Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Morphological Changes in the Residual Meniscus After Reshaping Surgery for a Discoid Lateral Meniscus

Background: Arthroscopic reshaping surgery is the first treatment option for a symptomatic discoid lateral meniscus (DLM) to preserve the peripheral rim. However, the degree of postoperative morphological change in the residual meniscus is unclear. Purpose/Hypothesis: The purpose of this study was to measure the meniscus after reshaping surgery for a DLM, to verify when the morphological change occurred, and to examine the related risk factors. The hypothesis was that the residual meniscal width would decrease throughout the postoperative course. Study Design: Case-control study; Level of evidence, 3. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of patients who underwent reshaping surgery for a symptomatic DLM and had undergone follow-up for ≥2 years. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was routinely performed preoperatively and at 3, 6, 12, and 24 months postoperatively, and the width, height, and extrusion of the residual meniscus were measured. According to the width of the midbody on final MRI scans, we compared the preoperative and postoperative data for the preserved group (≥5 mm) and decreased group (<5 mm). The associated risk factors for a decreased meniscal width (<5 mm) of the midbody were analyzed on final MRI scans. Results: We included 61 knees of 54 patients in this study. The mean age at the time of surgery was 11.7 years. The intraobserver and interobserver reliabilities of the midbody width were 0.937 and 0.921, respectively. The width of the anterior horn, midbody, and posterior horn decreased significantly from 3 to 24 months after surgery (from 9.1 to 8.6 mm [P < .001], from 7.5 to 6.1 mm [P < .001], and from 9.5 to 8.9 mm [P = .001], respectively). Meniscal extrusion of the midbody did not change significantly (from 1.2 to 1.5 mm; P = .062). Overall, 46 knees (n = 20/32 in the preserved group and n = 26/29 in the decreased group) had longitudinal tears that required meniscal repair. Clinical outcomes did not differ significantly between the 2 groups. Multivariate logistic analysis showed that intrameniscal degeneration (odds ratio, 4.36; P = .023) significantly increased the risk of a decreased meniscal width. Conclusion: The width of the anterior horn, midbody, and posterior horn decreased significantly from 3 to 24 months after surgery. In particular, the average decrease rate of the midbody was 19%. No clinical difference was seen in patients with a decreased width and height or with peripheral extrusion. Increased intrameniscal signals on preoperative MRI scans were associated with an increased risk of a decreased meniscal width. Surgeons should consider this result to determine the amount of resection.
Quantification of Calcium in Peripheral Arteries of the Lower Extremities

Supplemental digital content is available in the text. Objectives The aim of this study was to investigate the interscanner and interscoring platform variability of calcium quantification in peripheral arteries of the lower extremities. Materials and Methods Twenty human fresh-frozen legs were scanned using 3 different computed tomography (CT) scanners. The radiation dose (CTDIvol) was kept similar for all scanners. The calcium scores (Agatston and volume scores) were quantified using 4 semiautomatic scoring platforms. Comparative analysis of the calcium scores between scanners and scoring platforms was performed by using the Friedman test; post hoc analysis was performed by using the Wilcoxon signed rank test with Bonferroni correction. Results Sixteen legs had calcifications and were used for data analysis. Agatston and volume scores ranged from 12.1 to 6580 Agatston units and 18.2 to 5579 mm3. Calcium scores differed significantly between Philips IQon and Philips Brilliance 64 (Agatston: 19.5% [P = 0.001]; volume: 14.5% [P = 0.001]) and Siemens Somatom Force (Agatston: 18.1% [P = 0.001]; volume: 17.5% [P = 0.001]). The difference between Brilliance 64 and Somatom Force was smaller (Agatston: 5.6% [P = 0.778]; volume: 7.7% [P = 0.003]). With respect to the interscoring platform variability, OsiriX produced significantly different Agatston scores compared with the other 3 scoring platforms (OsiriX vs IntelliSpace: 14.8% [P = 0.001] vs Syngo CaScore: 13.9% [P = 0.001] vs iX viewer: 13.2% [P < 0.001]). For the volume score, the differences between all scoring platforms were small ranging from 2.9% to 4.0%. Post hoc analysis showed a significant difference between OsiriX and IntelliSpace (3.8% [P = 0.001]). Conclusions The use of different CT scanners resulted in notably different Agatston and volume scores, whereas the use of different scoring platforms resulted in limited variability especially for the volume score. In conclusion, the variability in calcium quantification was most evident between different CT scanners and for the Agatston score.
Measurement of the Reaction Between Endotoxin and Limulus

