great challenge for many societies. In parallel, religious education (RE) in state schools has been a controversial and unresolved issue. On both sides of Cyprus, RE is organized in a mono-confessional way: while the Christian Orthodox content of RE is linked with Greek national identity in the Greek Cypriot South, Sunni Islamic RE is linked with the Turkish national identity in the Turkish Cypriot North. On both sides of the island, the compulsory and mono-confessional characters of RE, as well as the national curricula and textbooks that are used, are a source of conflict. Within this context, this article explores the way RE (Orthodox Christian, Sunni Islamic) is organized in Cyprus and to what extent this may lead to an infringement of the freedom of religion and freedom of education.
Effects of Cleistanthus collinus on the reproductive system of male Wistar rats

Objective Plants are widely used in the traditional system of medicine and many of them can adversely affect the reproductive system. Cleistanthus collinus is a plant containing many active phytochemicals, which have the potential to be developed as a drug. The present study was aimed to evaluate the effects of an aqueous extract of C. collinus on the male reproductive system. Methods Male Wistar rats were treated with different doses of C. collinus (200 and 400 mg/kg, orally), or with saline for 28 days and its effect on the reproductive system was assessed. Cyclophosphamide (100 mg/kg, weekly, i.p), a well-known reproductive toxicant, was used as a positive control. Results There was a significant reduction in sperm count and motility with C. collinus treatment, along with the destruction of primary spermatocytes, spermatids and reduced thickness of the basal layer. The LH, FSH and testosterone levels were reduced significantly. A reduction in the area of seminiferous tubules indicates the destruction of germ cells and Sertoli cells. C. collinus treatment increased the oxidative stress, evidenced by elevated malondialdehyde levels along with a reduction in catalase and GSH activities. The expression of BAX, BCL-2 and p53 was observed in spermatocytes, indicating an increase in apoptosis. Conclusions C. collinus can produce male reproductive toxicity, which may be mediated through alterations in hormonal levels, which in turn interferes with spermatogenesis. It may increase the expression of apoptotic factors and deplete protective antioxidant enzymes in the testis.
On the Relation between the Development of Working Memory Updating and Working Memory Capacity in Preschoolers

This study aims at investigating the relationship between working memory updating and working memory capacity in preschool children. A sample of 176 preschoolers (36–74 months) was administered a working memory updating task (Magic House) along with three working memory capacity tests that specifically measure their core attentional component (M capacity, as defined in the theory of constructive operators): Backward Word Span, Mr. Cucumber, and Direction Following Task. Correlational analyses and cross-classification prediction analyses were performed. Updating and capacity were significantly correlated, although the correlations were not high when age was partialled out. Capacity increased with age, and mediated the relation between age and updating. More importantly, cross-classification prediction analysis revealed that high updating scores with low M capacity, and low updating scores with relatively high M capacity, are possible events; the only combination ruled out was a low updating score with precocious development of M capacity. These facts demonstrate that updating skills in preschoolers depends on M capacity but does not coincide with it. Therefore, in cognitive developmental theories, the constructs of working memory updating and capacity should be distinguished, and on practical grounds, different tests should be used to measure them.
Time‐probabilistic approach to the late Miocene Messinian salinity crisis: Implications for a disconnected Paratethys

The late Miocene Messinian salinity crisis was an evaporitic episode that occurred throughout the Mediterranean; it concluded with a transition from hypersaline to fresher- water “lake sea” (Lago Mare) conditions prior to the Pliocene. Whereas numer ous researchers propose that Lago Mare sediments accumulated in a Mediterranean-wide lake filled with Paratethyan waters, other workers reject this hypothesis. Here, to test this Paratethyan- overflow model, we develop a novel time- probabilistic approach to evaluate the distribution of precession- related deposits. We apply our methodol ogy to 24 circum- Mediterranean sites, focusing on two previously untested param -eters: the probability of preserving intrabasin precession cycles; and the similarities in interbasin preservation. Our results, which show an increase in preservation and similarity in successively younger cycles, display a trend opposite to what is expected from a flooded Mediterranean. Consequently, we conclude that Lago Mare accumula tions were
TRIM37 Promotes Pancreatic Cancer Progression through Modulation of Cell Growth, Migration, Invasion, and Tumor Immune Microenvironment

TRIM37 dysregulation has been observed in several cancer types, implicating its possible role in tumorigenesis. However, the role of TRIM37 in pancreatic cancer progression remains unclear. In the present study, we observed that TRIM37 knockdown resulted in reduced proliferation, clonogenicity, migration, and invasion ability of pancreatic cancer cells. Furthermore, an in vivo study using an orthotopic syngeneic animal model further confirmed that reduced expression of TRIM37 in cancer cells suppressed tumor growth in vivo. Moreover, in mice bearing TRIM37 knockdown pancreatic cancer cells, the proportion of CD11b+F4/80+MHCIIlow immunosuppressive macrophages was significantly reduced in tumor milieu, which might be due to the regulatory role of TRIM37 in cytokine production by pancreatic cancer cells. Collectively, these findings suggest a key role of TRIM37 in promoting pancreatic cancer progression.
Design and Analyses of a Propeller for Underwater Vehicles Using Computational Fluid Dynamics

This paper presents results of computation of a unique propeller design for underwater vehicles using an original in-house algorithm which is developed for the problems of fluid dynamics. Specific software based on finite volume calculations are used to validate design procedure. Conventional propellers having experimental results are good choice to investigate the convenience of solutions. Cavitation tunnel test results of two types of conventional propeller namely P-4382 and P-4119 were considered as a test-case study. The characteristic performances of those were all compared with CFD analysis for different conditions to realize the effects of mesh generation, discretization method and turbulence model in numerical process. Design criteria for unique propeller were selected according to underwater vehicle performance and its requirements. Then the method performed in validation stage was entirely implemented to the new design to observe its performance curves. The results show that this new propeller design is capable of providing desired thrust, vehicle velocity and power output with high efficiency for underwater vehicle. Algorithm implementation, mesh generation, turbulence models and solution methods in CFD process are so suitable that results of analyses are matching with experiments.