Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Shockwave Therapy versus Local Corticosteroid Injection in the Treatment of Chronic Plantar Fasciitis: A comparative study.

Objectives: This study aimed to assess the reliability and safety of extracorporeal shockwave therapy (ESWT) versus local corticosteroid injection on pain intensity and functional disability, as treatment modalities of patients suffering from chronic plantar fasciitis (PF). Patients and methods: This study was conducted on 45 patients suffering from chronic PF who failed to respond to conservative treatments. Patients were divided into 3 groups: 15 patients treated with ESWT once per week for 6 successive sessions (Group I), 15 patients treated with a local corticosteroid injection (Group II) and 15 patients taking acetaminophen 500mg/6 hrs for 7 days and exercises, as controls (Group III). All patients were subjected to history taking, clinical examination and assessment of foot pain, disability and activity limitations using the Foot Function Index (FFI) at the beginning of the study and after 6 weeks. Results: At the beginning of the study, no significant differences were reported between the studied groups regarding the FFI (p value = 0.23). However, at the end of the study, a highly statistically significant difference was reported between the three groups regarding the outcome variables (p value =0.001). Improvement occurred in group I and II but it was superior among group I patients. Skin reddening occurred in 11 patients (73.3%) of group I and 2 patients (13%) of group II with a statistically significant difference (p < 0.001) between the 2 groups. Pain was reported in 4 patients (26.7%) and 15 patients (100%) in group I and group II respectively with a highly significant difference (p < 0.001). None of the cases reported allergy or fat bad atrophy. Conclusion: Both ESWT and local corticosteroid injection treatments improved pain and functional ability in patients with chronic PF. Improvement of the FFI total scores was superior with the ESWT therapy that seems to be an unconventional but a safe method for the management of chronic PF.
The role of organic amendments in soil reclamation: A review

Larney, F. J. and Angers, D. A. 2012. The role of organic amendments in soil reclamation: A review. Can. J. Soil Sci. 92: 19-38. A basic tenet of sustainable soil management is that current human activities are not detrimental to future generations. Soils are degraded by natural events (erosion) or industrial activity. A prevalent feature of degraded or disturbed soils is lack of organic matter compared with adjacent undisturbed areas. Organic amendments, such as livestock manure, biosolids, pulp and paper mill by-products, wood residuals and crop residues, are produced in abundance in Canada and could be widely used in soil reclamation. Biosolids production is ~0.5 Tg yr-1(dry wt.); paper mill sludge generated in the province of Quebec was ~2 Tg (wet wt.) in 2002. This review paper examines mechanisms through which organic amendments affect soil properties (physical, chemical, biological) and describes the role of organic amendments in reclamation, with emphasis on amendment types and application rates for soil amelioration and biomass production. Single large applications of organic amendments can accelerate initial reclamation and lead to self-sustaining net primary productivity. Readily decomposable organic amendments may provide immediate, but transient, effects, whereas stable, less decomposable materials may provide longer-lasting effects. Using organic amendments for reclamation is mutually beneficial wherein waste products from agriculture, forestry and urban areas help other sectors meet their land reclamation goals.
A Thematic Analysis of between Session Activities of Counseling Clients

Abstract The contribution of between session tasks to psychotherapy outcome has been well documented and many models of psychotherapy utilize homework as an important component of treatment. Despite widespread use of between session tasks as a therapeutic technique, there is little consensus about the frequency and type of homework, and limited information about the completion of between session tasks, or the palatability of between session tasks on the part of therapy clients. The manuscript presents the results of a qualitative thematic analysis of between session tasks as reported by couple therapy clients of two university-based counseling centers in the United States. Data were collected through a daily diary format. Findings suggested that many clients completed between session tasks. Themes in tasks reported were: Communication and related behaviors; love, acceptance, and emotional work; and task oriented behaviors.
Neural Adaptive Command Filtered Control for Cooperative Path Following of Multiple Underactuated Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Along One Path