To study the active proteins which participate in the reaction of Limulus amoebocyte lysate (LAL) with lipopolysaccharide, antibody was raised in rabbits against LAL. When LAL was run against rabbit antiserum in crossed immunoelectrophoresis, a complex precipitin pattern appeared. Profound changes took place after reaction of LAL with lipopolysaccharide. The most distinct change was the complete disappearance of the cathodic migrating protein coagulogen, because the antigenicity of coagulogen was lost. Based on this observation, a new rocket immunoelectrophoretic method was developed to detect the disappearance of coagulogen after reaction of LAL with lipopolysaccharide. This assay method was used on clinical specimens (cerebrospinal fluid, plasma, ascites, and urine). It was used as a qualitative test, when a single sample is tested, or as a quantitative assay, when a number of sample dilutions were tested. The new method showed a higher degree of accuracy and sensitivity in comparison with the tube test and it can be used for both research and diagnostic purposes.
Prolonged grief in refugees living in Germany confronted with ambiguous or confirmed loss

ABSTRACT Background and objectives People often disappear in the context of displacement or armed conflicts. Although such an ambiguous loss is accompanied by persistent uncertainty about the whereabouts, the psychological consequences are not well understood. This study investigated the effects of ambiguous compared to a confirmed loss on prolonged grief disorder (PGD) and its correlates in refugees to Germany. Methods and design We investigated data on mental health outcomes of refugees from Syria, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan who had applied for/were granted asylum in Germany. In a secondary analysis, we compared 87 refugees with disappeared (n = 33) and deceased relatives (n = 54) who had completed questionnaire-based interviews. Results Participants with ambiguous loss displayed more severe symptoms of PGD than those with confirmed loss. However, we found no group differences in terms of probable disorder rates and the number of traumatic experiences. Even after controlling for several correlates of PGD, higher PGD symptom severity was associated with ambiguous loss, more PTSD symptoms and low perceived social support. Conclusions These results show a higher prolonged grief symptom severity after the loss of a significant other due to disappearance, indicating that this type of loss could be a specific risk factor for PGD severity.
Retrospective Longitudinal Evaluation of Male Firefighter's Body Composition and Cardiovascular Health

Sudden cardiovascular related death remains and occupational concern for career firefighters. Regular screening is advocated to identify high risk firefighters. This study demonstrates that firefighter’s body composition worsens with advancing age. Results enhance a clinician’s ability to appraise a firefighters change in body composition with age. Objective: Describe firefighter body composition and cardiovascular health as a function of age. Methods: 217 male firefighters with 1922 distinct evaluations over 23-years were included in this retrospective analysis. The firefighters had their height, mass, six-site skin-fold, blood pressure, and resting heart rate measured annually. Linear mixed models were used to analyze the effect of age. Significance was set to P < 0.05. Results: With each 1-year increase in age, mass (0.42 kg, P < 0.001), body mass index (0.13 kg m−2, P < 0.001), body fat percentage (0.18%, P < 0.001), fat mass (0.25 kg, P < 0.001), and fat free mass (0.15 kg, P < 0.001) increased. Systolic blood pressure (−0.09 mm Hg, P = 0.263), diastolic blood pressure (0.05 mm Hg, P = 0.308), and resting heart rate (0.07 beats min−1, P = 0.291) did not change. Conclusions: Interventions to maintain healthy body composition are critical to reduce sudden cardiovascular related death risk.
Multi-scale ensemble properties of the Escherichia coli RNA degradosome

