Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Diffusion Tensor Imaging: A Possible Biomarker in Severe Traumatic Brain Injury and Aneurysmal Subarachnoid Hemorrhage?

BACKGROUND A great need exists in traumatic brain injury (TBI) and aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH) for objective biomarkers to better characterize the disease process and to serve as early endpoints in clinical studies. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has shown promise in TBI, but much less is known about aSAH. OBJECTIVE To explore the use of whole-brain DTI tractography in TBI and aSAH as a biomarker and early endpoint. METHODS Of a cohort of 43 patients with severe TBI (n = 20) or aSAH (n = 23) enrolled in a prospective, observational, multimodality monitoring study, DTI data were acquired at approximately day 12 (median, 12 days; interquartile range, 12-14 days) after injury in 22 patients (TBI, n = 12; aSAH, n = 10). Whole-brain DTI tractography was performed, and the following parameters quantified: average fractional anisotropy, mean diffusivity, tract length, and the total number of reconstructed fiber tracts. These were compared between TBI and aSAH patients and correlated with mortality and functional outcome assessed at 6 months by the Glasgow Outcome Scale Extended. RESULTS Significant differences were found for fractional anisotropy values (P = .01), total number of tracts (P = .03), and average tract length (P = .002) between survivors and nonsurvivors. A sensitivity analysis showed consistency of results between the TBI and aSAH patients for the various DTI measures. CONCLUSION DTI parameters, assessed at approximately day 12 after injury, correlated with mortality at 6 months in patients with severe TBI or aSAH. Similar patterns were found for both TBI and aSAH patients. This supports a potential role of DTI as early endpoint for clinical studies and a predictor of late mortality. ABBREVIATIONS aSAH, aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhageDTI, diffusion tensor imagingFA, fractional anisotropyGOSE, Glasgow Outcome Scale ExtendedTBI, traumatic brain injuryTE, echo timeTR, repetition time.
The effect of ethoxyquin on the quality of ground poultry mortality carcasses preserved by lactic acid fermentation and phosphoric acid stabilization.

Fermentation and acidification have been shown to preserve the protein quality of ground poultry coproducts, but the effects of these processes on their lipid stability are unknown, especially in the presence of an antioxidant. To evaluate the effects of these treatments on lipid quality, ground poultry mortality carcasses, with and without an addition of 500 ppm ethoxyquin, were stabilized for 14 and 45 d by lactic acid fermentation or acidification with 2.76, 5.07, 7.35, or 9.65% feed-grade H3PO4. Ethoxyquin treatment significantly (P < 0.001) improved the oxidative stability of lipids from all storage treatments. However, the addition of ethoxyquin increased (P < 0.001) the levels of volatile N (VN) from 2.51 to 3.18% in products stored for 45 d and resulted in an increase (P < 0.001) in free fatty acids in all ensiled products. Ethoxyquin addition had no effect (P > 0.120) on the fatty acid profile of products stored for 14 d but significantly increased (P < 0.001) the levels of stearic (C18:0) and arachidonic acids (C20:4) in products stored for 45 d. In this experiment, the addition of ethoxyquin to preservation systems for the short-term storage of poultry mortality carcasses improved the lipid quality of the ground material without compromising the protein quality or affecting proximate analysis parameters. However, the increased oxidative stability of mortality silage materials that contain ethoxyquin may contribute to enhanced microbial or enzymatic activities that result in proteolytic or lypolytic breakdown products following longer periods of storage.
Electrophysiological Correlates of Word Retrieval in Traumatic Brain Injury