The aim of this article is to develop a new cooperative path following control scheme for a team of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) which track one curve with nonlinear uncertainties. Individual path-following controllers are designed to guarantee that each AUV meets the desired tracking performance. For the cooperative path following, a containment control approach is incorporated into the design, where each AUV is forced to evenly disperse on a path that is parameterized by a continuous variable over a communication network. The main features of the paper that unlike the existing designs are that: first, by employing the command filtered control technique, the assumption of second-order derivative of the reference path is removed. Second, a globally uniformly ultimately bounded (GUUB) path following control structure is proposed that enables two kinds of controllers to switch under different cases. Third, coordination between multiple AUVs is achieved through a containment design, and a path variable containment cooperative path following controller is derived that enables multiple AUVs to be evenly dispersed and guided by the virtual leaders. Finally, the stability analysis and simulation example are given to verify the proposed control strategy.
Electromagnetic and Mechanical Analysis of a Modular Outer Rotor Synchronous Reluctance Machine for Light Propulsion Vehicles

This article presents the optimal design from the electromagnetic and structural point of view of a fault-tolerant modular outer rotor synchronous reluctance machine, a not previously constructed topology. Two new topologies with the rotor in modular construction, one with each pole of the rotor considered as a separate module and a segmented one where each rib of a module can be considered as independent, are compared with a classic structure. The electromagnetic analysis is carried out using FLUX 2D software. The main studied parameters are electromagnetic torque, torque ripple content, saliency ratio, and power factor. In order to optimize the power factor of the machine, a cosimulation procedure is carried out for each structure, by employing a MATLAB and FLUX 2D coupling. Based on the obtained performances, the best topology is selected. Furthermore, a mechanical analysis is performed to determine if the new proposed rotor meets the structural integrity at rated speed and to establish the maximum speed value that can be attained such that the structural failure of the rotor is prevented. A modular outer rotor synchronous reluctance machine is designed and built. Experimental results of testing the prototype are given to confirm the validity of the proposed machine.
Response of quality protein maize (Zea mays) to nutrient and weed management in southern Rajasthan

A field experiment was conducted during rainy seasons of 2008 and 2009 to evaluate the effect of fertility levels, nutrient sources and weed management on quality protein maize production. The treatments comprised of 3 nitrogen + phosphorus levels viz. 90 + 40, 120 + 50 and 150 + 60 kg N and P2O5 ha–1, 3 nutrient sources viz. 100% NP, 75% NP + 25% vermicompost and 50% NP + 50% vermicompost and 3 weed control measures viz. weedy check, metribuzin 0.4 kg ha–1 followed by hoeing and weeding and atrazine 0.4 kg + alachlor 2.0 kg ha–1 followed by hoeing and weeding (HW). These were tested in a split plot design replicated thrice with nitrogen + phosphorus levels and nutrient sources in main-plots and weed control in sub-plots. Nitrogen + phosphorus levels had no significant effect on weed density, but their dry matter production increased significantly by raising nitrogen + phosphorus level from 90 + 40 kg N and P2O5 ha–1 to 120 + 50 kg N and P2O5 ha–1. The grain yield also increased significantly up to 120 + 50 kg N and P2O5 ha–1 during two years of study (4.20 and 4.15 kg ha–1). Stover and biological yields increased significantly up to 150 + 60 kg N and P2O5 ha–1. Nutrient sources had no significant effect on weed density. Application of 100% NP and 75% NP + 25% vermicompost were at par and significantly superior over 50% NP + 50% vermicompost in producing weed dry matter during both years. Weed management through atrazine + alachlor fb HW resulted in significant reduction in weed density & dry matter with concomitant significant increase in grain, stover & biological yields.
Review of the global models used within the Chemistry-Climate Model Initiative (CCMI)