In organisms from all domains of life, multi‐enzyme assemblies play central roles in defining transcript lifetimes and facilitating RNA‐mediated regulation of gene expression. An assembly dedicated to such roles, known as the RNA degradosome, is found amongst bacteria from highly diverse lineages. About a fifth of the assembly mass of the degradosome of Escherichia coli and related species is predicted to be intrinsically disordered – a property that has been sustained for over a billion years of bacterial molecular history and stands in marked contrast to the high degree of sequence variation of that same region. Here, we characterize the conformational dynamics of the degradosome using a hybrid structural biology approach that combines solution scattering with ad hoc ensemble modelling, cryo‐electron microscopy, and other biophysical methods. The E. coli degradosome can form punctate bodies in vivo that may facilitate its functional activities, and based on our results, we propose an electrostatic switch model to account for the propensity of the degradosome to undergo programmable puncta formation.
“That’s Me I am the Farmer of the Land”: Exploring Identities, Masculinities, and Health Among Male Farmers’ in Ireland

Compared to other occupational groups, farmers in Ireland experience a disproportionate burden of health problems, which impact farmers’ livelihoods and farming sustainability. Internationally, farmers’ poor health outcomes are associated with intersecting economic, environmental, socio-cultural, and occupation-specific factors linked to changes in agricultural governance. This qualitative study explored the challenges and stressors facing farmers in Ireland and how changes in farming governance have impacted farmers’ identities, masculinities and health. Eleven focus groups (n = 26 female, n = 35 male, age-range 20s–70s) were conducted with both male farmers (n = 3 focus groups; n = 13) and key informants (n = 8 focus groups; n = 48, 22 male, 26 female). Utilizing Thematic Content Analysis, transcripts were coded independently by the first and second author using open and comparative coding techniques, with emerging themes grouped into primary and subthemes. Theme memos and conceptual maps tracked evolving relationships between themes. The analysis identified three broad themes. “Wrestling with challenges to autonomy and control within farming” examines the impact of tighter regulatory frameworks associated with changes to farming governance and unpacks other challenges associated with scale and succession. “Farming masculinities and health” explores how farming masculinities were closely aligned with farming practices and health practices and were framed relationally. “Isolation and the demise of rural communities” considers the impact of reduced social interaction on loneliness among farmers, particularly among more “at risk” single and older farmers. Findings provide unique insights into contemporary challenges and stressors facing farmers and have important implications for informing the design and roll-out of a national farmers’ health training program.
Generating Data Visualizations of Longitudinal Cohort Ambient Air Pollution Exposure

Supplemental digital content is available in the text. A civic engagement and data science design was used to develop a report-back intervention to address stakeholder concerns related to air emissions surrounding a coke oven factory near Buffalo, NY. This factory had historically emitted high levels of benzene pollution and ceased operation in October 2018 because of violations of the US Clean Air Act and US Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Using publicly available air pollution and weather data, descriptive time series and wind-rose data visualizations were developed using open-source software as part of a two-page report-back brief. Data from two air toxics monitoring sites in this direction suggest that industrial sources were likely the major contributor to the benzene in the air at these locations prior to May 2018, after which traffic emissions became the likely major contributor. Wind-rose visualizations demonstrated that the wind typically blew toward the northeast, which was qualitatively consistent with locations of stakeholder concerns. With the factory closed, collective efforts subsequently shifted to address traffic emission air pollution sources, factory site cleanup, and ground and water pollution mitigation. Because this intervention utilized open-source software and publicly available data, it can serve as a blueprint for future data-driven nursing interventions and community-led environmental justice efforts.
The Estimation of Physiologic Ability and Surgical Stress (E-PASS) model as a predictor of postoperative complications and mortality after digestive surgeries: a meta-analysis and systematic review.

