Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Preoperative Opioid Use as a Predictor of Adverse Postoperative Self-Reported Outcomes in Patients Undergoing Spine Surgery.

BACKGROUND Opioids are commonly used for preoperative pain management in patients undergoing spine surgery. The objective of this investigation was to assess whether preoperative opioid use predicts worse self-reported outcomes in patients undergoing spine surgery. METHODS Five hundred and eighty-three patients undergoing lumbar, thoracolumbar, or cervical spine surgery to treat a structural lesion were included in this prospective cohort study. Self-reported preoperative opioid consumption data were obtained at the preoperative visit and were converted to the corresponding daily morphine equivalent amount. Patient-reported outcome measures were assessed at three and twelve months postoperatively via the 12-Item Short-Form Health Survey and the EuroQol-5D questionnaire, as well as, when appropriate, the Oswestry Disability Index and the Neck Disability Index. Separate multivariable linear regression analyses were then performed. RESULTS At the preoperative evaluation, of the 583 patients, 56% (326 patients) reported some degree of opioid use. Multivariable analyses controlling for age, sex, diabetes, smoking, surgery invasiveness, revision surgery, preoperative Modified Somatic Perception Questionnaire score, preoperative Zung Depression Scale score, and baseline outcome score found that increased preoperative opioid use was a significant predictor (p < 0.05) of decreased 12-Item Short-Form Health Survey and EuroQol-5D scores, as well as of increased Oswestry Disability Index and Neck Disability Index scores at three and twelve months postoperatively. Every 10-mg increase in daily morphine equivalent amount taken preoperatively was associated with a 0.03 decrease in the 12-Item Short-Form Health Survey physical component summary and mental component summary scores, a 0.01 decrease in the EuroQol-5D score, and a 0.5 increase in the Oswestry Disability Index and Neck Disability Index score at twelve months postoperatively. Higher preoperative Modified Somatic Perception Questionnaire and Zung Depression Scale scores were also significant negative predictors (p < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS Increased preoperative opioid consumption, Modified Somatic Perception Questionnaire score, and Zung Depression Scale score prior to undergoing spine surgery predicted worse patient-reported outcomes. This suggests the potential benefit of psychological and opioid screening with a multidisciplinary approach that includes weaning of opioid use in the preoperative period and close opioid monitoring postoperatively. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE Prognostic Level II. See Instructions for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.
Risk Factors and Clinical Outcomes for Patients With Acinetobacter baumannii Bacteremia

Abstract Acinetobacter (A.) baumannii, an opportunistic nosocomial pathogen that can cause significant morbidity and mortality, has emerged as a worldwide problem. This study aimed to analyze the clinical features and outcomes of patients with A. baumannii bacteremia and determine the factors influencing survival by using 14-day mortality as the primary endpoint.A 6-year retrospective study of 122 cases with monomicrobial A. baumannii bacteremia was conducted in Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) General Hospital from January 2008 to April 2014. Predictors of 14-day mortality were identified by logistic regression analysis.The overall 14-day mortality rate was 40.2% (49 of 122 patients). Multivariable analysis revealed that independent predictors of 14-day mortality included severity of illness defined by Pitt Bacteremia Score (PBS) (odds ratio [OR], 0.46; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.340–0.619; P < 0.001), neutropenia (OR, 18.02; 95% CI, 1.667–194.67; P = 0.017), and malignancy (OR, 4.63; 95% CI, 1.292–16.588; P = 0.019). The effect of malignancy was influenced by neutropenia (OR for interaction term, 1.60; 95% CI, 1.15–2.22; P = 0.005). A subgroup analysis revealed that 14-day mortality rate for patients with underlying hematological malignancies and solid tumors was 75% (12/16) and 40% (12/30), respectively. Survival analysis revealed that mortality in patients with hematological malignancies was higher than that in patients with solid tumors (P = 0.032). The outcomes of patients with A. baumannii bacteremia were related to PBS, neutropenia, and malignancy. Compared with solid tumors, patients with hematological malignancies had a higher mortality in the setting of A. baumannii bacteremia.
Influence of double flask investing and microwave heating on the superficial porosity, surface roughness, and knoop hardness of acrylic resin.