We present an overview of state-of-the-art chemistry-climate and -transport models that are used within the Chemistry Climate Model Initiative (CCMI). CCMI aims to conduct a detailed evaluation of participating models using process-oriented diagnostics derived from observations in order to gain confidence in the models’ projections of the stratospheric ozone layer, air quality, where applicable global climate change, and the interactions between them. Interpretation of these diagnostics requires detailed knowledge of the radiative, chemical, dynamical, and physical processes incorporated in the models. Also an understanding of the degree to which CCMI recommendations for simulations have been followed is necessary to understand model response to anthropogenic and natural forcing and also to explain inter-model differences. This becomes even more important given the ongoing development and the ever-growing complexity of these models. This paper also provides an overview of the available CCMI simulations with the aim to inform CCMI data users.
Preventing Falls Together: Social Identification Matters for Engaging Older Adults in a Group-based Exercise Program

ABSTRACT According to socioemotional selectivity theory, older adults may attend a falls prevention program due to social-emotional rather than health-related factors. Within a prospective design, N = 174 participants completed a questionnaire (T1) assessing social identification with the training group, risk perception, outcome expectancies, self-efficacy beliefs, intention, health status and form of housing. At follow-up six month later (T2), n = 125 participants provided information on training attendance. A multiple regression analysis with form of housing as moderator revealed that social identification predicted attendance, but only for those participants living alone (β = .87, p < .001). Health-related predictors were not associated with attendance.
Elastogravity Waves and Dynamic Ground Motions in the Korean Peninsula Generated by the March 11, 2011 MW9.0 Tohoku‐Oki Megathrust Earthquake

The mass dislocations caused by large coseismic slips in megathrust earthquakes are large enough to produce elastogravity waves. Despite, successful identification of elastogravity‐wave development during megathrust earthquakes, the nature of ground motions and hazard potentials in regional and teleseismic distances remains unknown. The dynamic ground motions from the March 11, 2011 MW9.0 Tohoku‐Oki megathrust earthquake are retrieved from broadband seismic records throughout the Korean Peninsula. The dynamic ground motions of the megathrust earthquake are dominated by low‐frequency (<0.1 Hz) energy that is a mixture of elastogravity waves and seismic waves. The peak dynamic ground displacements in the Korean Peninsula reached ∼20 cm with horizontal permanent displacements of ∼2 cm or more. Radially‐polarized elastogravity waves developed instantly at the event origin time. Very‐long‐period (<0.004 Hz) energy is a mixture of seismic waves and coseismic permanent displacements, presenting radially polarized retrograde particle motions for ∼600 s. The peak ground displacements (PGDs) and velocities for the Tohoku‐Oki earthquake are larger than those for a local MW5.4 earthquake. The peak ground motions vary azimuthally following the source radiation pattern. The tangential PGD increases with distance along continental ray paths due to the development of crustally guided waves. Large and slow dynamic ground motions cause dynamic stress changes of ∼1.8 MPa in the lithosphere of the Korean Peninsula, while the properties of the mantle are scarcely affected by slow dynamic motions. The large long‐period displacements induced by megathrust earthquakes may cause considerable long‐duration distortion on large buildings at regional and teleseismic distances. The characteristic elastogravity‐wave features may be used for detection of mass‐dislocation events.
Point Transformer for Shape Classification and Retrieval of Urban Roof Point Clouds

The success of deep learning methods led to significant breakthroughs in 3-D point cloud processing tasks with applications in remote sensing. Existing methods utilize convolutions that have some limitations, as they assume a uniform input distribution and cannot learn long-range dependences. Recent works have shown that adding attention in conjunction with these methods improves performance. This raises a question: can attention layers completely replace convolutions? This letter proposes a fully attentional model—Point Transformer (PT) for deriving a rich point cloud representation. The model’s shape classification and retrieval performance are evaluated on a large-scale urban data set—RoofN3D and a standard benchmark data set ModelNet40. Extensive experiments are conducted to test the model’s robustness to unseen point corruptions for analyzing its effectiveness on real data sets. The proposed method outperforms other state-of-the-art models in the RoofN3D data set, gives competitive results in the ModelNet40 benchmark, and shows high robustness to various unseen point corruptions. Furthermore, the model is highly memory and space-efficient when compared to other methods.
A health care record review of early mobility activities after fragility hip fracture: Utilizing the French systematic method to inform future interventions.