Abstract Persons who have had a traumatic brain injury (TBI) often have word retrieval deficits; however, the underlying neural mechanisms of such deficits are yet to be clarified. Previous studies in normal subjects have shown that during a word retrieval task, there is a 750 msec event-related potential (ERP) divergence detected at the left fronto-temporal region when subjects evaluate word pairs that facilitate retrieval compared with responses elicited by word pairs that do not facilitate retrieval. In this study, we investigated the neurophysiological correlates of word retrieval networks in 19 retired professional athletes with TBI and 19 healthy control (HC) subjects. We recorded electroencephalography (EEG) in the participants during a semantic object retrieval task. In this task, participants indicated whether presented word pairs did (retrieval) or did not (non-retrieval) facilitate the retrieval of an object name. There were no significant differences in accuracy or reaction time between the two groups. The EEG showed a significant group by condition interaction over the left fronto-temporal region. The HC group mean amplitudes were significantly different between conditions, but the TBI group data did not show this difference, suggesting neurophysiological effects of injury. These findings provide evidence that ERP amplitudes may be used as a marker of disrupted semantic retrieval circuits in persons with TBI even when those persons perform normally.
DBA-VM: Dynamic bandwidth allocator for virtual machines

Cloud computing is an emergent paradigm that allows customers to rent infrastructure, platforms and software as a service. With resource sharing and reuse through virtualization technology, cloud environments become even more cost effective and flexible. Nevertheless, networking within virtualized cloud still presents some challenges in performance and resource allocation. In this paper, we propose DBA-VM, a Dynamic Bandwidth Allocator for Virtual Machines with regard to the established SLAs. The proposed scheme enforces the isolation between the virtual machines through the transmission bandwidth adjustment at the network I/O channel. The experimental performance evaluation shows that DBA-VM allows to the virtualized system to respect each virtual machine SLA while reducing the global physical resources (CPU and memory) consumption.
Enhanced Omnidirectional Photovoltaic Performance of Solar Cells Using Multiple‐Discrete‐Layer Tailored‐ and Low‐Refractive Index Anti‐Reflection Coatings

An optimized four‐layer tailored‐ and low‐refractive index anti‐reflection (AR) coating on an inverted metamorphic (IMM) triple‐junction solar cell device is demonstrated. Due to an excellent refractive index matching with the ambient air by using tailored‐ and low‐refractive index nanoporous SiO2 layers and owing to a multiple‐discrete‐layer design of the AR coating optimized by a genetic algorithm, such a four‐layer AR coating shows excellent broadband and omnidirectional AR characteristics and significantly enhances the omnidirectional photovoltaic performance of IMM solar cell devices. Comparing the photovoltaic performance of an IMM solar cell device with the four‐layer AR coating and an IMM solar cell with the conventional SiO2/TiO2 double layer AR coating, the four‐layer AR coating achieves an angle‐of‐incidence (AOI) averaged short‐circuit current density, JSC, enhancement of 34.4%, whereas the conventional double layer AR coating only achieves an AOI‐averaged JSC enhancement of 25.3%. The measured reflectance reduction and omnidirectional photovoltaic performance enhancement of the four‐layer AR coating are to our knowledge, the largest ever reported in the literature of solar cell devices.
The landscape of viral proteomics and its potential to impact human health

ABSTRACT Introduction: Advances in mass spectrometry-based proteomic technologies are enhancing studies of viral pathogenesis. Identification and quantification of host and viral proteins and modifications in cells and extracellular fluids during infection provides useful information about pathogenesis, and will be critical for directing clinical interventions and diagnostics. Areas covered: Herein we review and discuss a broad range of global proteomic studies conducted during viral infection, including those of cellular responses, protein modifications, virion packaging, and serum proteomics. We focus on viruses that impact human health and focus on experimental designs that reveal disease processes and surrogate markers. Expert commentary: Global proteomics is an important component of systems-level studies that aim to define how the interaction of humans and viruses leads to disease. Viral-community resource centers and strategies from other fields (e.g., cancer) will facilitate data sharing and platform-integration for systems-level analyses, and should provide recommended standards and assays for experimental designs and validation.
Nine‐year results of whole femoral head allograft with articular cartilage for acetabular impaction grafting in revision hip replacement