PURPOSE Simultaneous polymerization of maxillary and mandibular complete dentures with teeth in occlusion through investing in a double special flask has been described as a more rapid and efficient method to polymerize prostheses than the conventional method; however, no study has been done to verify important properties of resin, including superficial porosity, surface roughness, and hardness, when processed by this technique. The purpose of this study was to verify if the simultaneous polymerization associated with microwave heating may alter the superficial porosity, surface roughness, and Knoop hardness of acrylic resin. MATERIALS AND METHODS Resin specimens processed in single and double dental flasks were compared using microwave energy and warm water methods. Four groups were tested according to the investing flask and the method of resin cure: Group I control specimens (n = 15) were invested in single metal flasks and cured by warm water at 74 degrees C for 9 hours. Group II (n = 15) specimens were invested in single polyvinyl chloride flasks and cured by microwave energy at 90 W for 20 minutes plus 450 W for 5 minutes. Group III (n = 30) and Group IV (n = 30) specimens were processed by simultaneous polymerization in double flasks and cured by the same warm water and microwave energy protocols, respectively. RESULTS No significant differences were found in mean superficial porosity (8.06 +/- 2.28 pore/cm(2)), surface roughness (0.14 +/- 0.03 mum), or Knoop hardness (19.66 +/- 2.25 kgf/mm(2)) between the control group (GI), and the other three experimental groups (p > 0.05). CONCLUSION Processing acrylic resin in a double flask heated by either warm water or microwave energy does not alter the resin's superficial porosity, surface roughness, or Knoop hardness; however, other properties of resin should be analyzed using this denture processing technique.
Differences in income between male and female primary care physicians.

OBJECTIVES to determine whether sex differences in income persist among primary care physicians in light of the increasing proportion of women entering the field. METHODS We obtained sex- and age-specific self-reported data from the American Medical Association's annual survey of physicians to determine the annual income, annual income per hours worked, proportion of time in direct patient care, and outpatient productivity for family practice physicians, general internists, and pediatricians between 1989 and 1998. We compared female to male results for respondents in the 36- to 45-year-old age group as well as for the age-weighted gender aggregate. RESULTS Female primary care physicians reported lower annual incomes (between 60% and 85% of those of their male counterparts) and lower incomes per hours worked (between 71% and 98% of those of their male counterparts). The income disparities decreased during the 10 years, at a rate of about 1% per year on average. Although the proportion of time female physicians spent in direct patient care activities was similar to that of their male counterparts, female physicians saw substantially more patients per office hour (about 17% more, on average, over time). CONCLUSIONS Gender inequities persist in the incomes of primary care physicians. Although the disparities appear to be decreasing, female primary care physicians' increased productivity compared with men's suggests that these inequities are perpetuated in more subtle ways and warrant immediate examination and remediation.
Extracting Visual Contracts from Java Programs (T)

Visual contracts model the operations of components or services by pre-and post-conditions formalised as graph transformation rules. They provide a precise intuitive notation to support testing, understanding and analysis of software. However, due to their detailed specification of data states and transformations, modelling real applications is an error-prone process. In this paper we propose a dynamic approach to reverse engineering visual contracts from Java based on tracing the execution of Java operations. The resulting contracts give an accurate description of the observed object transformations, their effects and preconditions in terms of object structures, parameter and attribute values, and their generalised specification by universally quantified (multi) objects. While this paper focusses on the fundamental technique rather than a particular application, we explore potential uses in our evaluation, including in program understanding, review of test reports and debugging.
Multi-domain Schema Clustering and Hierarchical Mediated Schema Generation