BACKGROUND Conflicting results exist about the usefulness of the Estimation of Physiologic Ability and Surgical Stress (E-PASS) model in patients undergoing digestive surgeries. Thus, this study aims to analyze and evaluate the E-PASS model for predicting postoperative complications and mortality. METHODS A literature search strategy for "E-PASS" was carried out in PubMed, Embase, Google Scholar, Ovid, and Cochrane databases for studies published before November 2020. "E-PASS" or "Estimation of Physiologic Ability and Surgical Stress" were used as the search terms in all databases, and a total of 20 published English language studies with available data relating to digestive surgery were selected for this study. Clinical data and indices including preoperative risk score (PRS), surgical stress score (SSS), comprehensive risk score (CRS), postoperative complications, mortality, and overall survival (OS) were collected. Meta-analyses of heterogeneity were performed using Review Manager version 5.3 and STATA 14.0. RESULTS Twenty studies with 9,136 patients were included in our meta-analysis. Using a random-effects model, the indices of the E-PASS model in patients with postoperative complications were significantly greater than those in patients without complications [PRS: 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.14-1.50; SSS: 95% CI: 0.28-1.06; CRS: 95% CI: 048-1.49]. Moreover, patient morbidity and mortality were associated with a higher CRS (morbidity: 95% CI: 2.17-6.29; mortality: 95% CI: 1.57-4.78), while subgroup analyses showed that a high CRS in the elderly was related to increased morbidity (95% CI: 1.57-4.78) without heterogeneity. In addition, we found that a high E-PASS CRS was significantly associated with shorter OS after digestive surgery (95% CI: 1.24-5.41). DISCUSSION The higher CRS score in the E-PASS model accompanies with many postoperative complications, increased mortality and shorter OS. Collectively, the E-PASS model is a convenient and effective risk assessment for patients undergoing digestive surgeries. More stringently designed studies are expected to develop better estimates of the application value of this model in digestive surgeries.
Physiology and ecology combine to determine host and vector importance for Ross River virus

Identifying the key vector and host species that drive the transmission of zoonotic pathogens is notoriously difficult but critical for disease control. We present a nested approach for quantifying the importance of host and vectors that integrates species’ physiological competence with their ecological traits. We apply this framework to a medically important arbovirus, Ross River virus (RRV), in Brisbane, Australia. We find that vertebrate hosts with high physiological competence are not the most important for community transmission; interactions between hosts and vectors largely underpin the importance of host species. For vectors, physiological competence is highly important. Our results identify primary and secondary vectors of RRV and suggest two potential transmission cycles in Brisbane: an enzootic cycle involving birds and an urban cycle involving humans. The framework accounts for uncertainty from each fitted statistical model in estimates of species’ contributions to transmission and has has direct application to other zoonotic pathogens.
Modeling evidence accumulation decision processes using integral equations: Urgency-gating and collapsing boundaries.

Diffusion models of evidence accumulation have successfully accounted for the distributions of response times and choice probabilities from many experimental tasks, but recently their assumption that evidence is accumulated at a constant rate to constant decision boundaries has been challenged. One model assumes that decision-makers seek to optimize their performance by using decision boundaries that collapse over time. Another model assumes that evidence does not accumulate and is represented by a stationary distribution that is gated by an urgency signal to make a response. We present explicit, integral-equation expressions for the first-passage time distributions of the urgency-gating and collapsing-bounds models and use them to identify conditions under which the models are equivalent. We combine these expressions with a dynamic model of stimulus encoding that allows the effects of perceptual and decisional integration to be distinguished. We compare the resulting models to the standard diffusion model with variability in drift rates on data from three experimental paradigms in which stimulus information was either constant or changed over time. The standard diffusion model was the best model for tasks with constant stimulus information; the models with time-varying urgency or decision bounds performed similarly to the standard diffusion model on tasks with changing stimulus information. We found little support for the claim that evidence does not accumulate and attribute the good performance of the time-varying models on changing-stimulus tasks to their increased flexibility and not to their ability to account for systematic experimental effects. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
Mixed‐effects multilevel analysis followed by canonical correlation analysis is an effective fMRI tool for the investigation of idiosyncrasies