BACKGROUND A fragility hip fracture is a serious injury in older adults. After experiencing a fracture, a large percentage of patients do not regain their pre-fracture level of mobility. There are several international guidelines recommending early mobility after surgery. We do not know the usage of these early mobility recommendations by health care providers within our institution. An evidence-to-practice gap occurs when there is a failure to implement best practices. Utilization of a systematic method allows for a strategic approach to assessment of an evidence-to-practice gap. There were two aims of this project: a) to describe early mobility activities undertaken on one post surgical unit and, b) to identify if there is an evidence-to-practice gap. METHODS At a large tertiary centre in Toronto, Ontario, medical records from one calendar year were abstracted for older adults (≥65 years of age) recovering from fragility hip fracture repair. Data were collected regarding demographics, co-morbidities, surgery type, post-operative mobility activities, and any post-operative complications. Primary outcomes were: evidence of early mobility activities and a comparison to Health Quality Ontario recommendations for fragility hip fracture care. RESULTS Between 11% and 50% of patients were not participating in early mobility activities. By postoperative day five only two patients had walked over 50 m. Those with low pre-fracture functional ability and a cognitive impairment consistently experienced lower rates of participation compared to patients with high pre-fracture functional ability and no cognitive impairment. Chi-square tests and regression analysis did not reveal any significant associations with variables. CONCLUSIONS There was very limited participation in early mobility activities after surgery. The study was unable to identify any significant relationships between several variables that may impact participation. This chart review identified the processes that have been sustained and highlights potential areas for future interventions.
Structural studies of enzymes involved in antibiotic resistance and phosphonate degradation

Several classes of naturally occurring antibiotics target the aminoacyl tRNA synthetase (aaRS) enzymes. The aspartyl tRNA synthetase inhibitor microcin C7 (McC7) consists of an aspartyl-adenylate conjugated to a hexapeptide carrier that facilitates active import into bacterial cells through an oligopeptide transport system. Subsequent proteolytic processing releases the toxic compound inside the target cell. As the processing proteases are broad spectrum nonspecific enzymes, producing strains of McC7 must protect themselves against auto-toxicity that may result from premature processing within the producer cell itself. The mccF and mccE genes confer resistance against McC7 by hydrolyzing the amide bond that connects the peptide and nucleotide moieties of McC7, and acetylating the backbone primary amine of the antibiotic respectively. We have determined the wild type apo crystal structure of MccF and of catalytically deficient mutant form of the enzyme in complex with the processed form of McC7 and various other substrate analogs. The MccF structure is similar to that of dipeptide LDcarboxypeptidase, but with an additional loop proximal to the active site that serves as the primary determinant for recognition of adenylated substrates. Wild-type MccF only hydrolyzes 1 Parts of this chapter have been adapted with permission from: 1. Agarwal V, Tikhonov A, Metlitskaya A, Severinov K, Nair SK. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012 Mar 20;109(12):4425-30. Referred to as ‘Agarwal et. al., 2012’ in this chapter. Reproduced with the permission of the publisher and is available from http://www.pnas. org/ and using DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1114224109. 2. Agarwal V, Metlitskaya A, Severinov K, Nair SK. J Biol Chem. 2011 Jun 17;286(24):21295-303. Referred to as ‘Agarwal et. al., 2011’ in this chapter. Reproduced with the permission of the publisher and is available from http://www.jbc. org/ and using DOI: 10.1074/jbc.M111. 226282. 3. Agarwal V, Nair SK. Med Chem Comm. 2012. Referred to as ‘Agarwal and Nair, 2012’ in this chapter. Reproduced with the permission of the publisher and is available fromhttp://pubs.rsc. org/en/journals/journalissues/md and using the DOI: 10.1039/c2md20032e.
Antibacterial mechanism of Aspergillus niger xj spore powder crude extract B10 against Agrobacterium tumefaciens T-37