INTRODUCTION Acetabular impaction bone grafting with a cemented polyethylene socket aims to reconstitute the bone stock in hip revision. This is an effective but resource intensive and time consuming technique. Usually, the articular cartilage is removed from the femoral head allograft. Our objective was to assess the late results of using the whole femoral head, retaining the cartilage. METHODS Forty‐two acetabular revisions using impacted morselised bone graft (retaining the articular cartilage) and a cemented socket were studied retrospectively. The mean follow‐up duration was 9.3 years (range: 6‐13 years). Clinical and radiological assessment was made using the Oxford hip score, the classification of Hodgkinson et al (1988) for socket loosening and the classification of Gie et al (1993) for evaluation of allograft incorporation. RESULTS Twenty‐seven sockets (75.0%) were radiologically stable, six (16.7%) were radiologically loose and three (8.3%) had migrated. Thirty cases (83.3%) showed good trabecular remodelling and six (16.74%) showed trabecular incorporation without remodelling. Six patients were lost to follow‐up. Kaplan‐Meier analysis calculated a survival rate of 94.5% at a mean of 9.3 years (95% confidence interval: 8.1‐10.4 years) for all reasons of failure, with two re‐revisions. CONCLUSIONS The nine‐year results of the aforementioned technique are comparable with other major studies. Particularly when the supply of allograft and operative time are limited, retaining the articular cartilage of the femoral head is a safe and successful alternative.
Effect of two different molting procedures on a Salmonella enteritidis infection.

Previous studies have shown that inducing a molt using feed removal exacerbated an intestinal infection by Salmonella enteritidis (SE). The current study was conducted to determine whether inducing a molt using a molt diet would still cause a pause in egg laying but not exacerbate an intestinal SE infection. In Experiments 1 and 2, hens were either provided ad libitum access to layer feed (control), fed 45 g molt diet (molt-feed) daily, or deprived of feed for 14 d (molted), and were orally infected with 1 x 10(7) SE on Day 4 of molt. Egg lay ceased in hens subjected to both molt treatments. The percentage of hens shedding SE did not differ among treatment groups in Experiment 1, whereas in Experiment 2 the molted hens had significantly higher shed rates than the controls on Days 10, 17, and 24 postinfection and the molt-feed hens on Days 17 and 24 postinfection. Compared with both fed groups of hens, the molted hens shed significantly more SE in Experiment 1 on Day 10 postinfection, and in Experiment 2 the molted hens shed significantly more SE on all 4 sampling days. In Experiment 3, subgroups of hens within each treatment group received serial 10-fold dilutions of SE and intestinal shedding of the organism in each subgroup was determined 7 d later. The 50% infectious dose (ID50) was calculated for each treatment group from these shedding results. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Broadcast Applications of Glyphosate Control Nutsedge at a South Georgia Forest Tree Nursery

Nutsedge is a mujor weedprohlem in some southernforest tree nurseries . Al though herbicides curt control most weeds in nurseries, control ofnutsedge is usually dependent on fumigation. The purpose of this s tudy was to examine the e f fect iveness of broadcast uppl icat ions of glyphosate ,for control of nutsedge. Single and mul t iple appl icat ions of g lyphosate at 2 . 2 kg &ha greutly reduced the density of nutsedge shoots and viable tubers at a south Georgia forest tree nursery. The,first applicat ion in June 1999 reduced nutsedge shoots by approximately 98%. Subsequent uppl icat ions during September and October 1999 had no addi t ional detectable ejj5ect. Al though uppl icat ions in August and September2000 great ly reduced the amount of nutsedge in previously untreated areas, their e f fect d id not uppeur to be as great as glyphosate appl icat ions during the f irs t year. Rainfhll before and af ter glyphosate appl icat ions, undplunt age at the t ime of applicat ion may have influenced the level of nutsedge control in year two. Nutsedge shoots and viable tubers were reduced to neur zero levels in plots treated over u 2 yrperiod. The use of broudcast appl icat ions qf glyphosate may be of value in developing a more cost-ef fective mnnagementprogrum,for nutsedge control in southern,forest tree nurseries . South. J. Appl. For. 27(3):176-l 79 .
A Smart Parking Lot Management System for Scheduling the Recharging of Electric Vehicles