In data integration, users can access multiple data sources through a uniform interface. Yet it is still not easy to query from data sources where many domains coexist even if the data sources are clustered into several domains since users have to write different query clauses for each different domain. Previous researches have presented various data integration techniques, but nearly all of them require the schemas of data sources to be integrated belong to the same domain, or failed to address that some different domains may be the sub-domains of a high level domain in which case a more abstract query clause for upper domain can substitute several less abstract query clauses for lower domains. In this paper, we propose a graph-based approach for clustering schemas which would finally expose to users a hierarchical mediated schema forest, and a query forwarding mechanism to transform queries down along the schema forest. A set of experimental results demonstrate that our schema clustering algorithm is effective in clustering the data sources into hierarchical schemas, queries on the mediated schemas could achieve answers with good accuracy, and the cost of writing query clauses for users is reduced without losing query accuracy.
Heterogeneity of Helicobacter pylori

&NA; Although many physicians view Helicobacter pylori strains as a homogenous group of organisms, it has become increasingly clear that populations in humans are highly diverse. This heterogeneity can be analyzed at two different levels: genotypic variation among strains and variations in H. pylori populations within an individual host. Genotypic variation includes point mutations in conserved genes (e.g. ureC), variation in the gene order on physical maps, mosaicism in conserved genes (e.g. vacAs1a), non‐conserved genes (e.g. cagA) and extragenetic elements (e.g. IS605). Population differences include the observations that humans can be simultaneously infected with two or more H. pylori strains and that a single strain may represent a cluster of closely related organisms (a ‘quasispecies’). The presence of multiple organisms within a host may occur as a result of recombination events leading to genetic shift, whereas ongoing mutation within a strain can lead to the formation of quasispecies by genetic drift. Over recent years it has become increasingly clear that observations on the fundamental biology of H. pylori have considerable clinical relevance. Several genotypic markers (e.g. cagA, vacA, s1a and iceA1) are associated with an increased risk of disease. Also, the multiplicity of infection and quasispecies indicates that analysis of a single H. pylori isolate is inaccurate for defining the genotype of H. pylori strains present in a patient. Global assays, such as serology, are more suitable. The aim of this paper is to review the general phenomenon of diversity in H. pylori and to describe particular heterogeneities that are related to clinical outcome.
Voiceprint analysis using Perceptual Linear Prediction and Support Vector Machines for detecting persons with Parkinson ’ s disease

In the aim of developing the assessment of speech disorders for detecting patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD), we have collected 34 sustained vowel / a /, from 34 subjects including 17 PD patients. We subsequently extracted from 1 to 20 coefficients of the Perceptual Linear Prediction (PLP) from each individual. To extract the voiceprint from each individual, we compressed the frames by calculating their average value. For classification, we used the Leave-One-Subject-Out (LOSO) validation scheme along with the Support Vector Machines (SVMs) with its different types of kernels, (i.e.; RBF, Linear and polynomial). The best classification accuracy achieved was 82.35% using the first 13 and 14 coefficients of the PLP by Linear kernels SVMs. Key-Words: Voice analysis, Parkinson’s disease, Voiceprint, Perceptual linear prediction, Support Vector Machines, Leave One Subject Out.
A Protocol of Secure Multi-party Multiplication Based on Bilinear Pairing

A new method of secure multi-party multiplication using bilinear pairing is constructed. First of all, a protocol of signcryption based on bilinear pairing is proposed, which satisfy the secure requirements of forward security, publicly verifiability and so on. Secondly, a protocol of secure two-party multiplication using the signcryption and oblivious transfer is constructed and a protocol of secure multi-party multiplication is deduced. In the protocol, malicious participants can’t temper the message and it can prevent the k-1 numbers participants from cheating the other together.
Categorizing Social Multimedia by Neighborhood Decision Using Local Pairwise Label Correlation