We report that regions‐of‐interest (ROIs) associated with idiosyncratic individual behavior can be identified from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data using statistical approaches that explicitly model individual variability in neuronal activations, such as mixed‐effects multilevel analysis (MEMA). We also show that the relationship between neuronal activation in fMRI and behavioral data can be modeled using canonical correlation analysis (CCA). A real‐world dataset for the neuronal response to nicotine use was acquired using a custom‐made MRI‐compatible apparatus for the smoking of electronic cigarettes (e‐cigarettes). Nineteen participants smoked e‐cigarettes in an MRI scanner using the apparatus with two experimental conditions: e‐cigarettes with nicotine (ECIG) and sham e‐cigarettes without nicotine (SCIG) and subjective ratings were collected. The right insula was identified in the ECIG condition from the χ2‐test of the MEMA but not from the t‐test, and the corresponding activations were significantly associated with the similarity scores (r = −.52, p = .041, confidence interval [CI] = [−0.78, −0.17]) and the urge‐to‐smoke scores (r = .73, p <.001, CI = [0.52, 0.88]). From the contrast between the two conditions (i.e., ECIG > SCIG), the right orbitofrontal cortex was identified from the χ2‐tests, and the corresponding neuronal activations showed a statistically meaningful association with similarity (r = −.58, p = .01, CI = [−0.84, −0.17]) and the urge to smoke (r = .34, p = .15, CI = [0.09, 0.56]). The validity of our analysis pipeline (i.e., MEMA followed by CCA) was further evaluated using the fMRI and behavioral data acquired from the working memory and gambling tasks available from the Human Connectome Project.
Neural Architecture Search for Portrait Parsing

This work proposes a neural architecture search (NAS) method for portrait parsing, which is a novel up-level task based on portrait segmentation and face labeling. Recently, NAS has become an effective method in terms of automatic machine learning. However, remarkable achievements have been made only in image classification and natural language processing (NLP) areas. Meanwhile, state-of-the-art portrait segmentation and face labeling approaches are all manually designed, but few models reach a tradeoff between efficiency and performance. Thus, we are extremely interested in improving existing NAS methods for dense-per-pixel prediction tasks on portrait datasets. To achieve that, we resort to a cell-based encoder–decoder architecture with an elaborate design of connectivity structure and searching space. As a result, we achieve state-of-the-art performance on three portrait tasks, including 96.8% MIOU on EG1800 (portrait segmentation), 91.2% overall $F1$ -score on HELEN (face labeling), and 95.1% overall $F1$ -score on CelebAMask-HQ (portrait parsing) with only 2.29M model parameters. That is, our approach compares favorably with all previous works on portrait datasets. More crucially, we empirically prove that even a fundamental encoder–decoder architecture may reach an outstanding result on the aforementioned tasks with the help of the innovative approach of NAS. To the best of our knowledge, our work is also the first to report the success of applying NAS on these portrait tasks.
SPERMICIDAL ACTIVITY OF CHLOROFORM FRACTION OF HYDRO-METHANOL (2:3) EXTRACT OF CUMINUM CYMINUM: AN IN VITRO STUDY

The chloroform fraction of hydro-methanol extract of Cuminum cyminum was examined for its effects on sperm motility in vitro at different concentration. Different doses of chloroform fraction were added to an amount of fresh semen, in a 1:1 volumic ratio. Motility and viability of cells, hypoosmotic swelling test and sperm revival tests were carried out. A dose and time dependent effect of this fraction on sperm motility and viability was observed. The maximal spermicidal effect was observed with a 2 mg/ml dose of the fraction. The effects were spermicidal but not spermiostatic as sperm immobilization effect was found to be irreversible. The maximum number of sperm failed to decondense when treated with 2 mg/ml chloroform fraction. The hypoosmotic swelling of these sperm was reduced significantly at this highest concentration, indicating that the fraction may probably cause injury to the sperm plasma membrane. The present study indicates that chloroform fraction of hydro-methanol extract of Cuminum cyminum has potential spermicidal effect in vitro.