In this paper, we propose a centralized electric vehicles (EVs) recharge scheduling system for parking lots using a realistic vehicular mobility/parking pattern focusing on individual parking lots. We consider two different types of EV based on their mobility/parking patterns: 1) regular EVs; and 2) irregular EVs. An extensive trace-based vehicular mobility model collected from the Canton of Zurich is used for the regular EVs, and a probabilistic pattern built on top of this trace is used for modeling the behavior of irregular EVs. To the extent of our knowledge, this is the first EV charging scheduling study in the literature that takes into account a realistic vehicular mobility pattern focusing on individual parking lots. We compare the performance of our proposed system with two well-known basic scheduling mechanisms, first come first serve and earliest deadline first, with regard to two objective functions: 1) maximizing the total parking lot revenue; and 2) maximizing the total number of EVs fulfilling their requirements. Comparison results show that our proposed system outperforms well-known basic scheduling mechanisms with regards to both objectives. Parking lots managing the recharging of a high number of EVs will greatly benefit from using such recharge scheduling systems in the context of smart cities.
A Bayesian approach for estimating under-reported dengue incidence with a focus on non-linear associations between climate and dengue in Dhaka, Bangladesh

Determining the relation between climate and dengue incidence is challenging due to under-reporting of disease and consequent biased incidence estimates. Non-linear associations between climate and incidence compound this. Here, we introduce a modelling framework to estimate dengue incidence from passive surveillance data while incorporating non-linear climate effects. We estimated the true number of cases per month using a Bayesian generalised linear model, developed in stages to adjust for under-reporting. A semi-parametric thin-plate spline approach was used to quantify non-linear climate effects. The approach was applied to data collected from the national dengue surveillance system of Bangladesh. The model estimated that only 2.8% (95% credible interval 2.7–2.8) of all cases in the capital Dhaka were reported through passive case reporting. The optimal mean monthly temperature for dengue transmission is 29℃ and average monthly rainfall above 15 mm decreases transmission. Our approach provides an estimate of true incidence and an understanding of the effects of temperature and rainfall on dengue transmission in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
BLISS 2.0: a web-based tool for predicting conserved regulatory modules in distantly-related orthologous sequences

UNLABELLED BLISS 2.0 is a web-based application for identifying conserved regulatory modules in distantly related orthologous sequences. Unlike existing approaches, it performs the cross-genome comparison at the binding site level. Experimental results on simulated and real world data indicate that BLISS 2.0 can identify conserved regulatory modules from sequences with little overall similarity at the DNA sequence level. AVAILABILITY http://www.blisstool. org/
Community- and Healthcare-Associated Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Strains: An Investigation Into Household Transmission, Risk Factors, and Environmental Contamination

OBJECTIVE To measure transmission frequencies and risk factors for household acquisition of community-associated and healthcare-associated (HA-) methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). DESIGN Prospective cohort study from October 4, 2008, through December 3, 2012. SETTING Seven acute care hospitals in or near Toronto, Canada. PARTICIPANTS Total of 99 MRSA-colonized or MRSA-infected case patients and 183 household contacts. METHODS Baseline interviews were conducted, and surveillance cultures were collected monthly for 3 months from household members, pets, and 8 prespecified high-use environmental locations. Isolates underwent pulsed-field gel electrophoresis and staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec typing. RESULTS Overall, of 183 household contacts 89 (49%) were MRSA colonized, with 56 (31%) detected at baseline. MRSA transmission from index case to contacts negative at baseline occurred in 27 (40%) of 68 followed-up households. Strains were identical within households. The transmission risk for HA-MRSA was 39% compared with 40% (P=.95) for community-associated MRSA. HA-MRSA index cases were more likely to be older and not practice infection control measures (P=.002–.03). Household acquisition risk factors included requiring assistance and sharing bath towels (P=.001–.03). Environmental contamination was identified in 78 (79%) of 99 households and was more common in HA-MRSA households. CONCLUSION Household transmission of community-associated and HA-MRSA strains was common and the difference in transmission risk was not statistically significant. Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 2016;1–7
Fluorescent Polymer Incorporating Triazolyl Coumarin Units for Cu2+ Detection via Planarization of Ict-Based Fluorophore