On social media, the user generated contents, e.g., Articles and images, can be assigned with multiple labels. In this paper, we focus on the problem of performing multi-label classification on social media data, where the user generated contents are associated with multiple labels. Multi-label learning studies the problem where each object is represented by a single instance and associated with a set of labels. Current multi-label learning algorithms mainly exploit label correlations globally, by assuming that the label correlations are shared by all the examples. In real applications, however, different examples may share different label correlations. In this paper, we propose a Local Pair wise Label Correlation (LPLC) method for social media content categorization. We try to exploit the strongest local pair wise label correlations between the ground truth labels for each training example by computing the maximum conditional probabilities. If two labels have strong correlation, there will be a larger conditional probability of one label given by another. In the training stage, we find the most correlated labels for ground truth labels of each training example. In the test stage, we make prediction through maximizing the posterior probability, which is estimated with the distribution of each label in the k nearest neighbors and their most correlated local pair wise label correlations. We compare our method with six well-established multi-label learning algorithms over nine data sets from different social media data domains and scales. Comparison results with the state-of-the-arts approaches manifest competitive performances of our method.
3-{3,5-Bis[(2-butoxyethoxy)carbonyl]-2,6-dimethyl-1,4-dihydropyridin-4-yl}-1-[(3,4,5-trimethoxybenzoyl)methyl]pyridinium bromide

In the title salt, C37H51N2O10 +·Br−, the 1,4-dihydropyridine (1,4-DHP) ring adopts a slighly puckered boat conformation. The N and opposite C atoms deviate from the least-squares plane calculated through the four other ring atoms by 0.068 (5) and 0.224 (5) Å, respectively. The orientation of both C=O groups is similar (cis with respect to the double bonds of 1,4-DHP. The pyridinium ring has an axial orientation with respect to the1,4-DHP ring and is almost perpendicular to the least-squares plane of the 1,4-DHP ring, making a dihedral angle of 89.2 (3)°. The molecule has a compact shape due to the parallel orientation of the long-chain substituents. One of the butoxy groups was fond to be disordered (occupancy ratio 0.70:0.30). In the crystal, the bromide anion accepts a weak hydrogen bond from the N—H group of a neighboring 1,4-DHP ring.
Reflective inserts to reduce heat strain in body armor: tests with and without irradiance.

BACKGROUND This study evaluated adding reflective thermal inserts (RTI) to reduce the physiological strain during exercise-heat stress with a radiant load. RTI were used with a U.S. Army desert battle dress uniform, body armor, and helmet. METHODS Four male volunteers attempted four trials (10 min rest followed by 100 min walking at 1.56 m x s(-1)). All trials were at 40.0 degrees C dry bulb (Tdb), 12.4 degrees C dew point (Tdp), 20% RH, and 1.0 m x s(-1) wind speed. On 2 d, there was supplementary irradiance (+1) with globe temperature (Tbg) = 56.5 degrees C and on 2 d there was no supplementary irradiance (-I) with Tbg approximately Tdb. Trial conditions were: 1) RTI and armor with supplementary irradiance (RA+I); 2) plain armor with supplementary irradiance (PA+I); 3) RTI and armor with no supplementary irradiance (RA-I); and 4) plain armor with no supplementary irradiance (PA-I). RESULTS Endurance times were not significantly different among trials. With one exception, armor and helmet interior and exterior surface temperatures were not significantly different between either RA+I and PA+I or RA-I and PA-I. Temperature on the inside of the helmet in RA+I (47.1 +/- 1.4 degrees C) was significantly lower than in PA+I (49.5 +/- 2.6 degrees C). There were no differences for any physiological measure (core temperature, heart rate, mean weighted skin temperature, forehead skin temperature, sweating rate, evaporative cooling, rate of heat storage) between either RA+I and PA+L or RA-I and PA-I. CONCLUSIONS Results showed no evidence that wearing RTI with body armor and helmet reduces physiological strain during exercise-heat stress with either high or low irradiance.
Modelling and analyzing multimodal dyadic interactions using social networks