Abstract A crude extract (B10) of Aspergillus niger spores showed effective antibacterial activity against Agrobacterium tumefaciens T-37. The inhibition rate was 98.22%, and the half maximal inhibitory concentration was 0.035 ± 0.018 mg/mL. To study the primary antibacterial mechanism, this study used relative electric conductivity, release of proteins and nucleic acids, sodium dodecyl sulphate–polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS–PAGE) and detection of reactive oxygen species (ROS). After adding B10, the relative electric conductivity increased in the supernatant indicating electrolyte transport from intracellular to extracellular space. Compared with the control group and the benzylpenicillin potassium (BP) group, the B10 group had a significant increase in extracellular nucleic acid and protein within 0–18 h, showing that the cell and cytoplasmic membranes were damaged by B10. The SDS–PAGE results confirmed that the extracellular protein and nucleic acid levels were in agreement with lower intracellular total protein. Finally, the intracellular levels of ROS indicated that B10 caused an increase in ROS. In summary, B10 showed clear antibacterial activity against A. tumefaciens through damaging cytoplasmic membranes. The research provided a scientific basis for the prevention and treatment of bacteria.
Unit commitment in a hybrid diesel/wind/pumped‐storage isolated power system considering the net demand intra‐hourly variability

This paper presents a novel two-stage stochastic mixed-integer linear programming model for the generation scheduling of a hybrid diesel/wind/pumped-storage power system that considers the intra-hourly net demand variability during the ﬁrst stage. The model aims to minimise the scheduling cost, calculates the power system storage opportunity cost and considers that the start-up cost of thermal units depends on the time passed since the previous shutdown in a detailed manner for the ﬁrst stage (i.e. using integer variables) and in an approximate manner (relaxing the integrality constraints) for the second stage. To increase the model’s computational efﬁciency, a solution approach based on the Benders decomposition technique is applied. The model is implemented in the real power system of El Hierro island, an isolated hybrid diesel/wind/pumped-storage power system with a closed-loop pumped-storage plant and high wind power installed capacity. The schedules provided by the proposed model are compared to the ones provided by a similar model that does not consider the intra-hourly net demand variability, resulting in generation schedules with a signiﬁcantly lower wind energy curtailment. The results demonstrate the importance of considering the intra-hourly net demand variability in order to integrate more wind energy at a moderate extra cost.
Vibrational–Electrical Properties Relationship in Donor-Doped TiO2 by Raman Spectroscopy

Transparent conducting TiO2, obtained by Nb or Ta doping of the anatase structure, is gaining increasing attention for the development of transparent electrodes. Usually, regardless of the deposition technique, a crystallization process in a reducing atmosphere is necessary to achieve large mobility; in addition, electrical and optical properties are also strongly sensitive to the oxygen deposition pressure. These facts reveal that the defect chemistry of donor-doped TiO2 is not trivial and involves a strict interplay among extrinsic dopant atoms, oxygen vacancies, and “electron killer” defects such as Ti vacancies and O interstitials. We here present a Raman characterization of donor-doped TiO2 films synthesized under several deposition and postannealing conditions, employing different doping levels and dopant elements (i.e., Ta and Nb). Correlations between structure, crystallinity, shift and width of Raman peaks, and electrical properties are shown and discussed. In particular, a clear relationship bet.
Heterogeneous Taxes and Limited Risk Sharing: Evidence from Municipal Bonds

Heterogeneity in the taxation of asset returns can create ownership clienteles. Using a simple model, we demonstrate that an important consequence of tax-induced ownership segmentation is to limit risk-sharing, creating regions of the aggregate demand curve for the asset that are "downward-sloping. '' As a result, the constraints of the ownership clientele impact the asset price response to variations in asset supply, and make the asset's price more sensitive to movements in idiosyncratic risk. We test these predictions on U.S. municipal bonds, where cross-state variation in state tax privilege results in different levels of in-state ownership. In states with high tax-induced ownership segmentation, we find greater susceptibility of municipal bond yields to supply variation and heightened sensitivity of muni yields to local political uncertainty.