A novel fluorescent polymer with pendant triazolyl coumarin units was synthesized through radical polymerization. The polymer showed reasonable sensitivity and selectivity towards Cu2+ in acetonitrile in comparison to other tested metal ions with a significant quenching effect on fluorescence and blue shifting in the range of 20 nm. The blue shift was assigned to the conformation changes of the diethylamino group from the coumarin moiety which led to planarization of the triazolyl coumarin units. The possible binding modes for Cu2+ towards the polymer were determined through the comparison of the emission responses of the polymer, starting vinyl monomer and reference compound, and the triazole ring was identified as one of the possible binding sites for Cu2+. The detection limits of the polymer and vinyl monomer towards Cu2+ were determined from fluorescence titration experiments and a higher sensitivity (35 times) was observed for the polymer compared with its starting monomer.
Protein-enriched, milk-based supplement to counteract sarcopenia in acutely ill geriatric patients offered resistance exercise training during and after hospitalisation: study protocol for a randomised, double-blind, multicentre trial

Introduction Age-related loss of muscle mass and strength, sarcopaenia, burdens many older adults. The process is accelerated with bed rest, protein intakes below requirements and the catabolic effect of certain illnesses. Thus, acutely ill, hospitalised older adults are particularly vulnerable. Protein supplementation can preserve muscle mass and/or strength and, combining this with resistance exercise training (RT), may have additional benefits. Therefore, this study investigates the effect of protein supplementation as an addition to offering RT among older adults while admitted to the geriatric ward and after discharge. This has not previously been investigated. Methods and analysis In a block-randomised, double-blind, multicentre intervention study, 165 older adults above 70 years, fulfilling the eligibility criteria, will be included consecutively from three medical departments (blocks of n=20, stratified by recruitment site). After inclusion, participants will be randomly allocated (1:1) to receive either ready-to-drink, protein-enriched, milk-based supplements (a total of 27.5 g whey protein/day) or isoenergetic placebo products (<1.5 g protein/day), twice daily as a supplement to their habitual diet. Both groups will be offered a standardised RT programme for lower extremity muscle strength (daily while hospitalised and 4×/week after discharge). The study period starts during their hospital stay and continues 12 weeks after discharge. The primary endpoint is lower extremity muscle strength and function (30 s chair-stand-test). Secondary endpoints include muscle mass, measures of physical function and measures related to cost-effectiveness. Ethics and dissemination Approval is given by the Research Ethic Committee of the Capital Region of Denmark (reference no. H-16018240) and the Danish Data Protection Agency (reference no. HGH-2016-050). There are no expected risks associated with participation, and each participant is expected to benefit from the RT. Results will be published in peer-reviewed international journals and presented at national and international congresses and symposiums. Trial registration number NCT02717819 (9 March 2016).
Uncertainty and Capacity Constraints: Reconsidering the Aggregate Production Function

Abstract The Cobb–Douglas function is today one of the most widely adopted assumptions in economic modeling, yet both its theoretical and empirical bases have long been under question. This paper builds an alternative function on very different (albeit also neoclassical) microfoundations aimed at both addressing those theoretical drawbacks and providing a better empirical fit than the Cobb–Douglas formula. The new model, unlike the Cobb–Douglas function, does not portray installed capacity as aggregate capital but as a sunk cost generating economic rents. An analysis of 1949–2008 annual U.S. growth data suggest this alternative model explains nearly 85 percent of GDP fluctuations and is empirically more robust than the Cobb–Douglas, whilst both contemporary and lagged aggregate capital are statistically rejected as explanatory variables. This lends support to the old “Cambridge Critique”, according to which using value-weighted capital aggregates to explain production simply makes no sense. At face value, these results not only pose a question on any macroeconomic model assuming a Cobb–Douglas function but also point towards an alternative interpretation of phenomena such as the way monetary policy impacts productivity.