Social network analysis became a common technique used to model and quantify the properties of social interactions. In this paper, we propose an integrated framework to explore the characteristics of a social network extracted from multimodal dyadic interactions. First, speech detection is performed through an audio/visual fusion scheme based on stacked sequential learning. In the audio domain, speech is detected through clusterization of audio features. Clusters are modelled by means of an One-state Hidden Markov Model containing a diagonal covariance Gaussian Mixture Model. In the visual domain, speech detection is performed through differential-based feature extraction from the segmented mouth region, and a dynamic programming matching procedure. Second, in order to model the dyadic interactions, we employed the Influence Model whose states encode the previous integrated audio/visual data. Third, the social network is extracted based on the estimated influences. For our study, we used a set of videos belonging to New York Times' Blogging Heads opinion blog. The results are reported both in terms of accuracy of the audio/visual data fusion and centrality measures used to characterize the social network.
Baring It All to Software: Raw Machines

The most radical of the architectures that appear in this issue are Raw processors-highly parallel architectures with hundreds of very simple processors coupled to a small portion of the on-chip memory. Each processor, or tile, also contains a small bank of configurable logic, allowing synthesis of complex operations directly in configurable hardware. Unlike the others, this architecture does not use a traditional instruction set architecture. Instead, programs are compiled directly onto the Raw hardware, with all units told explicitly what to do by the compiler. The compiler even schedules most of the intertile communication. The real limitation to this architecture is the efficacy of the compiler. The authors demonstrate impressive speedups for simple algorithms that lend themselves well to this architectural model, but whether this architecture will be effective for future workloads is an open question.
Data Stream Mining: the Bounded Rationality

The developments of information and communication technologies dramatically change the data collection and processing methods. Data mining is now moving to the era of bounded rationality. In this work we discuss the implications of the resource constraints impose by the data stream computational model in the design of learning algorithms. We analyze the behavior of stream mining algorithms and present future research directions including ubiquitous stream mining and self-adaption models.
Evidence of hot spot directional signature from airborne POLDER measurements

The POLDER instrument was flown during the BOREAS experiment over various sites and at various altitudes in the Canadian boreal forest and other nearby targets. The instrument design permits the acquisition of the directional signature of any surface cover. In particular, the high directional resolution of POLDER allows it to measure, with an unprecedented accuracy, the hot spot signature of natural targets. The authors present some typical examples of such highly anisotropic reflectance directional signatures. The ratio of the maximum reflectance (hot spot direction) to the minimum reflectance (broad area in the forward scattering hemisphere) varies with wavelength and canopy. It can be as large as six in the visible and three in the near IR.
Assessment of Musculoskeletal Toxicity 5 Years After Therapy With Levofloxacin

BACKGROUND: Safety concerns for fluoroquinolones exist from animal studies demonstrating cartilage injury in weight-bearing joints, dependent on dose and duration of therapy. For children treated with levofloxacin or comparator in randomized, prospective, comparative studies for acute otitis media and community-acquired pneumonia, this 5-year follow-up safety study was designed to assess the presence/absence of cartilage injury. METHODS: Children enrolled in treatment studies were also enrolled in a 1-year follow-up safety study, which; focused on musculoskeletal adverse events (MSAE). Those with persisting MSAEs, protocol-defined musculoskeletal disorders, or of concern to the Data Safety and Monitoring Committee were requested to enroll in four additional years of follow-up, the subject of this report. RESULTS: Of the 2233 subjects participating in the 12-month follow-up study, 124 of 1340 (9%) of the levofloxacin subjects, and 83 of 893 (9%) of the comparator subjects were continued for 5-year posttreatment assessment. From children identified with an MSAE during years 2 through 5 posttreatment, the number that were “possibly related” to drug therapy was equal for both arms: 1 of 1340 for levofloxacin and 1 of 893 for comparator. Of all cases of MSAE assessed by the Data Safety and Monitoring Committee at 5 years’ posttreatment, no case was assessed as “likely related” to study drug. CONCLUSIONS: With no clinically detectable difference between levofloxacin- and comparator-treated children in MSAEs presenting between 1 and 5 years in these safety studies, risks of cartilage injury with levofloxacin appear to be uncommon, are clinically undetectable during 5 years, or are reversible.